Part 3: The Servant Lawyer

This is the final part of a 3 part series on the work of Thomas Shaffer, an American lawyer and ethicist.

Reading Thomas Shaffer’s work has generated many light bulb moments for me. As a lawyer who has struggled to reconcile the pure ideal of the law with the reality of practice, Shaffer’s astute observations reveal the idolatrous trust that we put in our law, our legal system and our lawyers. At the same time, his optimism and story-based approach to teaching ethics rather than abstracting issues assures me that the daily work of lawyering is thoroughly moral. A person works not just with his knowledge and skill but with his whole person.

In the first post of this series, we examined Shaffer’s characterization of the gentleman-lawyer who maintained a coherent self without separating personal and professional ethics, but tended to be hubristic. In the second post, we examined the lawyer-client relationship and concluded that the best kind of relationship exists when the lawyer and client are both concerned for the good of the other. In this final post, we will consider Shaffer’s proposal on how the Christian faith influence the way a lawyer practises.

            Lawyers often claim to be serving their clients and their clients’ best interest. But service that is rendered in return for some status or financial reward can hardly be called service in the true sense. As C.S. Lewis said (of his own profession), “we should not be ashamed of our need to earn bread, although we cannot suppose the need to be a virtue. It is probably a better thing for us to consider the need with relative candor...than to perpetuate a fiction...”[1]

Shaffer says that the service that God demands is one that is consequent on serving God. Our service follows the example of the way Jesus serves.[2]

First, Jesus was a servant, not merely offering a service.  He was obedient to God in his serving, to the point of suffering.[3] In Philippians 2:6-7, Paul writes,

Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God
something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant.

To be a like Jesus in his servanthood, a lawyer is not merely to serve his client and be their servants, but to expect to suffer for it. Like Atticus Finch, who suffers the scorn of others when he defends Tom Robinson.

Second, Jesus served through powerlessness.[4] Jesus renounces power out of choice in order to render a service. He says,

“Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belong to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” (Luke 18:16-17; Mark 9:35-37)

            Being a child means being without power. Jesus makes people his subjects through their own free decision rather than as objects of his power. The kingdom Jesus speaks about is one he enters without sharing in worldly power. As Martin Buber says, the way to the kingdom is not to tread on the surface of success.[5]

Third, Jesus served for reconciliation.[6] Jesus came to reconcile God and man and man with fellow man. Shaffer says the aim of moral life with clients is to serve in such a way so that the client himself will be a servant – that he will himself be moved to love and good works (Hebrews 10:23).[7]

With the ethics of servanthood, a person approaches the other not because of moral or professional choice but as one who is cherished. “The client is cherished not as an equal, but as a superior, my master, as the boss.”[8] Like Jesus washing the disciples feet, Shaffer calls on lawyers to a culture of humility and servanthood. Karl Barth calls on the professional worker to leave his isolation and self-centredness, “not in order to be satisfied in his altruism, but in order to make his professional action correspond to the biblical model, the suffering servant, who works in the shadow and whose achievement may be in the deep of failure.”[9]

            The suffering, powerless, conciliatory servant lawyer is antithetical to most people’s conception of a lawyer. It is a risky approach in a litigious world when clients frequently sue their lawyers. But Christians take on this servanthood because they are imitating their Lord, and because they do not work out of fear but confidence that they have a greater reward from Him.

            Shaffer’s narrative ethics is shaped by his Catholic faith. He takes the everyday “stuff” of legal practice, specifically the interactions between lawyers and their clients, disentangles the pretentious and idolatrous from the true, and applies the stories of heroes and anti-heroes to them. Insofar as he draws moral significance from heroes, Shaffer borrows William McClendon’s idea of “biography as theology”. McClendon had said that in the religious life, images and metaphors are prior to principles and propositions, and religion consists of applying such images to life – images such as the Cross, the Suffering Servant and atonement.[10] Shaffer studies characters who live out their faith in this way, rather than abstract biblical concepts to apply to ethical situations. In doing so, Shaffer preserves the coherence of a person’s character with his actions. It is an indirect way of teaching but an emotive one, and one that is consistent with the model of discipleship and growing in Christ-likeness.

           

This 3-part blog post was part of an assignment for a Graduate Diploma subject.

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[1] Shaffer, On Being a Christian and a Lawyer, 158

[2] Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 61

[3] Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 62

[4] Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 63-64

[5] Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 64

[6] Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 64-65

[7] Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 65

[8] Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 68

[9] Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 66 

[10] Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 35

Part 1: The Gentleman Lawyer

This is Part 1 of the 3-part series on the work of Thomas Shaffer, an American lawyer and writer on ethics.

