Donald Miller, Joshua Harris, and the vow at Summit

 Joshua Harris and Donald Miller both served on staff at Summit Ministries in Colorado for a summer in their late teens. At the end of that summer, they made a vow along with five other guys to follow a list of moral standards for a year. They didn't keep the vow for very long, but their friendship continued, and they eventually wrote books and Facebook posts where they recounted different aspects of the same experience, but for different purposes. 

Read the excerpts below and ask yourself: how will I view today's struggles and friendships ten or twenty or thirty years from now? What have I learned from my struggles and friendships of the past? And how can I continue being a faithful, encouraging friend even when our perspectives have changed?

Donald Miller: On the discouragement of breaking self-imposed standards

Donald Miller (2003). Blue Like Jazz, pp.79-81

[Note: this memoir became an inspiration to the emerging church folks, young people searching for spiritual authenticity outside of the evangelical church they were familiar with. Miller has since stepped away from active church attendance.]

I was a fundamentalist Christian once. It lasted a summer. I was in that same phase of trying to discipline myself to "behave" as if I loved light and not "behave" as if I loved darkness. I used to get really ticked about preachers who talked too much about grace, because they tempted me to not be disciplined. I figured what people needed was a kick in the butt, and if I failed at godliness it was because those around me weren't trying hard enough. I believed if word got out about grace, the whole church was going to turn into a brothel. I was a real jerk, I think.

I hit my self-righteous apex while working at a fundamentalist Christian camp in Colorado. I was living in a cabin in the Rockies with about seven other guys, and the whole lot of us fell into this militant Christianity that says you should live like a Navy SEAL for Jesus. I am absolutely ashamed to admit this now.

We would fast all the time, pray together twice each day, memorize Scripture, pat each other on the back and that sort of thing. Summer was coming to a close, and we were getting pretty proud of ourselves because we had read a great deal of Scripture and hadn't gotten anybody pregnant. We were concerned, however, about what to do after we split up, thinking that if we didn't have each other we'd fall apart and start selling drugs to children. One of us, and it was probably me, decided to create a contract that listed things we wouldn't do for an entire year, like watch television or smoke pipes or listen to music. It was the constitution of our self-righteous individualism. The contract stated we would read the Bible every day, pray, and memorize certain long passages of Scripture. We sat around one night with pen and paper and offered sacrifices, each of us trying to outman the other with bigger and brighter lambs for the slaughter. We were the direct opposite of a frat house; instead of funneling our testosterone into binge drinking and rowdy parties, we were manning up to Jesus, bumping Him chest to chest as it were, like Bible salesmen on steroids.

I hitched a ride to Oregon and got an apartment in the suburbs where I didn't know anybody and nobody knew me. I had this necklace on my neck, this string of beads, each bead representing one of the guys in the contract, and a cross in the center, a reminder that we had all gone in on this thing, that we were going to be monks for a year. At first it was easy, living in a new place and all, a new city, but after a while that necklace started to choke me.

The first of the exploits to go was the Bible. It wasn't that I didn't want to read it or didn't agree with it, I would just forget. It sat on the floor next to my bed beneath a pile of dirty clothes. Out of sight, out of mind. I'd forget about it for a month until I cleaned my room, and then I'd lift up a pile of dirty clothes and there would be my Bible, staring up at me like a dead pet.

One evening I was walking around Pioneer Square in downtown Portland when I noticed a pipe and tobacco store across the street. I decided I'd step inside and take a look-see. I came out with a new pipe that I swore I wouldn't smoke till the year was up. It was a good deal, you know, about fifteen dollars or something. I couldn't pass up the sale on tobacco, either, even though it would go bad before the contract expired. I sat down in Pioneer Square with the skateboarders and musicians, chess players and coffee drinkers. I decided to pack my pipe, just to get a feel for it. I stuck it in my mouth to bring back that sensation, the feel of the stem between my teeth. Then I lit it. Then I smoked it.

