Lynda A. Calder's Blog: Consider This

August 23, 2018

Consider This: Writing and Research

Finally back to some writing. It's hard to write when you have a million things going on in your life and your head is not in the writing space.

Anyway, back to writing the story of Mary & Martha. I've done SO much research on this and, yet, I feel like with every sentence and every new scene I have to do so much more.

How do I navigate the mire of writing without feeling I know the times and everything I want to write about?

Stephen King, in his book "On Writing" recommends that the first draft should be written with "the door shut", as if no one is ever going to read it. And then the editing is done with "the door open".

I have resolved to write and put in a modicum of good detail, but get the actual story down from beginning to end before I do the edit and fill it with some outstanding research, including, it seems, some locational research as my hubby is determined to take me to Israel after Christmas to visit all the sites.

The trick is not to get bogged down in the research thinking it needs to be complete before I write. One can be mired in research and use it as an excuse to procrastinate (which I think I've been doing). It's time to get down to writing.
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Published on August 23, 2018 23:07 Tags: procrastination, research, writing

October 18, 2017

Consider This: Mango

I have been told by my HSC son that there will be a new, enduring meme for his generation that involves mangoes. He introduced me to the poem Mango by Ellen Van Neerven and the controversy surrounding the ensuing memes and criticism the use of the poem in the HSC English Exam gained. The first of the meme images apparently appeared on the HSC Facebook group only 10 minutes after the students walked out of the exam room. There was a lot of anger.

Most of the controversy has circled around claims of racism, but I asked my son if students were even aware the poet was indigenous. And then if the poet, herself, had given authority for the poem's use - especially since she then received so much criticism from students.

But why the anger? Students didn't understand the poem. They didn't see its relevance. They couldn't interpret it the way the examiners expected in the limited time given. Their teachers had not prepared them properly. They were STEM students... There are many reasons. I'm sure there were some students who loved this poem and could wax lyrical about it and relate it to any topic given to them. But what about those who see not the grey of life but the black and white? Those STEM students.

When I read the poem (which was supposed to be linked with the Area of Study: Discovery) I wondered how the poem related to the topic. I believe the poet herself when asked (in what I thought was a very polite tweet) how she thought it related to Discovery replied "IDK LOL" [I don't know. Laugh Out Loud].

So the poem: Mango by Ellen van Neerven

eight years old

walking under the bridge

scrub, swamp

abandoned machinery

insides of tennis balls

bits of fences

meeting the boys

at the dam

bikes in a pile

skater shoe soles

not cold in

never is

boys talking about mangoes

slapping water

some have never had one

listen to the taste

the squeeze of a cheek

dripping chins

a dog jumps in

they pull on tufts of hair

fill ears with mud

breeze full

clouds break

they remember my birthday

is tomorrow

While I am no poet and don't really appreciate poetry, as such, I can sort of appreciate this poem. I can see the imagery and the scenes it describes. BUT I don't really see it in the context of an exam question on Discovery. It does, though highlight, for me, the disconnect that STEM students feel when it comes to reading and interpreting English texts.

My son couldn't appreciate this at all. To him (as it was to me for SO long) this is not a poem. It has no grammar, no punctuation, no rhyme. Fair enough. This is true. So what are teachers doing in trying to help students understand and appreciate all forms of poetry? I really don't like free form poetry and find it, myself, an excuse for poor grammar and poor rhyme, because I know there is another art going on - one that I cannot see, nor understand. Having just read another person raving about how wonderful this poem is in terms of imagery and rhythm, I still can't find the poem to my liking. And all poetry is like that. Thankfully I don't need to subject myself to poetry unless I choose to. HSC students have it thrust upon them and usually in a way where they are expected to "get it".

Discussing the need for English in the HSC with my sister-in-law, I lamented that students who are good at English don't have to take Maths (although they will soon) and, if they do, it doesn't have to count in their ATAR (entrance mark for Uni). But those who are STEM students and not good at English have to not only take English (at quite a sophisticated level) but also HAVE to count it in the ATAR. This is not fair.