There is a powerful scene at the end of a West Wing episode. The fictional President Jed Bartlett had spent almost the entire episode agonizing over whether to commute a prisoner’s death sentence. In the end, not wanting a political backlash, he let the prisoner go to his death despite the many pleas from his advisers.

Now, earlier in the episode, President Bartlett had a casual conversation with his old parish priest in which he requested to be called “Mr President” rather than by his first name. “It’s not ego,” he had said – but as president, he had to make tough decisions – “It's helpful in those situations not to think of yourself as the man but as the office.” Yet very pointedly, as the episode closes, and President Bartlett kneels in the Oval Office to make confession, the priest calls him simply, “Jed.” The point is that ultimately, he was accountable to his Maker for all of himself.

            This scene encapsulates on the highest level the schizophrenic selves our professional lives have become. We hold to one set of morals for our personal lives and another for our work lives. This observation is a centerpiece of the scholarship of Thomas L. Shaffer. [1] Shaffer, a lawyer and a Catholic, argues that the separation of legal ethics (in the form of codes and regulation) from personal ethics (which appeals to conscience and character) is undesirable.[2] We don’t need more principles or statements. We need stories. We need teachers. And ultimately, we need heroes – heroes that even better the likes of Jed Bartlett.

            In this series of blog posts, I will explore the major themes of Shaffer’s work. In this first post, I will discuss Shaffer’s idea of the gentleman-lawyer – one who makes no distinction between private and public morals. In the second post, I will discuss Shaffer’s model of the lawyer-client relationship. In the final post, I will discuss Shaffer’s idea of the servant lawyer.

            There was a time, Shaffer observes, when there was no separation between a lawyer’s conscience and regulation. In his native America, that was in the colonial days until the end of the Civil War. Lawyers were typically affluent, erudite and powerful. Theirs was a righteous and noble profession. Their ethics was the ethics of a gentleman. [3] These men carried the same set of morals in private as in public. Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird) typified the gentlemen’s ethic when he said, “I can’t live one way in town and another way in my home.”[4]

            And yet, for all his apparent integrity, Shaffer recognizes that the gentleman-lawyer is given to hubris – “I am my client’s conscience keeper”,[5] he would say. And for all his appeal to Scripture, the gentleman-lawyer is only nominally Christian. The Bible is a source book for legal philosophy but has little relevance to day-to-day moral behavior. Judge Sharswood speaks of the “high and pure morality that breathes from the Sermon on the Mount” but goes on to say that morality is of no use in a law office.[6] Further, a deeper idolatry was present – a worship of the American civil religion.[7] The gentleman-lawyer is above all a patriot, with a Jeffersonian sense of responsibility to his country.[8]

            With the rise of the robber barons in the late nineteenth century, lawyers found a way to separate their personal ethics from their professional duty.[9] According to Shaffer, lawyers in New York City developed the adversary ethic to justify working for these industrialists.[10] The adversary ethic says that lawyers should single-mindedly advocate for the interest of their client, and justice will result when all lawyers do the same for their respective clients.[11]

 Another factor that contributed to the separation of religious and professional life has to do with the positions of in middle-class families.[12] Increasingly, the world of commerce and professions were occupied by men while the moral education of children were left to the women. The result, Shaffer argues, was “feminine control of ... the critical years of moral formation for boys who would later become doctors and lawyers.” Home became a place of relative purity while the professional world became a place of relative callousness. This explains why morality became an increasingly private matter not useful to the professional world. Another lawyer, Joseph Allegretti, argues that code and regulation filled the void that religious wisdom used to occupy, resulting in a legalistic, rationalistic mindset that excludes questions of character and virtue.[13]

            The theological justification sometimes given for this separation of private, religious life and public, professional life is Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms.[14] Paul says in Romans 13:1:

“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.”

Luther argues that in the kingdom of law, civil authorities are instituted by God to keep peace and order. But in the kingdom of the Gospel, believers are not subject to the state but subject to God. Luther’s doctrine arose in his historical context, at a time when princes and popes were embroiled in political as well as theological battles. Luther’s doctrine means believers should obey civil authorities, just as Paul commanded. But Luther also taught that the kingdom of law is limited in its authority whereas the kingdom of Gospel is one of salvation. Even princes were subject to the kingdom of the Gospel in their hearts. And unlike medieval Christianity, Luther did not accept that the Beatitudes were “counsels of perfection” for nuns and monks, they were also commanded for ordinary working Christians.

