My younger sister got an AntWorks set for her birthday earlier this spring. Instead of using sand as the material through which the ants tunnel, AntWorks ant farms use a specially formulated transparent blue gel that the ants both tunnel through and eat. This makes for a far superior ant farm to the messy, sandy ones of yesteryear.
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Today is the two hundred seventy-seventh anniversary of the birth of the Trumpet of the Revolution, Patrick Henry, Esquire.
Ever since I can remember, Patrick Henry has been one of my heroes.[fn]I wrote a 14-page, single-spaced Times New Roman 12-pt biography about him in high school.[/mfn] He was a tireless defender of liberty, and his stirring cry of “Give me liberty or give me death!” is one of the most well-recognized phrases in American history.
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I think it was the summer of 2008 when I first read Alex and Brett Harris’s book, Do Hard Things. Prior to reading the book, I knew nothing about the twin brothers or the “Rebelution” movement they had started two years prior.
At the age of sixteen, they had started the Rebelution blog as a “teenage rebellion against low expectations.” Their premise was simple: people today don’t expect teenagers to contribute anything worthwhile to society; many don’t even think teenagers are capable of such productive actions. Our society is built upon low expectations for the “tween” and “teen” age groups. The teen years are viewed as years for kids to play, goof off, and shirk responsibility.
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We spent the last two weeks looking at God’s story and the anti-story, and how those stories have played out, both in the history of the world and in our society today. We were challenged to consider what story we have bought into, who we are allowing to author our story. We covered a lot of territory, some of which I plan to revisit down the road. But today—and for the next week—I want to shift gears and share with you some of my story.
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Choose Your Story
We began this series on story by looking at God’s story and the anti-story. We discussed the story of the Israelites, their bondage in Egypt, the story they encountered there, and the mission God gave them as they came out of Egypt. But we left them before they got to the Promised Land.
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To properly chronicle the story behind modern public schooling would take a book. Fortunately for you, this is a blog and not a book. I have, therefore, limited myself to one post on the topic…for now.[mfn]If, however, you are one of those like myself who enjoys additional research and the challenge of a fat, scholarly book, I recommend to you John Taylor Gatto’s “Underground History of American Education,” (http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm) which can be read in its entirety for free online, and which lays out in great detail the story the public schools are bent on telling.[/mfn]
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Every story has an author. The author conceives an idea – characters, plot, setting, etc. – and weaves the elements together to create a story. The outcome of the story is determined by the will of the author, the storyteller.
Today I want to continue our study of story, but examine it from a different perspective that I think will give us an even clearer picture of the stories we encounter in life.
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‘ “And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.’”[mfn]Exodus 19:6[/mfn]
The Israelites had seen God’s majestic power in each of the ten plagues in Egypt. They had experienced His amazing grace as He split the Red Sea and provided a way of escape from the pursuing Egyptians. They had declared their devotion to God in an impromptu worship service on the shores of the Red Sea.
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Mankind had seriously messed up God’s perfect world, sending it spiraling back down into chaos almost as quickly as it had risen out of it. At this point in time, God could easily have thrown up His hands and left His now-marred world to its own destruction and demise.
But He didn’t. (more…)
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Tale: a series of events or facts told or presented
Story: an account of incidents or events
When I first conceived of the idea for this series, I planned to begin with a short summary of my own story up until this time. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I needed to begin at the beginning.