“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
~ Matthew 10:29–31
“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.”
~ Psalm 150:6
I like elevators. I really do. They are so nice! I mean I would much prefer riding elevators to walking up stairs. Especially in 18-floor buildings.
My wife, Karen, prefers to walk up stairs. It is good exercise for one thing, and she seems never to be in a hurry. Also, I wonder if it is because I kiss her in the elevator (it is a tradition), but I really think it is because she wants some exercise. Go figure. We will talk about kissing later.
I like to exercise, too. But I like my exercise to be on straightaways and short. And I guess I look like it, too. I like my exercise to be short, sweet, and manageable. A little suffering is okay, but walking up 18 floors of stairs? Too much for me.
I like God to keep me on straightaways and easy walking, too. But, like Karen, He often does not always do what I want Him to do. He makes me walk up the stairs. But that is another issue.
I like elevators. I am a “punch the button four or five times” sort of guy. Those of you who know me could have guessed that. Karen reminds me that I only need to punch the button once. And she is right. The things lights up — or not — after one punch. But it still feels good to me to do it three or four times. And if the elevator is delayed I give it three or four more punches for good measure. Never causes the darn thing to go any faster though.
Karen sighs and tells me that it really doesn’t make the elevator move any faster. She is probably right.
And she is probably right when she tells me that my worrying doesn’t help either. It is like punching an elevator button multiple times in order to change my situation. Neither thing works I suppose — but, honestly, it still feels good sometimes!
Am I right, fellow worriers?
But I like to be with my wife alone even more. Now, I don’t know about other married people, and sundry other loving couples, but Karen and I are inveterate surreptitious elevator smoochers. Rarely do I get a kiss on the lips, I admit — after all we must not mess up the lipstick thing — but we certainly do kiss. And I most certainly am not a picky kisser when it comes to my wife — really, I am of the school that believes all kisses are special. After almost 40 years of marriage, I am grateful for the most innocent kiss. Karen and I are absolutely wicked though. With no guilt, we kiss on that empty elevator. That is, if we are all alone on the elevator. If we are not I just wink and smile at my honey and she does her best to ignore me.
Rarely, but occasionally, I stay in hotels with six or eight elevators. In my present hotel, I avoid the last of three elevators on the right. The button for the lobby does not light up. Do you know how frustrating it is to push a button that is supposed to light up but it doesn’t? Is it really pushed? Should I try again and push harder? I like my elevator buttons to light up. Don’t you? You sit there and wait — not knowing if it is working. I like my elevator buttons to light up.
I am old enough to remember elevator wardens — nicely dressed, uniformed guys who pushed all the buttons for you. Pushing elevator buttons is pretty important stuff. These guys always were able to push their elevator buttons.
Yes, elevator buttons that don’t light up can be a problems. Now really, how can you be sure you are going to land on L level? What if the mischievous thing decides to drop you off on level 4 or 3 — how will you know? How will you know when you arrive at the lobby if the button does not light up?
Serving God sometimes feels that way. You know? He sets me on a path and He does not always light up all the floors as we travel. I have to sort of trust Him to get me to the lobby, to the destination. In fact, I often don’t know I have arrived until I arrive. But I know when I arrive. Maybe that is what faith is all about. Maybe.
“The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs . . . one step at a time.”1
— Joe Girard
Redundancy: Wordiness
In the following examples, place the word or words in parentheses that are uncalled for and that should be omitted:2
- He took wine and water and mixed them both together.
- He descended down the steps to the cellar.
- He fell down from the top of the house.
- I hope you will return again soon.
- The things he took away he restored again.
(Joseph Devlin, How to Speak and Write Correctly)
Test-Taking
Insight
Science Test
As with the reading test, you will be asked 40 questions in 35 minutes. Here is a news flash: the science test is really a reading test. All the answers are in front of you. Simply read the science questions well and you will have your answers.
Quickly read the passage and analyze the tables, graphs, or figures. Then carefully read the passage and try to comprehend any other data illustrated. What sort of data is it? How is it presented? In bar graphs? In a pie graph?
After about two or three minutes of careful reading, answer the question. Spend 20 to 30 seconds per question.
Practice brings perfection! Practice reading these passages and understanding the data presented. Practice! Practice! Practice! The more you work with this type of passage, the faster you will be able to comprehend the data.
The Sea Wolf3
Jack London
The protagonist and narrator, Humphrey Van Wyden, is a wealthy, educated dandy who does not work. While traveling to see friends, his boat is rammed by another boat and sinks. Van Wyden is rescued by the Ghost, a schooner that hunts seals, and is forced to become the cabin boy. Life on the Ghost is hard. The captain, Wolf Larsen, and others are cruel to Van Wyden. Van Wyden adjusts to his new surroundings by learning how to run a ship, and by becoming stronger. Miss Brewster, a woman the Ghost rescues, and Van Wyden become friends. Miss Brewster and Van Wyden escape from the Ghost on a small boat and land on an island. Life on the island is hard and Miss Brewster and Van Wyden become self-sufficient and fall in love. This is a strange plot twist for the naturalist London — romantic love in the desolate, Darwinist universe that is their deserted island! The Ghost, in disrepair and abandoned except for Captain Larsen, arrives at the island one day. Van Wyden attempts to fix the ship and in spite of Larsen’s attempts to sabotage his work he succeeds. Larsen is slowly dying of a brain tumor. Miss Brewster and Van Wyden set sail on the Ghost and Larsen dies of the brain tumor shortly afterward. Miss Brewster and Van Wyden are rescued by an American ship. The interplay between Wolf Larsen and Humphrey Van Wyden is a remarkable literary event. In many ways, like Buck in Call of the Wild, Van Wyden gives into his own “call of the wild” and manages to survive in the most difficult surroundings.