The righteousness that Jesus teaches, a righteousness that exceeds even those of the Pharisees, is perhaps why many lawyers shy away from taking the Bible seriously in their professional lives. But Shaffer wisely does not prescribe legal ethics from the Bible. He eschews any codes made by associations he calls little more than pressure groups.

Shaffer advocates a better way, a way that maintains a person’s coherence and integrity – stories.[15] Fictional stories, he says, communicates morals to a community more quickly than biographies.[16] They describe the deeds of a hero, and heroes teach and inspire in a way principles or statements do not. After all, most of us were attracted to the profession by a hero, a compelling character who embodies for us the goodness of the profession. Shaffer says,

“I have claimed that lives are prior to principles. I do not appeal here to logic. The sort of story I’m talking about speaks to its reader directly, from life to life, without the mediation of concept or of explanation... We are formed by their stories in a way that is analogous to the way we are formed by the lives of people in our families.”[17]

John Yoder acknowledges the value of narratives in loosening up the rigidity of rules, but disputes that we can dispense with rules altogether.[18] In his view, once you know the rules, stories are powerful to heighten empathy, imagination and able to teach more effectively. But both are required.[19]

The gentlemen-lawyers of stories and film, like Atticus Finch, teach us by the coherence of their professional and personal lives. But the actual gentlemen-lawyers of history, by Shaffer’s own analysis, could not survive the abstraction of principles from the person. John Yoder justifiably retorts that “good stories about good people” are at best a corrective to the rule-based approach to ethics.[20] But that in itself is very valuable. Like Shaffer, a Catholic growing up in Protestant America, Christian lawyers stand somewhat outside of the fray and offer a powerful dissenting opinion that can save us from the cynicism and moral paralysis of the profession.

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[1] This theme is present in two of his major books, Shaffer, Thomas L. Faith and the Professions. Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1987.and Shaffer, Thomas L. On Being a Christian and a Lawyer: Law for the Innocent.  Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1981. It is also explored in his journal articles Shaffer, Thomas L. "American Legal Ethics." Theology Today 59, no. 3 (2002): 369-83. and “The Christian Lawyer – an Oxymoron?” America 175, No. 16 (November 23 1996) 12-17

[2] Shaffer, “American Legal Ethics,” 370

[3] An overview of the history of the “gentleman-lawyer” and his subsequent demise is discussed in Shaffer, “American Legal Ethics”, 369-375 and in Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, Chapters 2 and 3

[4] Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 76

[5] The sentiment is attributed to Judge George Sharwsood, a nineteenth century judge of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Shaffer, “American Legal Ethics”, 374

[6] Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 40

[7] David Hoffman, the father of American legal ethics, set the federal constitution beside the Bible and referred to the lawyers he trained as “ministers at a holy altar”: Shaffer, “American Legal Ethics,” 374

[8] According to Shaffer, the gentleman-lawyer is typically a Jeffersonian Republican lawyer. They were neither secular nor biblical. The Bible was carefully included in what they did, but it didn’t mean anything that couldn’t have been based just as well on Jeffersonian American Civil Religion: Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 40; Shaffer, “American Legal Ethics”, 374-375, Shaffer, Thomas L. “Legal Ethics and the Good Client”, (1987) Scholarly Works Paper 645. http://scholarshiplaw.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/645, 319-330, 320-321

[9] Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 72

[10] This claim is made in Shaffer, “Legal Ethics and the Good Client”, 323

[11] Shaffer, “Legal Ethics and the Good Client”, 323

[12] The argument is set out in Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 44-45

[13] Allegretti, Joseph. "Lawyers, Clients and Covenant: A Religious Perspective on Legal Practice and Ethics  ". Fordham Law review 66, no. 4 (1998): 1110-29, 1108.

[14] The theology of two-kingdoms and its relevance to the professions is set out in Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 78-92

[15] This is discussed in the opening chapter in Faith and the Professions (Chapter 1). An indication of Shaffer’s reliance on stories is seen in the extensive index of stories in his book. The index of literary characters run to nearly 5 pages and are found in novels including George Elliot’s Middlemarch, Anthony Trollope’s The Orley Farm and of course, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

[16] Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 22

[17] Shaffer, Faith and the Professions, 33

[18] John H. Yoder “The Scholarship of Thomas L. Shaffer: A Retrospective and Response” Journal of Law and Religion 10, no.2, 331-337 (1993-4) at 337

[19] Yoder, “The Scholarship of Shaffer”, 332

[20] Yoder, The Scholarship of Shaffer, 332

Crafting around: bath paints, snowflakes and wheelbarrow

Bath paints

I have been hearing about bath paints for toddlers for a while but only the other day plucked up the courage to try making them. It was mad fun. I followed the recipe from this website. Essentially the "paints" are just a mixture of soap, cornstarch and food dye. You can get a bit of the Jackson Pollack effect. And they make oodles of bubbles afterwards!