After the Bible and the pipe thing fell apart, I decided to yield a bit on the television aspect of the contract. There was this indie pizza place down the street from my apartment, Escape from New York Pizza or something like that, and they had a big-screen television. I'd go down and watch Monday night football, which was a double sin because on Mondays we were supposed to be fasting. I figured none of the guys would mind if I switched the fasting day to Wednesday, just to shuffle things around. I shuffled so many fasting days around that after three months I was supposed to go twelve days without eating. I think I fasted twice that year. Maybe.

I hated the entire year. Hated it. I felt like a failure every morning. I hated looking in the mirror because I was a flop. I got ticked at all the people who were having fun with their lives.

I'd walk home from the pizza place feeling criminal for my mischief, feeling as though I were not cut out to be a Christian, wondering what my punishment would be for disobeying God. Everything was failing. I'd get letters from the other guys, too, some of them doing quite well. I wouldn't answer them. Not only was I failing God, I was failing my fundamentalist brothers!

Joshua Harris: On the discouragement of breaking self-imposed standards

Joshua Harris (2003). Not Even a Hint, pp.15-18, 21-22

[Note: at the time of writing Not Even a Hint, I think Harris was assistant to C.J. Mahaney, and the year after publishing he took over the pastorate of Covenant Life Church (Gaithersburg, MD) from Mahaney. Soon after, the book was sold at the booktable at Household of Faith Community Church (Gresham, OR), where his father pastored and where I attended. I listened to the audiobook in Thailand around 2015.]

Seven of us were gathered in the dimly lit living room. A single sheet of notebook paper passed slowly between each person. Finally, it came to me. I scanned the numbered list then solemnly signed my name at the bottom of the page.

The "contract," as we had come to call it, was a strict code of conduct, a list of promises that each of us was vowing to follow for the coming year.

We would read our Bibles every day.

Go to church every Sunday.

Memorize a passage of Scripture every week.

Fast every Tuesday.

Share our faith with one person each week.

We wouldn't watch any movies.

We wouldn't kiss a girl.

We wouldn't drink alcohol.

And we wouldn't masturbate.

Actually, I don't remember all the promises on the list. I think there were nearly fifteen. But I distinctly remember that the vow to refrain from masturbating was number ten on the list. That promise held the particular attention of each of us.

...I was eighteen years old. The other six guys ranged in age from seventeen to twenty-four. That summer we were working as counselors at a Christian leadership camp in Colorado. Carlos, Clint, and I washed dishes. Don, Brook, Jon, and Scot shuttled students in the vans. We called ourselves "The Stallions"--named after a cabin several of the guys lived in.

I can't remember exactly where the idea for the contract came up. I guess we wanted rules. We wanted to know we were pleasing God. The whole process of becoming holy seemed complicated to us, so the idea of reducing our faith to a manageable list of promises and prohibitions was appealing.

So there we were in Jon's parents' living room signing our names. After we were done, Jon took the piece of paper, placed it on the floor in the center of the room, and knelt beside it. "C'mon, guys," he said. "Let's seal our vow with prayer."

The whole thing was very dramatic. All that was missing was a rising orchestral theme playing in the background. We got down on our knees, huddled in a circle, and extended our right hands onto the sheet of paper. We closed our eyes and bowed our heads, then pledged before God to obey every rule on the list.

It was official. The contract was ratified. I felt sure that the angels in heaven must be leaning down in amazement, watching our impressive display of godliness and the sheer strength of will in the room.

A few days later, we all left for home. I was still basking in the euphoria of our religious zeal. Every generation needs men of courage, men of conviction, men of strength--men of God. I was one of those men.

The illusion lasted about two weeks. That's when I broke rule number ten of the contract.

The year that followed was a very humbling lesson in how utterly incapable I was of being righteous in my own strength. And I wrote "number ten again" in my journal more times that year than I want to think about. All my great ambitions, all my vows, all my self-efforts were revealed to be worthless.

...I can laugh now as I look back on that year under the tyranny of "the contract," but it really taught me some important lessons about the limitations of human rules and regulations to bring about real change in a person's life--especially in the area of lust.

...My failure to uphold "the contract" was my first clue that my method for resisting lust was misguided. To begin with, it was based on my own standard of what it meant to obey God. I created a rule I thought I could follow: I wouldn't masturbate for a year.