My SIL commented that there needs to be some sort of English level that equates to General Maths (my son says there is such a subject but it is not an ATAR subject - which makes me think What the...?).

It always brings me back to the same thing... we are teaching English to STEM students in the WRONG WAY! It's like this diagram:
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg...
"For fair selection everyone has to sit the same exam: everyone climb that tree." And there is a monkey, penguin, elephant, goldfish, seal and dog all lined up to take the test.

For a fair system, everyone has to take the same course and everyone has to count it. But only in English.

We also need to examine the way we teach English AND the teachers who present it to STEM students. English teachers don't think the same way as STEM students. Find some really gifted STEM teachers, train them as English teachers and set them loose!
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Published on October 18, 2017 20:11 Tags: atar, english, fair, free-form-poetry, hsc, mango, stem-students, teachers

August 17, 2017

Consider This: Where do you ideas come from?

I was considering this question yesterday as I prepared for a visit to a High School during Book Week next week. It is the question all authors are asked: "Where do your ideas come from?"

For me, my ideas are usually sparked by a snippet from a dream that then raises a "What if?" question and away I go. Although, there is one manuscript I am working on that was sparked by sitting in many, many violin lessons, listening to my oldest son screech away (and then he got good) and looking out this window. It was a window that overlooked the back of shops. It wasn't a pretty view. And I wondered, what if out that window I saw, instead, a world that was not there? A world of green grass and blue sky and mountains. A fantasy world. What would it be like?

When I visit in Book Week I have been asked to run a workshop for some Year 8 students as well as talk about my journey as an author/writer. I have also been, more recently, helping my youngest son with his HSC English. And it occurred to me that every exam or every creative writing exercise that high school students undertake starts with a stimulus; something to spark their imagination. And, yet, so many students like to have a pre-written piece of creative writing and then try to mold it to fit the stimulus.

How wonderful it would be if students could be encouraged more to stimulate their imagination and work with the stimulus as a spark for something new. Then again, the stimulus can sometimes be rather confusing and requires its own analysis. And here lies a problem. What if the student (especially a STEM student) does not know how to analyse the stimulus or does not know that the stimulus requires analysis and then just writes? Are they penalised? Are students given instruction on how to work with a stimulus? Are they shown a stimulus and then, with guidance from an expert (eg. the teacher) shown what can be done with it?

Confidence in writing, particularly original material that has not been written, tried, tested, marked, rewritten, edited and tests again, comes from experience and instruction and is that what is lacking?

Is the English syllabus now too crowded to really allow the development of the proper skills? It appears to me that my son has 4 or 5 different areas of study packed into his study year, head and then two exams. That is SO many.

So, where do I get my ideas from - my imagination. Where do students get their ideas from? Are they allowed to use their imagination? Or are they expected to write within such a limited scope that really stymies true imagination?

Something to think about.
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Published on August 17, 2017 21:53 Tags: confidence, hsc-english, ideas, imagination, spark, writing

May 31, 2017

Consider This: Teaching English to STEM Students

The other morning I was in the car with my HSC son as he drove to school (I take the car back home after he gets there). We were having an interesting conversation about his recent half yearly exams and resultant school report. His STEM results (Physics [S], Multimedia [T], Engineering Studies [E] and Ext 1 Maths [M]) are really quite outstanding for a student who spends little obvious time studying, but he really does struggle with English, no matter how much review he does. I was the same (as previous Blog posts will attest to). I get it. Our brains work differently.

These exam results for English are especially frustrating for him because he really put a LOT into the study for this exam and he has received very little useful feedback from his teacher. More than this, he had been given good feedback on what he had shown his teacher and then got a bad mark for it. He practiced his creative writing, he reviewed his essay topics.