Snowflakes

Today my son came back from preschool with a big collection of tissue paper snowflakes. So we stuck some thread on them to make a nice hanging ornament for our kitchen doorway.

Wheelbarrow

Just to complete a productive afternoon we made a wheelbarrow with a Laughing Cow cheese box as wheel, a skewer as axle, some straws to connect to the barrow and a milk container for the barrow to carry Teddy. Those round boxes work pretty well as wheels.

Crafting around: Modpodge glue

I have just discovered and love Modpodge glue. It sticks virtually any paper material onto any surface: ceramic, glass, etc., and dries clear. For mothers' day, we stuck photos of ourselves onto tiny glass bottles, decorated with coloured paper and smeared Modpodge all over. Voila! 

Another time, I Modpodged shiny Japanese print paper onto a plain glass bottle. The result's not bad either.

Crafting around: painting on foil

Crayola manufactures wonderful felt-tip pens and papers that produce all sorts of special colour effects. My old favourite were the "Over-writers" that let you write one colour over another. There are colourless pens that magically colour in a picture in all different colors when rubbed against the picture. Our latest purchase 'Colour Explosion Metallic' create metallic colors on special black paper.

I don't know the chemistry behind the special effects but have found a fun and (cheaper) way to approximate the effect by painting on foil. Simply paint a thin layer of poster paint on the foil, wait till it is semi-dried, then use a cotton bud to scratch out a picture! You can also use toothpicks or more pointy objects so long as you are careful not to puncture the foil. 

Modelling happiness for our children

How often do you hear parents of grown-up children say, "I just want you to be happy"?

Last week on SBS's "Insight" (a discussion forum with audience participation), the topic of discussion was "Pushing for Success". On stage was a mother and her 15 year old daughter whom she was grooming for academic success; a father with a 12 year old daughter whom he was grooming for tennis success; and Liesel Jones, swimming gold medallist. The host of the show, Jenny Brockie interviewed a number of youth (and their parents), some who lauded their parents' push for success and others who have been seemingly burnt by it.

There was the usual debate on what "success" means, what "pushing" means and the cost of pushing children towards this success. But one comment that caught my ear was from the psychologist in the audience. She said,

"[A]ny time you have a child carrying the responsibility of fulfilling the adult in the room's happiness, or trying to meet that perceived expectation, I think that's completely debilitating. A child is not equipped to make other people happy and my own personal belief, as a mother, is that my role is to role model being happy. (emphasis added)"

My role as a mother is to role model being happy. Interesting. Is that an oxymoron in today's society, when books like "All joy and no fun" tell us that a child's happiness is at the expense of a parent's happiness? That after a child's birth, marital satisfaction declines?

Before we ask whether parental happiness is possible, let's put the claim to the test by imagining the results. I think there are few who would argue that children learn through modelling. For example, we don't have to teach our boys to like noodles. They love noodles because Daddy loves noodles and Daddy's delight when he crams in a mouthful of noodles is contagious. On the flipside, have you noticed the more you demand of a trait from your child that you yourself don't have, the less inclined they are to produce your desired results? If you truly desire your children to be happy, then role modelling happiness is important. It is also why post natal depression is not just bad for mothers, it is bad for children.

It has often been said that the best gift you can give your children is a happy marriage. When children experience love and happiness outside of themselves, they have a secure place to base their world on. We do our children a great disservice when we tell them that life is only ever as good as they are.

It is not a long stretch then to say that the best gift to your children is your own happiness. Parents, it is squarely back in our court to inhabit a happiness that is independent of the enjoyment we receive from our children. That happiness can be founded on many things of course - our marriage (as discussed already), our friendships, our work, our hobbies, our faith. It is no help to our children to neglect all these things if we become miserable and visit our resentment on the children.

Isn't it liberating to know that our happiness is good for ourselves and for our children?

City to City Conference (Women): a postlude Part 2

Kathy Keller is irreverent - not towards God, but towards what she calls "pious babble" - the religious jargon of the Christian sub-culture. She is funny, down to earth and, like her husband Tim, delivers hard-hitting truth with understatedness.