The result was that I placed my hope in the wrong source of power to obey--my own willpower and strength. I wasn't putting my faith in God; I was putting my faith in Joshua Harris and his ability to resist temptation.

My motivation didn't help either. Though it wasn't completely wrong--part of me genuinely wanted to please God--a huge part of my motivation was to "feel" like a pure person. I wanted to be able to say I hadn't sinned. I wanted to show God how good I could be and how worthy I was.

But of course it all fell apart. After I sinned again, my motivation crumbled. I didn't feel pure or worthy of God's love. My guilt made me hesitant to pray. So I tried harder to muster the willpower to stop lusting. This only led to more discouragement and frustration. Even when I revised my standards--"I won't do it for the next nine months!"--the whole cycle repeated itself again.

Can you relate? Do you see how getting our standard, source of power, and motivation all wrong leads to ongoing failure?

I wrote this book because I've learned that I don't have to live on this treadmill. You don't have to either. God's Word shows us how to get on the path to freedom. It shows us that the key to escaping the cycle of defeat is to embrace God's standard for holiness, His source of power for change, and His motive for fighting sin. 

Joshua Harris: On the deepening of faith

Joshua Harris (2010). Dug Down Deep, pp.21-22

[Note: at this point, Harris had been senior pastor of Covenant Life Church for six years, and was feeling nostalgic, realizing that he was grateful for the formative experiences that had challenged and deepened his faith, even though they seemed intense at the time, and even though his writings in his early twenties had laid blame on some of his early religious environments.]

When I was seventeen, I went to a Christian leadership camp in Colorado Springs. The students there were different from other Christians I'd met. They were serious, focused. That might have been the first time I was with a group of Christians who weren't simply trying to "outfun" the world. These kids wanted to outthink and outwork and outlove the world. They wanted to apply their minds to studying Scripture and gaining a Christian worldview. Many had a hunger for God and his Word that stood in stark contrast to my life.

In one session the camp director asked students to stand and recite passages of Scripture they had memorized. I misunderstood the request and at one point stood with my Bible in hand and read the passage. When I realized my mistake, I felt really dumb. I slumped back into my chair red-faced and embarrassed as others stood, one after another, and recited portions from memory. Worse than my misunderstanding was the realization that I didn't have a passage of the Bible memorized. My conscience was pricked.

Around that same time my girlfriend and I ended our two-year relationship. It was a significant moment in my spiritual life. I didn't realize till we broke up just how much our relationship, with its ongoing temptation to compromise, had been draining my spiritual passion. With the distraction and guilt of that temptation over, I began to pursue God in a way I'd never done before.

Joshua Harris: On the encouragement of long-term friendship

Joshua Harris (17 Jan 2022). Facebook.com

[Note: at this point, Harris has stepped down from pastoring, gone to seminary, renounced his former books, left his marriage, left his faith, and started a business-coaching consultancy.]

I’ve been friends with @donaldmiller since I was 17. We met while we were both working at a Christian leadership youth camp in Colorado Springs (any Summit alumni out there?). He was a counselor, I was a dish washer. When he moved to my hometown of Portland, Oregon, after camp, our friendship continued. We ended up working alongside each other, traveling, and dreaming of being writers. 

Thirty years later Don is still my friend and there’s a long history of him inspiring me, teaching me, and supporting me. When I decided to stop being a pastor he reminded me of entrepreneurial roots and encouraged me to launch my own business. When my marriage ended he didn’t judge or berate me. On a weekly basis I draw from his StoryBrand framework in my creative agency and his Business Made Simple video curriculum in my coaching. 

Don just released a new book called Hero on a Mission that uses principles from story to help you set clear goals for your life and, instead of playing the role of victim or villain, choose to be a hero on a mission.

I interact with a lot of people who have gone through significants shifts in their beliefs. And consistently they ask, “Where do I find meaning? How do I rediscover a sense of purpose?” For anyone asking those kind of questions, I’d highly recommend Don’s book. It’s inspirational, but also extremely practical. It guides you in creating a life plan and encourages you not to let fate write your story. It teaches you to set big goals and then break that down to daily choices. 

