Me Thinks

 I am sharing three more books today...

This is such a fascinating book.  Even if you only read a couple of chapters, the message sinks in.  Children in America are not born into similar situations.  Children born to upper class families have limitless advantages compared to those who are born in poverty. Parenting is different dependent on social class.

Social class was not important in shaping how much the youths’ parents loved them, worried about then, and sough to help them. But it did make a critical difference in the resources parents could bring to bear on their children’s behalf.  It was especially significant in parents’ interactions with educational institutions (pg. 262).

Class does matter.  In real life, the educational and work outcomes of young people are closely tied to the class position of their parents. Because social class is a significant force, existing social inequality gets reproduced over time, regardless of each new generation’s aspirations, talent, effort, and imagination (pg. 305).

 

Our son recommended this book to me and it was both marvelous and heart wrenching.  The great migration is shared through the stories of three individuals. I am happy to have read this book, and I feel increased empathy for the plight of millions of black Americans who were looking for a better life and had such a difficult time finding it.

Just to leave, the migrants had to draw upon their inner reserves, transcend the limits of caste and geography and the station to which they had been assigned.  The beneficiaries, despite the casualties, were many.  The migrants would seem to be the prime beneficiaries of their actions. But they were the ones who had to face the unsettled in-betweenness of their emigrant status.  Their individual actions, added together, benefited their children, their grandchildren, and even those they left behind in the South as much as if not more than themselves   

(pgs. 530, 531).

 

 

I like reading Adam Miller. I like the way he explains things and the way he thinks. The premise of the book is as the title states, that he would be explaining gospel topics to a young audience, but I am not young and I still really enjoyed the book.

You must bear wholeheartedly the fact that the work of living your life can’t be done by anyone else (pg. 1).

The gap between theory and practice is often biggest with the simplest things.  You’ve promised to pray but you’ll spend a lifetime learning how to pray.  You’ve promised to study the scriptures, but you’ll spend a lifetime learning how to read them.  And you’ve promised to give God everything—your time, your talents, your money—but you’ll spend a lifetime learning how to consecrate even a part. You cannot forfeit responsibility for this how.  You cannot wait for someone else to do it for you.  If you do not work things out for yourself, they will never be done. You must learn how to body your religion out into the world with your own fingers, toes, eyes, and ears, flesh and bones.  This can only be done from the inside out. You are a pioneer.  Life has never before been lived in your body (pgs. 2, 3).