She speaks on suffering and the chosen text is Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want." Notice that it is the shepherd who leads the sheep. The shepherd who leads the sheep to green pastures is the same shepherd who leads it through the valley of the shadow of death. He sets up picnic, not by green pastures, but in the presence of its enemies. Probably the highlight of the entire conference came when Kathy recounted her counsellor's advice to her, "He is the good shepherd. You are His sheep. Just bleat!"

One choice quote from John Newton: "If we seem to get no good by attempting to draw near to Him, we may be sure we will get none by keeping away from Him.”

Kathy reminds us that in suffering we rejoice, not in the suffering, but in God who is there in the suffering. God is not immune to suffering.

But C.S. Lewis says "God whispers to us in our pleasures... shouts in our pain." The counterpoint is that prosperity poses a greater danger to our faith. The greatest test comes, she says, when there is no test at all. Can you then desire God just for Himself and not for what he can do? Proverbs 30:8-10 is instructive here, "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise I may have too much and disown you and say, "Who is the LORD?" Or I may become poor and steal and so dishonour the name of my God."

Kathy says there comes a tipping point in a Christian's life when they trust so much in God's character that their faith is not called into question with every bump in life.  The best way to prepare for suffering is "practise, practise, practise" - borrowing from the joke about how you get to Carnegie Hall. Practise reading his Word, hearing His voice, and speaking His word back to him. Ramp up your prayer life, and bring your heart to him unedited.

This reminds me of something C. Michael Patton of Credo House said, "Having good theology [of suffering] is like exercise. It is preventative. You do exercise before you fall sick. When you are already sick, exercising then is not going to help/ be that much harder." (to the effect of).

I agree with the observation that there is such a "tipping point" in a Christian's life but there is no telling with oneself whether you have reached that point. I think of many saints who have struggled in their very last days with God's goodness. The Biblical warnings against apostasy will always apply to me and a fear of my propensity to wander is ever real. There is great assurance of faith but that assurance is always in Him, which is why Kathy is right - there is no secret to it, just practise, practise, practise.

City to City Conference (Women): Flourishing Faith in Dangerous Places: A postlude Part 1

Today a few hundred women met at Angel Place Recital Hall for a girly chat. That’s right, I was very blessed to have attended the City-to-City Conference for Women with Kathy Keller as keynote speaker. I use the word “chat” intentionally because the subject and the tenor of our conversation was exactly that – intimate, personal, emotionally wrought. The guest speakers each spoke their personal life story – on work, on loss and suffering – their personal testimony was as much a part of the communicated message as well as the Bible teaching. So with hearts resonating with the sweet timber of Chelsea Moon’s voicings to the Lord, and under the warmly lit timber of this hall of refuge midst our city, we settled down to a program that consisted of:

- Bible talk on Romans 5 (Cathy Tucker)

- Work and faith (Kathryn Leary Alsdorf)

- The panel (on suffering)

- Suffering (and prosperity and comfort) (Kathy Keller)

Work and faith (Kathryn Leary Alsdorf)

I particularly wanted to jot down my thoughts Kathryn Leary Alsdorf’s talk (the second of the day) because her topic is one I have been thinking a lot about. What are the dangers of work, she asks. Her points were clearly set out:

Danger 1: We are incompetent or fruitless

Danger 2: The environment is hard

Danger 3: That it’s pointless

Danger 4: That it brings out our “ugly”

This seems to be a fairly comprehensive summary of the struggles of work. And the antidote to each of those dangers...

In response to danger 1: We can fail at our work. We don’t need to prove anything. Our failures do not define us. Therefore we are free to take much greater risks for Christ.

In response to danger 2: We should not be surprised if the work environment is hard because the world is broken. Our task is to go into that brokenness and to join in God’s work in redeeming it.

In response to danger 3: The gospel is the only and perfect antidote to meaninglessness. To be able to join in God’s work of redemption gives us meaning.

This is probably the one issue I struggled most with when I was in the paid workforce – not just the meaninglessness of the inconsequential task I’m made to slave away at 4am in the morning but the bigger task that my small task is connected with that is ultimately also meaningless. (Actually, I just realise that the situation reflects dangers 1, 2 and 3 all wrapped in one.) Kathryn said something quite applicable to me, which is that people often work to get something out of it for themselves – even if it is something as abstract and intangible as meaning – rather than enjoying the work itself.

Calling is something that is realised in retrospect. When you have lived each step of your life in faithfulness to God, you look back and realise that has been your calling. 