Don’t let discouragement, distraction, or confusion steal your story.

How Stephen Olford influenced Jim and Elisabeth Elliot

In January 1948, 20-year-old Jim Elliot (1927-1956) and 21-year-old Elisabeth Howard (1926-2015), both students at Wheaton College, sat in a week of chapel meetings led by a 29-year-old Stephen Olford (1918-2004). On Friday, January 16, he preached on journaling and quiet time. Here's what each one had to say about the experience.

Jim

January 17, 1948

What is written in these pages I suppose will someday be read by others than myself. For this reason I cannot hope to be absolutely honest in what is herein recorded, for the hypocrisy of this shamming heart will ever be putting on a front and dares not to have written what is actually found in its abysmal depths. 

Yet, I pray, Lord, that You will make these notations to be as nearly true to fact as is possible so that I may know my own heart and be able to definitely pray regarding my gross, though often unviewed, inconsistencies. 

I do this at the suggestion of Stephen Olford... whose chapel message of yesterday morning convicted me that my quiet time with God is not what it should be. These remarks are to be written from fresh, daily thoughts given from God in meditation on His Word. 

- Jim Elliot, (Elisabeth Elliot, ed.), The Journals of Jim Elliot.

Elisabeth

A young British preacher named Stephen Olford spoke in our college chapel for a week. Two things he said stayed with me: He quoted from the Song of Solomon, “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake love until it please.” He interpreted this to mean that no one, man or woman, should be agitated about the choice of a mate, but should be “asleep” as it were, in the will of God, until it should please Him to “awake” him. The other thing he urged was that we should keep a spiritual journal. I determined to follow his advice on both counts.

I bought a small, brown looseleaf notebook, almost exactly the size of my small, brown leather-bound Bible, given to me by my parents for Christmas in 1940. These I kept together at all times. 

- Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity.

Jim and Elisabeth began a romance that year that eventually ended in marriage in 1953. Jim was eventually speared to death along with four other missionaries in Ecuador as they tried to reach the Waodani tribe in 1956. 

It is my contention that the reason we know about Jim and Elisabeth today is not only because of Jim's martyrdom, but also because Elisabeth wrote so many books about their lives, such as Through Gates of Splendor, The Savage My Kinsman, and Passion and Purity, along with her edited version of The Journals of Jim Elliot. She would not have been able to do so to the level of detail and emotional depth that she did without the evidence from these journals, which they started after hearing Stephen Olford's message. 

And I'm sure that the writing and processing each of them did as they kept the journals helped them make the life decisions they did. So in a way, we know about Jim and Elisabeth Elliot today because Stephen Olford encouraged them to journal.

Robert Morse on unity in prayer

On Saturday, June 8, 1991, Robert Howe Morse, Sr. (1923-1993) gave a talk on prayer at a church in Phoenix, Arizona. I received the tape recording from his colleague, Joel Lillie, who called him "Uncle Robert". I will share a portion of the transcript below, but first I want to give some background.

Uncle Robert was a second-generation missionary who translated the Bible into the Rawang language of northern Burma from 1951 to 1987. He, his folklorist wife Betty (1930-2001), and the rest of their family, are most famous for the six years they spent in no-man's land between Burma and India from 1965 to 1972, after the Ne Win government ordered them to leave -- an adventure documented in his brother Eugene's book Exodus to a Hidden Valley. These years were difficult, and he reportedly resented the ordeal for a good while, and was surprised to find that these were the years that Reader's Digest wanted to focus on for Eugene's book. 

After reading the book as a child, I assumed that Robert and Betty continued together in ministry for the rest of their lives after the events recorded in the book. However, I later found out that they divorced after the ordeal, with Betty taking several of their children from Hidden Valley to Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 1968, briefly marrying a Kachin officer, and traveling to the US, Thailand, India, and Nepal. Robert remained single for several years, even as he returned to the US and then transplanted his ministry to Chiang Mai. He later married a local woman named Phonsri, who was with him when he gave the talk in Phoenix. 