But with an English teacher who does little actual explicit teaching of analytical techniques, textual techniques, essay writing, thesis statement synthesis or creative writing he feels like he is floundering with no direction. I had a similar teacher who seemed to think I would just "pick it up". Well, I didn't (not until I had to teach it to my older son when I home-schooled him with an Excel Book on Essay Writing). It was not enough for the teacher to put the texts in front of me. I could not see themes, links, techniques or the ideas that she seemed to be sprouting. In fact, I saw nothing more than the words on the page and little else. Perhaps they were obvious to her, but certainly not to me. To me they were an enduring mystery.

But back to my discussion.

Apparently my son's regular English teacher is on leave and they have a substitute who has explicitly laid out for them all the themes and links in their current text and topic. He's written more in his English notebook in this short time than he has in the past 18 months. This teacher is also, apparently, and "English head" because she talks about writing essays and Uni and her Masters course and such, but I am tipping that, if he asks her, she may just be one of those rare entities that is/was also good at STEM subjects! She seems to understand the needs of STEM students and can teach to them.

At any rate, reflecting later on our discussion it appeared to me that my son, as a STEM student, has a great advantage which is also a great disadvantage. He sees patterns but not the ethereal ones the English teacher does, more concrete ones. And these are obvious to him so:
1. Since they are obvious, he thinks they are obvious to everyone and discussing them in an essay would be pointless; and
2. He has little idea of how to articulate these in anything other than dot points.

It was only when I was at Uni doing my own Master of Arts in Creative Writing that I realised my observations (obvious to me) were not so obvious to my experienced fellow English students. They had done BA degrees majoring in English. I had done a BE in Electrical Engineering!

There was this short story we were discussing called The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro. The title of the short story prompted me to start singing in my head as I walked around the house. Was this a real song? Yes "The Bear Went Over the Mountain". The title of the piece really didn't fit with the themes of the story until I realised that when the bear went over the mountain, all that he could see was the other side of the mountain - ie, nothing different. And that was happening in the short story. When I brought this up in our discussion group and experienced English teacher said she had studied and taught this piece before and had never made that link! (Kudos for this Engineer!)

But, something that was so obvious to me was worth a mention because it had not been thought of by another! And this is the lesson my HSC son needs to learn. His obvious insights may not be obvious to others and are worthy of exploration.

But this leads to his second disadvantage; the inability to articulate himself in the written form. Verbally he's really strong but struggles to put on paper thoughts that he feels an English teacher would mark well. He complains that he writes this simply and as he sees them, whereas he feels English teachers are looking for flowery words and clever language to express in three sentences what could be written in one. And he is probably right. At Uni essays have word limits, so the distillation of thoughts into the simplest of language is important (and this can be done WITHOUT high fallutin' words) but at school teachers seem enamoured with flowery nonsense. I've read some Band 6 essays (ie those that receive the top marks) and I even wonder if the students comprehend what they are saying or are just throwing together random words that make them seem smarter than they really are. But why should those who express themselves simply be penalised?

This deficit in articulation now extends into the STEM subjects as they have introduced the "extended response" question which is a mini essay that requires linkage and such. Rather than content being the focus of these questions it is the expression and argument within them, which seems bizarre to me for a STEM subject (the person who put the touchy feely into STEM subjects should be shot!).

As a result he is sitting in ranking behind students who do Advanced English simply because these students can get full marks in the extended responses - despite not necessarily being as knowledgeable in the content! Unless a STEM teacher takes it upon themselves to fix this deficit, it will never be addressed by an English teacher because they have no idea how to do this for STEM students (unless they, themselves, were also STEM students).

Anyway, this little discussion and analysis is going to make for some interesting and very different parent teacher interviews next week. No cookie cutter "he needs to review more, do more home study, do more HSC practice papers" interviews for us, thanks. It's going to be "why aren't you doing anything to address this English deficit" and "where is the specific and explicit feedback that is going to help him improve in this area"?
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May 18, 2017

Consider This: What to do when you get bored with a manuscript

The past couple of months have been rather trying for this writer. I have endured the most extreme stress. More stress than I think I have experienced in my entire life: increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, inability to think straight, almost anxiety, obsession, paranoia and certainly no creativity, therefore the inability to write.