In response to danger 4, worship God. We are idol-making factories. If we are not worshipping God, we are worshiping something else. 

The gospel gives us a new story for work, a new vision for work, a new compass for work.

A new story for work. If we don’t know how the story ends, we don’t know how to interpret our present (e.g. missing Malaysian airline plane). But if we know how the story ends, then life is vastly different. And we do know how God’s story ends. That gives us hope, a confidence and assurance of our ending. She aptly used the example of her marriage at aged 58. She had no assurance she was going to get married but if she knew that she was going to get married at 58, that would make a difference to her earlier life wouldn’t it? 

 I like that she explains the bottom of the work issue as a story. Meaning is ephemeral; meaning demands answers. But story is the way God has revealed himself. It is a story that has been completed in Christ (and it’s a rollicking ride up till then) but it is a story that is continually being unfolded, retold, heard, loved, mined for its riches. So the story of work begins in Genesis 1, takes a dramatic turn for the worse in Genesis 3, and ends in Revelations 21.

A new vision for work

Kathryn says, let our imagination and creativity soar to see how we are part of God’s world.

A new compass for work

The difference the gospel makes to work is not just to make us more ethical. We need wisdom. In Matthew 11:28, Jesus says, "Come to me all you who are weary an burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon me and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." Why then, isn't it easier? Kathryn challenges us to take off some of the burden of the task.

Flourishing faith is not grabbing the golden ring; it is not control; it is not escape. Flourishing faith is humble. Forgiving. Faithful. Joyful. Loving.

End of part 1.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Found an old book review of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" while dredging through old files. It reminded me of what a lovely story it was, so here it is again.

* * *

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Jean-Dominique Bauby
Harper Perennial 2004

I heard of “The Diving Bell” the film before I heard of the book. The film was an adaptation of a memoir by a "locked-in" patient -  someone who is paralyzed but lucid. The author, a former fashion editor, dictated the entire memoir by blinking his left eyelid - the only part of his body he could still control. A therapist would point to each letter of the alphabet one by one (A to Z) until he blinked at the one he wanted. The process was repeated again, and again, to form words and sentences.

The film, like the book, is a collection of stories, memories, sounds and images. It was stunning and bewildering to watch – the whole film was shot through the perspective, literally and visually, of the memoirist, Jean-Dominique Bauby or “Jean-Do”, as his friends called him. Each blink, each tear was replicated, down to the frightening moment when his limp right eyelid was sewn up.

Reading the memoir years later was something else altogether. For one, the words themselves bear witness to the labour that had gone into producing them. It is as if words formed so painfully carry an exaggerated meaning, more love, more sorrow, than mere “love” and “sorrow” would imply. In the least they merit a second, perhaps third and fourth reading; and certainly a slower one.

I have always been drawn to narratives of the voiceless – like the fictional Fish Lamb in “Cloudstreet”, retarded in life, but in an act of literary resurrection, revealed as the novel’s lucid and omniscient narrator. So too Jean-Do in “The Diving Bell”.

I often find it difficult, when reading a memoir, to separate the writing from the circumstances in which it was written, so that you are left wondering whether you are marvelling at the life lived, or the life as presented on the page. In the case of “The Diving Bell”, there is a further dimension – it is the life imagined, the life Jean-Do would have liked to have lived, but could not.

It is in this realm of imagination that the memoir truly gets me – say for example, his private joke with the Empress Eugene, the hospital’s patroness whose marble bust inhabits the main hall. I love the humour and delicateness with which Jean-Do describes these flights of fancies – and the fact that these flights of fancies were born of an absolute stillness.

Sadness is rare in this memoir. Even though Jean Do mentions his past life, the memoir is very much about the present – petty annoyances like his inability to change TV channels and pleasures like the simple foods he imagines himself lovingly prepare, salivates over, and eats. Funny things happen. He has a keen sense of irony and can be endearingly sarcastic. He speaks of the richness of everyday emotions that are often neglected by ordinary, busy people who tend to focus on the activities rather than the meaning behind them.

It is tempting to draw moralistic conclusions about quality of life in suffering but I believe Jean-Do never intended to, nor should I regard this book as anything other than a story about himself, an expression of that which he cannot voice, a gift to his children and ultimately, a thing of beauty.

6 March 2010

Toronto

Ten years ago I didn't have any family in Toronto. Now I have two.