It was in Chiang Mai that Robert and his brother Eugene realized more their need for unity in prayer with other believers of different backgrounds. They joined a Tuesday night interdenominational prayer group in the home of Allan and Joan Eubank. Allan tells about one particularly intense prayer session in his memoir Where God Leads... Never Give Up:

One night Robert Morse, a long-time missionary friend, brought a tribal lady and her sister to see me. Actually, he had much more experience than I had, but he wanted me to join with him in prayer. The lady was a backslidden Christian who had been cursed because of a conflict with a non-Christian lady on the mountain where they lived.  

Her sister brought the woman to see the Morse family. They had prayed for her an entire week without effect. As we began to pray to cast out the spirits, the woman’s voice changed, becoming high, shrill, and comical saying, “Oh, it’s gone. See, it’s under that chair over there.” Obviously a spirit itself was speaking. It spoke in such a ridiculous tone of voice that the sister burst out laughing. Even though we knew this was a very serious situation, we had to laugh with her. In spite of our commands in Jesus’ name, we knew the spirits were still there. Finally, we remembered the story of the Gadarene demoniac in Mark 5:1-17. The demons begged Jesus to send them into the herd of pigs, and Jesus granted their request. We then asked the evil spirits, “Where is your home, and where are you allowed to live?” I don’t remember how the spirits answered, but we understood they lived on the same mountain as the woman. So we commanded them to go back to the place where Jesus allowed them to live. Then the spirits left, and the lady became her normal self.

Uncle Robert alludes to a similar incident in his Phoenix talk:

I find that in prayer, a very necessary element in prayer is agreement. It's for this reason that I've been effective as a worker, most recently, just with my wife. My wife and I, in agreement, bring matters to the Lord, and claim and pray, and get answers.

Jesus sent his disciples out two by two. Two people agreeing together, pull the Lord into it -- you don't say, "Well, I want a Cadillac, she wants a -- what's another big one? -- She wants a Mercedes. Lord, which one do you agree with?" 

No, that's not, that's not barely… In the first place, I think your old man's sort of gotten on top, there, to make a prayer like that. "Lord, whatever you want me to have, I leave it to you. Yes, I feel the need for a car. If you want to give a car, good. If you don't, feel I don't need one, good also."

But be it alone agreeing, with whom? There's no agreement. You've got to have others, a coworker, someone else. Whatever it is that you're praying about, whatever it is, work that you're doing, get someone who will agree with you.

You know, I don't mean to preach about unity and all that, but it's very important. Where there is strife, God cannot bless! That's my experience!

Where there is strife, you're way out on a limb. First make that right. First clear up the strife, to where there is unity, unity of spirit, one way or the other. Husbands and wives, find that unity and put that unity high, high on your agenda, for God's blessing. Because God blesses you when you have unity.

I was in Chiang Mai, as a single, oh, maybe fifteen years ago, and I felt under attack, the enemy was attacking in more ways than one -- that's north Thailand, where I was. And I was the only missionary of my group, in the city. I went over to two other missions, missionaries from two other missions, and said, "Look, I would like for you to come and pray with me, because I've got a problem, I have a need, and I need to pray God to overcome it."

They were a little surprised to say the least. They'd never had anybody do anything like that. But they were fellow believers in prayer, at least. So they saw my point when I explained it to them. I had to take 15-20 minutes to explain it to each of them, why I wanted them to agree with me. "Oh, yeah!"

There's people that would have, I suppose, some doctrinal differences, if we got to discussing theology, but we weren't in a place where we needed to discuss theology. Theology wasn't a question. They were God's children, I was God's children. I had a need, I needed a prayer that would be successful, be answered, I needed support. So I got their unity. I got them to agree with me. And we prayed together -- just like that, the situation was clear.

So -- find it! Even if you're a single! Get out there and find someone who -- or if you're not a single, but still, you're in one job all by yourself, go out and find a fellow believer, and say, "Hey! Would you mind stopping your work for five minutes and praying with me?" "Uh-huh?"

Going to blow somebody's mind, making a request like that, but, really! Unity of spirit is something that doesn't have to have long years of work to build up. It doesn't mean that you're all agreed in every detail of your work, and every bit of your theology and all that. But God wants to see our unity of spirit, and come to him, and ask for something, and he will listen.