It's a long story and may turn up in parts in future books, but for now I can feel happy that I am on the other side of that (I hope) and I can feel the creativity returning.

I have at lest three manuscripts on the go and I find myself wanting to return to them but not knowing where to go with them. So, I have focussed on just one for the moment: Bringer . This is the YA I started when doing my Masters degree.

Why can't I move it forward? I have moved my characters to the main location for the final action but find that the story itself feels very thin and the characters are so unlovable and so undeveloped that I can't bring myself to write the final scenes. The characters aren't ready for them.

And then I realised: the whole middle of the story is missing.

This is one of the faults in my writing. I can start a story and end it, but the middle is always the struggle. So, now some heavy thinking on how the characters need to develop to reach their destination and how their relationship to each other, their surroundings and everything need to change.

It's brainstorming time. Writing to explore and adding layers of meaning.

This is the hard part. But also the fun part. Let it begin :D
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Published on May 18, 2017 00:16 Tags: boredom, bringer, character-development, manuscript, stress, writing

May 3, 2017

Consider This - Seven Questions

I recently received my copy of the Australian Society of Author's "Australian Author" magazine. A couple of great articles that caught my eye.

The first was about Writers and procrastination. That's me to a tee and one of the reasons I've been stuck not doing anything this year (last year was different, it was wake, train, work, home, cook, meeting, sleep, repeat and I was beyond exhausted).

The other article was 5 questions for 7 authors. Being just questions, I thought I would use the idea and tackle them myself:

1. What was your favourite author growing up and why?

Until I hit high school I tended to read only Nancy Drew. So, that would mean Carolyn Keene was my favourite author. But when I learnt, not that long ago, that Carolyn Keene was not a real person (just like H.I.Larry, the "author" of Zac Power is not a single, real person) but a conglomerate of writers all contracted to write under that name.

Once I discovered Sci Fi and fantasy my favourite writers were Frank Herbert (Dune Series), Isaac Asimov (especially the Foundation Series but also the short stories), Larry Niven (Ring World series) and Janny Wurts and Raymond E. Feist (Daughter of the Empire and Magician series). The new worlds they created so expertly and then told a tale in that world with many threads that ALL came together at the end. (Tolkein has to feature there, too, but not as much as these others.)

2. What were your first attempts at writing like?

I've been writing since Kindergarten, so that was pretty ordinary and I've only just been back and read some of it. Good beginnings, but little development.

My more recent foray into big person writing was a little better but fraught with all the usual writing mistakes, the worst being "Telling" the reader rather than "Showing" the reader. I cringe when I read early drafts of early stuff now.

3. What's the biggest challenge you've faced as an author?

I'm still facing it. Haven't overcome this one, yet. That is trying to convince someone who matters that my work is worthy of publishing and them paying me. I know a writer shouldn't write to be published, but what is the point of writing something you want to share if you can't share it? Rejections suck.

4. What has been your greatest career satisfaction so far?

Writing my two books and getting them out there and finding that people are REALLY enjoyed reading them. REALLY enjoyed them and want the next installment.

Also, completing my Master of Arts in Creative Writing with a Distinction average. My High School English teacher would probably not believe it. I hardly did.

5. In terms of craft, what do you think you're best at and where could you improve?

I'm best at the "what if", the concepts; getting the idea and starting and then knowing where I want it to end. I love writing action. I'm good at coming up with little twists that add to the background and the foreground.

I could improve at the middle bit. Getting them from start to end and not writing boring filler. I think my characterisations probably need some work, particularly of the main character. I tend to see the work through that person's eyes, so I see all the other characters very well but not the main character.

6. What would you like to see more and less of in Australia's literary scene?

I would like to see more of a go for the new writer and less of the same old getting the opportunities.

