Flannery, I love you!

It's a spring Saturday here in Nebraska, and that means garage sale time! Carl and the boys are holding our annual garage sale to move stuff out and get ready for a new season of Omaha garage sale trips! Love, love, love garage sales so much:-)

Started Henle Latin with Trent this week, and I am pretty scared about learning a new language. Trent is off and running, while his mama has to admit she is not a language expert!

Reading a ton right now. Here's a list:

What's So Great About Christianity by Dinesh D'Souza. Just finished What's So Great About America by the same author. These books will change the way you view America and the Christian faith!

Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism by Sean Hannity

Plan to start (again, for the millionth time) The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor. You know, Flannery O'Connor is my literary hero. I first discovered her in the graduate English program at Northwest Missouri State University, Maryville, MO. I immediately loved her stories. I was drawn to the dark humor, but also to the faith in her writing. I was so angry one summer when my favorite English professor (now Graduate Studies chair) decided we would not read O'Connor's ground-breaking novel Wise Blood during a course called "American Novel 1945 - Present." He said he had no knowledge of the Bible or religion and would not be able to discuss the novel. This novel was also on the reading list for the Comprehensive Exams graduate students must take. Soon after I entered the program, O'Connor's novel was replaced by a Margaret Atwood novel, for goodness sake! I had had my first taste of life on a secular university campus! Atheism really does abound!!! Thankfully, I did later complete a course entitled "The Bible and Literature," where the professor discussed the Biblical themes in much of O'Connor's work in great detail. This man was a Christian who never did quite fit into a liberal English department more concerned with "queer theory" than an author as important as O'Connor. Lesson learned: religion is a dangerous threat on a liberal college campus. I never did feel the same enthusiasm for the instructor who had once dazzled me with his insights on postmodernism. It was kind of a spiritual awakening for me. Luckily, I've been reading and re-reading Flannery O'Connor ever since. I have her collected letters, and those, too, reveal what a deeply devout Christian woman she was. Her themes are never easy; indeed, they are still controversial today. How lovely that a small, sickly, deeply devout writer from the Deep South is still so relevant today. So here is a list of my favorite Flannery quotes:

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."

“All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.”

"I am not afraid that the book will be controversial; I'm afraid it will not be controversial."

“When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.”

“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.”

"Conviction without experience makes for harshness.”

"Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.”

"The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make them appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock ~ to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the blind you draw large and startling figures."