The first I gained through adoption, or more precisely “god-adoption”. Back in 2001, after I finished my exchange semester in Berkeley, I made a trip to Toronto to visit my childhood friend who had emigrated there with her family. Growing up, I had always loved spending time with her and her family. They were fun and generous people and threw the best sleepover parties. And her parents had an inexplicable fondness for me that one has for young people you've watched grow up, a fondness I can only describe as, parental.

This trip was no different. They drove me everywhere, encouraged us to go visit Quebec. One day, my childhood friend jokingly said, 'why don't you “kai” Susan?' (“Kai” is the Chinese word which means to 'make a godchild’ but it does not have religious connotations.) We laughed it off, but sure enough at our next meeting, they presented me with as gold necklace (a tradition) and asked my dad to grant permission. And so I became their “kai-daughter” or goddaughter. They take my children as their god-grandchildren. This year, when I was staying in Ohio for a month with my family, they drove six hours from Toronto just to see us.

The second family in Toronto I married into. Remember the boyfriend of the long-ago Canadian trip? As it happened, his grandmother and aunt live just a few minutes’ drive away from my godparents. I have since spent many happy weeks staying with my husbands’ aunt and grandmother, always with extended outings and meals with my godparents. Each time we go to Toronto, we are overwhelmed by the love and hospitality we receive from these two families.

When I reflect on the rich relationships I have in Toronto, I cannot but marvel at the providence of God in putting these two dear families in the same suburb so we can reach them. More than that, I see a parallel with my spiritual adoption into God's family. Perhaps you, like me, struggle to understand why someone who aren’t your biological family would choose to love you, for no other reason than that 'now, you are family.'

And God knows the hardness and the unloveliness of our hearts and still chose to love us. He loves us like He loves his own son. Loving us is a delight to him. Next time I doubt why on earth God should love me, I can take him at his word: because you are family.

Why gender equity at work starts with gender equity at home (and not the other way round)

I was educated in a girls-only school from the age of six until I entered university. My husband was educated in a boys-only school from the age of eight until he entered university. He comes from what I call a “boy household” – two brothers. I come from a “girl household” – two older girls, then a much younger boy (8 years my junior).

I mention these personal facts to make the point that is at the heart of my argument – that our childhood experience of the different sexes is the most influential factor as to how we regard the sexes in adulthood. If we want to change discourse between the sexes in society, we need to start at age 5, not 35, or even 25.

When I entered the world of co-education aged 18, I was a champion of single sex education. I was brimming with confidence in the female ability (and statistically, girls are more academically able than boys). Girls from my school earned a negative reputation and I could not, for the life of me, understand why.

Fifteen years later, I can see the deficiencies in my understanding of the other sex and indeed, my own sex. So far as the actual study or work is concerned, perhaps I was not disadvantaged. But outside the classroom, where most of life occurs, I was terribly naïve.

From my observation, people from single sex upbringing can become either: over-developed in their sexual identity – identifying strongly and perhaps exclusively with the external characteristics of maleness (e.g. athleticism) or femaleness (e.g. beautification); or they can become under-developed in their sexual identity – that is, they do not appreciate the complex differences between the sexes or do not particularly enjoy their own gender, having developed their personhood in the absence of the opposite sex.

I belong to the latter category. I walked into my course expecting to be judged as a sexless human being but I could not negotiate the dance between the sexes. I admired my female peers who could be confident without being feminist, feminine without being a fading violet.

Project this to age 40, is it any wonder that aspiring women still complain of discrimination and objectification in the workplace? Could it not be due to the fact that the established majority, the men, have an overdeveloped maleness and naturally incline towards the all-boy culture that they knew in their formative years?

Perhaps one way to dismantle the old boys club is to rethink the old boys school. Of course, school is but one facet of childhood but for some, like myself with little socialisation outside of school, that was my entire world. I think boys too would find great relief in the company of girls. The all-male culture can be mercilessly aggressive and men, like women, occupy the whole spectrum of personality. They will find a space to be masculine without being macho, manly without being muscle-ly, a leader without being a jock.

When children from mixed-gender upbringing enter adulthood to interact with both men and women, they can be respectful and confident. Theirs is a confidence that comes from a deep understanding and acceptance of the other, and not an arrogance that comes from empowerment in the superiority of their own kind.   

And we would all get along better at age 45.

香港的行人天橋

行人天橋 - 是香港其一的特色. 因香港人多擠迫,大厦向高發展,駕車和行路都向上搬,整個城市已變得立體,有3D的感覺.