I would like to see recognition for good writing, rather than the name attached to it. And a lot less soul crushing.

I went to a writing conference recently and there were established authors winning prizes (that's fine, well done), but they were crying as though they had won Miss Universe. I thought "there is something wrong with out industry if even established authors can react this way to winning prizes."

I would like to see Middle Grade become an actual "thing" so there is a step between Young Fiction/Chapter Book and YA angst.

I would like to see less "literary" stuff winning things and more genre writing winning.

7. What's a misconception some people have of you and your work?

I'm a writer so I must be able to just churn out a good sentence at will. That my writing ability can translate to every and all situations. Mostly it can, but it takes just the same about of work and care as it does to craft a novel.

Also, a misconception is that I'm a writer, so I must have been an artsy, English head at school. Many are VERY surprised when I tell them I was the Maths/Science nerd and English was really hard for me. And thus (see my previous blog posts) they are surprised when they learn my writing process is completely different from what they expected of a writer.

There we go, a quick 7 questions. Post me some more if you are interested.
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Published on May 03, 2017 16:33 Tags: answers, asa, procrastination, questions

April 3, 2017

Consider This - Batteries that die

It is the author's curse that a battery is going to die. When I was doing my Honours thesis back in the days when laptops had very (VERY) limited battery life, if at all, I was working on generator power at a Youth Camp. We knew that the generator would go off at a particular time but I was on such a role (as they say) I lost track of time. I ahd written a lot of my thesis and then I heard the generator start to sputter and go down.

OH NO!

I was using Word Perfect, at the time, and quickly hit the save keys. Phew! Then realised there was that message: "Do you want to save?" As I went to hit return to say yes the computer died (the battery had failed) and all that work (about 2-3 hours' worth) went with it. Dang it.

And this is the curse of an author. Today I was going to use the time waiting for my son (while he did an exam) to sit in the car and work on Mary & Martha. I was going really well. I had worked for 45 minutes with the car radio on and then, suddenly, the car radio went off. What? The radio was having an issue?

No, the car was. I had left the headlights on and drained the car battery. It was dead. Deader than dead. Nothing left. NRMA called and 1.5 hours later the car was going again and son was out of exam, but not a lot of writing got done. Once one battery went down, my head went to a non-writing place.

So, I worked on draining the battery in my phone and played "Bubble Witch 3" instead.

Batteries come in all forms, and the brain battery is such an important one. It has to be fully charged and in the right mode of use before writing can happen (well, that's my experience).

Beware batteries.
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Published on April 03, 2017 00:44 Tags: batteries, brain-drain, car-drain, writing

March 24, 2017

Consider This: Teaching High School English to Maths Students

I was a Mathematics/Science student at school and I struggled with English. The worst of it was poetry - could I understand those few words that seemed to convey so much meaning and emotion to others? No! And then there was determining themes in narrative and writing essays. Totally useless.

And then I learned to fake it. And then I did a Masters of Arts in Creative Writing and received a Vice Chancellor's Award for Academic Excellence! I guess I got it, eventually.

But in all of that process I realised that my brain works very differently from those who, in my MA course, had studied Arts or English or Literature at Uni (I had studied Electrical Engineering - so a completely different field of study!).

AND YET, I could mix it with them, but my answers, my contributions came at the same material from a different direction.

Now, that is all stuff I spoke about in my talk to the Society of Women Writers. Since then, I have been helping my youngest son with his English, who is sitting the NSW Higher School Certificate this year. He's a Maths/Science student, too, and he's struggling with English. We've had some pretty awesome talks about his struggles and way around them.

His topic area is "Discovery" and one of his modules is "Distinctly Visual". The first requires him to analyse texts to draw out themes. His text is actually a TV series - which good for him being that he is a Visual Person AND he can remember the spoken quotes MUCH better than having to remember them from a written book. So, this is brilliant for a Visual Spatial thinker. But, the teacher had not really defined Discovery nor given his class a concrete way of analysing the text in a way that made it accessible.