Suggested Vocabulary Words
I seemed swinging in a mighty rhythm through orbit vastness. Sparkling points of light spluttered and shot past me. They were stars, I knew, and flaring comets, that peopled my flight among the suns. As I reached the limit of my swing and prepared to rush back on the counter swing, a great gong struck and thundered. For an immeasurable period, lapped in the rippling of placid centuries, I enjoyed and pondered my tremendous flight.
But a change came over the face of the dream, for a dream I told myself it must be. My rhythm grew shorter and shorter. I was jerked from swing to counter swing with irritating haste. I could scarcely catch my breath, so fiercely was I impelled through the heavens. The gong thundered more frequently and more furiously. I grew to await it with a nameless dread. Then it seemed as though I were being dragged over rasping sands, white and hot in the sun. This gave place to a sense of intolerable anguish. My skin was scorching in the torment of fire. The gong clanged and knelled. The sparkling points of light flashed past me in an interminable stream, as though the whole sidereal system were dropping into the void. I gasped, caught my breath painfully, and opened my eyes. Two men were kneeling beside me, working over me. My mighty rhythm was the lift and forward plunge of a ship on the sea. The terrific gong was a frying-pan, hanging on the wall, that rattled and clattered with each leap of the ship. The rasping, scorching sands were a man’s hard hands chafing my naked chest. I squirmed under the pain of it, and half lifted my head. My chest was raw and red, and I could see tiny blood globules starting through the torn and inflamed cuticle.
Argument
A metaphysician (i.e., scientist/philosopher who studies the universe) whose worldview requires God (if a decidedly anemic God), and who respected the cultural role of religious institutions. Contrasted to existentialists and naturalists, A.N. Whitehead preferred to work within society’s institutions. Nonetheless, Whitehead appealed to direct experience. Like many romantics, Whitehead saw harmony in nature and all human experience. Similar to the empiricists, Whitehead leaned toward rationalism. Whitehead’s story is a modern story — he became an agnostic. He also took some radical tangents in his world view.
In his book Process and Reality,4 A.N. Whitehead abandoned the notion, strong in Western philosophy since Plato, that what is most unchanging is most real. Instead he conceived the structure of reality in dynamic terms. Whitehead set out a radical metaphysics based not on entities but on events — on an infinite series of ‘‘actual occasions.’’ Reality was not based on Platonic “forms” but on “fluid experience.” All entities are ‘‘momentary constituents of the processes of reality’’; unchangingness is a property of what is ‘‘dead, past, abstract or purely formal.’’ The emphasis is on becoming, on development in time, rather than on static being, and by implication, absolute truth. Whitehead embraced the modernist notion of process thought. The central metaphor for process thought is that of organism, rather than that of machine. The formation of each event is a function of the nature of the entities involved, their context and interdependence in a way more characteristic of biological organisms than of inanimate objects; their ‘‘experience’’ and their effort to ‘‘fulfill their possibilities to the full’’ in the given event; language deriving not merely from biology but from the analogy of human mentality. Whitehead’s agnosticism is most evident in his understanding of suffering. God ‘‘the fellow-sufferer who understands,’’ who does not coerce but merely seeks to persuade other beings in the direction of love, seems profoundly attractive in the light of the Holocaust. Process schemes subvert the notion of the omnipotence of God, and therefore escape some of these tensions.
What is the central problem that the author has with Whitehead’s worldview?
- Whitehead is a romantic.
- Whitehead is a Darwinist.
- Whitehead’s pursuit of empathy dilutes the omnipotence of God.
- Whitehead is an agnostic.
Vague and Commonplace Words
Rewrite the following sentences with more vigor and precision. Note: precision may or may not mean “shorter.” Take as many words as necessary to ensure that your reader gets your point.
- He hit the ball over the fence.
- He ate all the cake that was left.
- She called for help.
Another common cause of sentence dullness is lack of variety in the kinds of sentences in a paragraph. Too many simple or compound sentences can make your style just as monotonous as too many subject-first sentences.
Expand
- (5 – x)(3 – x)
- (6 – x)(7 + x)
- (11 – x)(3 + x)
- (x – 3)(x + 3)
- (y + 5)(y – 5)
“Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.”5
— Alfred North Whitehead
Faulty Logic
What is wrong with the conclusion in this 1850 health manual?
HOW OFTEN SHOULD CHILDBIRTH TAKE PLACE?
It is most important that the childbearing wife and mother have a long period of rest between births. At least one year should separate a birth and the conception following it. This means that about two years should elapse between two births. If this rule be followed, the wife will retain her health, and her children will also be healthy. It is far better to give birth to seven children who will live and be healthy, than to bear fourteen, of whom seven are likely to die, while the numerous successive births wear out and age the unfortunate mother.
- It is most important that the childbearing wife and mother have a long period of rest between births.
- This means that about two years should elapse between two births. If this rule be followed, the wife will retain her health, and her children will also be healthy.
- It is far better to give birth to seven children, who will live and be healthy, than to bear fourteen, of whom seven are likely to die, while the numerous successive births wear out and age the unfortunate mother.
- I
- II
- III
- All
- None
What is a false assumption?
- Childbirth is painful.
- Rest between childbirth will produce laudable results.
- Childbirth wears out the mother.
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