我家有個有趣的講法,當要步行到謀地方,會接着問,'懂得行馮'? 因為行人天橋從一幢大一厦穿出來,又到另一幢大厦鑽進去.有時要去的地方眼見到,但腳行不到,碰錯路.

假日,銅鑼灣軒尼詩道的行人天橋聚滿了正放班的菲傭丶印傭丶泰傭坐在一塊塊的野餐膠布上,佔了每個角落,甚至在榴梯上,尤其在雨天,那怕難找到有瓦摭頭的地方.她們有些在吃零食,有些在聊天,有些在化裝.這天是整個星期中唯一天可以去見同是獨在異鄉的朋友了.她們快樂嗎?這是個我完全不能插入了解的世界,没有語言是其中之因素.但對我這愛静的人來說,放假被迫趕出街, 實在覺得有點可憐.天橋, 畢竟對無家可歸的人是一種避難處.

我呢?我愛站在天橋中央,望着下面來來往往的人和車,覺得城市已包溶了我,我也擁抱着城市.在這個地方,没有寂寞,没有空虛,因眾人的忙碌给我力量.

香港 - 究竟是一個怎樣的地方? 它沒有巴黎的羅曼蒂克,沒有纫约的童話雀躍,但處在天橋中央,我感到它有與別下同的浪漫親密.

My favourite radio shows (and podcasts)

In this age of media interactivity, one of my favourite habits, still, is listening to a good radio show. I like them partly for practical reasons - it's easy enough to bung on whilst doing some mindless chore or in the car. But mostly, I still very much enjoy the pure, unadulterated spoken word.

Stripped of the distracting allure of the face, the naked human voice is very engaging. I would argue that more can be said (that is, communicated) in 5 minutes on radio than on most other mass media. It is matchless in its sincerity. There is something conspiratorial about focusing on someone's voice, with its tremors and inflections. Some people call it a confessional medium - case in point are the lonely hearts who ring up on a late night show to pour out their troubles.

Here are three of my favourite radio shows (or podcasts) to entice you to fall in love with radio all over again.

Interviews with Margaret Throsby (ABC FM)

To me, Margaret Throsby has the best job. She spends an hour every weekday talking to some of the world's most interesting people, from ex-Prime Ministers to Masterchef winners and everyone in between. The conversation is interspersed with music chosen by the guest which often becomes a springboard to discussing the guest's personal life.

Such is the sensibility of Margaret Throsby (she's dubbed "The Velvet Throat") that you feel like you are eavesdropping on a conversation between old friends. Plus it is highly educational - she has a wonderful, curious layperson way of drawing out fascinating facts from experts. 90% of my general knowledge - science, music, history, anything - comes from my loyal audience of Margaret in the last 10 years.

Move over, Andrew Denton, Michael Parkinson; in my mind, Margaret is the best of them all!

A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor (American Public Broadcasting Service) 

Garrison Keillor might not be very well known in Australia, but in America, he is beloved enough to have a movie made about his show, starring Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and Lindsay Lohan.

I first came across Garrison Keillor's comedy through "A Young Lutheran's Guide to the Orchestra" his parody of Benjamin Britten's "A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra". One thing led to another and I stumbled upon the (free) podcast of a segment of his show, "News from Lake Wobegon".

It's a 15 minute fictional news broadcast done in the form of a monologue. It is wonderful, wonderful story telling - funny, evocative, spontaneous, wistful. His northern American accent (and occasional singing) tops off the small town nostalgia. So vivid is his cast of characters from Lake Wobegon that they have spawned novels - of which I have bought one - though not as good as the show.

You might laugh out loud, you may even shed a tear, but you will be smiling inwardly long after the closing credits: "That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where the women are strong, the men are good looking and the children are above average."

Thank God It's Friday (Radio Sydney)

I love Richard Glover's column and I love the show he hosts. TGIF is a variety show of the good old variety with guest comedians, guest musicians and people ringing up to answer quizzes. Sometimes, the reason we start following a show is entirely fortuitous. In my case, I happen to always be driving my son back from his grandparents, and in a terribly good mood after a day off. One of these days I will be in the studio audience cheering and laughing out loud.

* * * 

For my 30th birthday, my husband bought me a professional quality microphone complete with a pop-blocker - a circular mesh screen to accentuate your consonants and make you sound like love god Richard Mercer - to start me on my podcasting career. We did make a hilarious episode explaining Chinese idioms. It even had Kirby's original composition as opening credits. I think we quickly realised that a radio career would not be forthcoming but by golly it still sends me into fits of laughter - for the wrong reasons. Back to the listener's chair, for now!