One hour later, we had a framework of concrete ideas which we were able to apply to almost every sample exam question he could find online.
1. STARTING POINT (initial perceptions)
2. WHAT DISCOVERY WAS MADE
& HOW WAS IT MADE (challenges made to the initial perception - or not!)
3. CHANGE as a result of the DISCOVERY - and did it address the initial perception.

And then we looked at the essay questions and took the airy fairy and made them concrete, too.

Then, "Distinctly Visual" requires textual analysis, particularly or narrative techniques. Brilliant! I did that at Uni in my MA. NONE of the techniques I introduced him to had been covered in any detail at school, if at all.

1. Point of View - 1st, 2nd or 3rd person? Present tense or past tense? Who is the narrator? Who are they talking to? Is it an older version of the person in the story? Do you allow them to intrude with other information?
2. Time - where does the story start? Are there flashbacks (prolepses) or flash forwards (analepses)? How do these work? Does time go fast or slow? Where does it slow down and why?
3. Speech types - direct, indirect, reported, internal etc. What effect does this have on the narrative? Why use it where it is used?
4. Language types - colloquial, formal, contractions, etc.
5. Senses - which senses are being evoked? Why?
6. Metanyms - yes, something that you really don't hear about. We know metaphors and similes, but metanyms... what are those? A Metanym is where a part of a thing replaces the thing to describe it. For example, to refer to a business man you just call him a "suit". This brought is to talk about how a reader brings their own understanding to a text to bring meaning to the text. That the writer and paint a broad stroke but then allows the reader to fill in details.

And it was this last idea (called Cognitive Narrative Theory, by the way) that has inspired an idea for his Creative Writing, which is brilliant. Now he just has to pull it off. Does he have the skills to do it? Maybe. But it could mean some more awesome sessions as he works through it.

I can see some pretty interesting types of workshops I could run for Maths Students struggling with English. Just wish I had a way to do it.
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March 13, 2017

Consider This - The Story of a Story

In my last post I blogged about my excitement over The New Perspective on Mary and Martha by Mary Stromer Hanson. I have been wanting to write their story for over a decade. Not least to explore the reason why "Jesus wept." but because I have always felt there is more to these women, to this family, than is obvious from first glance. Why did Jesus love them so much? Why did he keep going back to Bethany (apart from the fact that it was so conveniently close to Jerusalem)?

For years I have been reading tomes on life in biblical times.
- Phoenix: Daily Life in Palestine at the Time of Christ (1959) by Henri Daniel-Rops, a short 453 pages translated from the French
- Mary and Martha: Women in the World of Jesus (2002) by Satoko Yamaguchi
- Sketches of Jewish Social Life (1994) by Alfred Edershem
- The Jewish World: 365 Days from the Collections of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2004)
- Food at the Time of the Bible: From Adam's Apple to the Last Supper by Miriam Feinberg Vamosh
- Daily Life at the Time of Jesus by Miriam Feinberg Vamosh
- Women at the Time of the Bible by Miriam Feinberg Vamosh
- The Red Tent (1997) by Anita Diamant - a fictional tale based on Joseph's sister Dinah

and more recently academic and narrative accounts of Mary & Martha.
- Martha and Mary: Saving the Sisters from Bethany (2008) by Patty Froese Ntihemuka
- Lazarus, Mary and Martha: Social-Scientific Approaches to the Gospel of John (2006) by Philip F. Esler & Ronald Piper
- The Family Which Jesus Loved: Or, the History of Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus. in Seventeen Lectures. (1870) by James Haldane Stewart

Not to mention I've photocopied all four gospels from the Bible on different coloured paper and used Annals of the World by James Ussher to timeline all the events in Jesus' life. Matthew was pink, Mark was blue, Luke was green and John was yellow. The resulting chart is HUGE and I would need a large hall to lay it out. But it is also rather interesting in that most of the earlier part is pink, blue and green (and they overlap A LOT). The last 6 days are mostly yellow.

[Actually, thanks to Hanson, who does a lovely narrative analysis of John's gospel, I have a much greater appreciation for the literary genius that John was. I never realised that the first half of John's gospel leads up to Lazarus's death and revivification and the last half is Jesus heading towards the cross. The first half are the signs of who Jesus is and last half is Jesus walking towards living that out.]

From this I have picked the instances where Mary, Martha and Lazarus have interacted and possibly could have interacted with Jesus.

SO much information is paralising.

I have procrastinated from starting my own narrative for weeks. I had something there already from 2011 but it was dreadful and not really anything I wanted to keep (except the first chapter - which just lays it all out for me in terms of story, potential growth and themes - YAY!).

Therefore, today I have a plan.
STAGE 1: Using the Biblical events and characters I will write the story of this remarkable family and their growth from beginning to end.

Later stages will be layers of making the life more authentic to the time of Jesus, weaving bible verses and Hebrew into the narrative and building in the themes I want to explore. SO MUCH to do. But I had to start somewhere.

So, STAGE 1 here we come - story time. Stephen King in his amazing On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft describes it as writing "with the door closed". So the door shall be closed for some time. I had intended to do this book as a PhD or something, but I don't think that is really possible. There are academic aspects, but I don't know, I think it would be too multidisciplinary for a Uni to cope with - Bible studies, literary analysis, narrative.

And, hopefully blogging the process may keep me accountable AND I'll know what process I went through for that inevitable question - "How did you write this book?"
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Published on March 13, 2017 19:13 Tags: layers, mary-martha, phd, process, writing

February 21, 2017

Consider This - A New Perspective on Mary and Martha

I am still reading the book in the title of this blog post and have just finished Chap 3 BUT WOW! The amazing exegesis of the text in Luke 10:38-42 just makes so much sense. It makes me see these women - Mary and Martha - in a whole new context and light. If this is the correct interpretation of the text, then why has the part of these women in the narrative been so trivialised for so long?

Essentially:
Martha "receives" Jesus, in the sense that she accepts his teaching and becomes his disciple. There is likely no mention of "into her house". So this is not a story about Martha working and preparing a meal while a lazy Mary sits at Jesus' feet.

Martha has a sister who "also" "sits at Jesus feet". Both Martha and Mary have been "sitting at his feet", in the metaphorical sense, learning for a long time. (This makes Martha's declaration of faith in John 11 so much more understandable, because she seems to "get it" when many of the disciples are still floundering).

It appears that Mary is NOT there. Notice how she has no voice in this interaction. Why did she not defend herself? In fact, the verb tenses indicate she has been deserting Martha on a regular basis. She is likely off serving elsewhere (maybe with the 70) and Martha is just too concerned about all her responsibilities - actually worried to the point of distraction. Any modern day female would then relate to Martha who is likely responsible for a home and property, maybe elderly, dying or dead parents, a younger brother (possibly ill), her own ministry etc etc etc. Sound familiar?

Martha takes the opportunity to appeal to Jesus to ask Mary to come home and help her with all her many duties. Jesus tries to calm her and is very concerned about her (indicated by the double "Martha, Martha"). Jesus insists that the work Mary is doing is good (not implying that it is better than what Martha is doing, just good), but perhaps Martha's long-term worries are distracting her from good, too.

Remember, earlier in Luke 9 there is talk of the cost of discipleship and leaving your family and the sending out of the 70. And soon after in Luke 11 there is talk of prayer.

In this context, we see not two bickering siblings but two godly women who have chosen different paths of ministry - one at home, one in the mission field.

Mind is totally blown. And now onto Chap 4 where Mary Stromer Hanson discusses the John 11 passage! Can't wait.
The New Perspective on Mary and Martha
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Published on February 21, 2017 19:55 Tags: lazarus, mary-martha, mary-stromer-hanson, mindblown

Consider This

Lynda A. Calder
Read about the exploits of an Emerging Writer and insights into writing.
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