It is encouraging to me to see that, first, a missionary like Uncle Robert could learn and grow even after many years in the field, and that, second, he was willing to share the painful and lonely parts of his experience, and not just his triumphs, with those of us who came after, in the hopes that by our inviting others to unite with us in prayer, God would meet us too in our hour of need.

The autobiography of Robert Shafer

Robert Shafer was an amateur linguist who collaborated with Paul K. Benedict under the sponsorship of Alfred L. Kroeber on the original Sino-Tibetan linguistics project at UC Berkeley in the 1930s and 40s. He wrote the following short autobiography in 1963 in a French journal called Orbis. Thank you to Nathan Hill for helping me secure a scan of the article, and to Roy Andrew Miller for originally pointing it out in a footnote of his review of Benedict's Sino-Tibetan: A Conspectus -- I will quote Miller's note in full below:

"The autobiographical sketch that Robert Shafer contributed to Orbis (12:1.350-353 [1963]) is interesting and important, not the least for its list of his publications on Sino-Tibetan, an impressive total of 18 articles in various journals appearing between 1940 and 1955, plus a book (the first volume of his Bibliography of Sino-Tibetan Languages, 1957, the second volume of which appeared in 1963--both these were to some extent, and the first volume almost entirely, further spin-offs from the S-T L [Sino-Tibetan Linguistics] manuscript volumes). This notice of Shafer and his work had escaped my attention until Professor South Coblin of the University of Iowa told me about it."

(Miller, Roy Andrew. 1974. Sino-Tibetan: Inspection of a Conspectus. Journal of the American Oriental Society 94(2). 195–209.)

For Benedict's memories of Shafer, see: Benedict, Paul K. 1975. Where it all began: memories of Robert Shafer and the Sino-Tibetan Linguistics Project, Berkeley 1939-1940. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 2(1). 81–92.

And now, our main feature:

Shafer, Robert. 1963. Collaborateurs du présent fascicule: Shafer, Robert. Orbis 12(1). 350–353.

 

I was born in the sleepy little city of Findlay, Ohio, which never breaks into the metropolitan newspapers except with quotations of the price of oil, for the headquarters of the Standard Oil of Ohio are located there. My first contact with a foreign language was with German. My grandfather Shafer was an Alsatian who spoke both French and German, but he came to the United States in 1818 and my father knew German when he was young, because there were many German farmers in Ohio, but he had forgotten it before I was born. But I had a German aunt that my mother and I would visit every summer, and she had an old German Bible, and since I knew lots of passages more or less by heart, I used to entertain myself by seeing how much I could read in German. On her death she bequeathed the German Bible to me.

I wished to study French in high school, but they did not teach it, so I took Latin instead. Class was at 2 p. m., and we had two hours for lunch and always intended to get our Latin lesson after lunch. But the river was nearby and we always found it so much more enticing to pole a scow about on the river, pretending it was the Congo or the Orinoco we were exploring, than it was to get our Latin lessons. We had a very "easy" Latin teacher, and we would get back to high school about fifteen minutes to 2, each one would pick out a sentence and rush in to the teacher and say "Oh, teacher, I had a little trouble translating this". Then we would all rush back, exchange translations, and remember long enough to get through the recitation. The next year I wore the edges off my Caesar, which I could take an interest in, but flunked the course. Not a very brilliant beginning for a linguist. But I think it was the best thing that could have happened to me. For we had moved to Tacoma, Washington, where the larger high school offered courses in French. I got busy and learned the grammar the first year, and a sailor on a Belgian boat gave me an old fashioned almanach in French that had something on just about everything in the world, I think, and from reading that on rainy days – and that is about seven months out of the year in Tacoma – I got a very large vocabulary for a first year French student in high school.

Between high school and college I taught myself Italian. And when I was 17 I did my first linguistic research, unofficially and without any grants. My mother and I had returned to Findlay, Ohio, for the trip. In the city library in the basement of the court house, I ran across Grimm's Law, I think in one of the works of one of the von Humboldt, I suppose Wilhelm. It made a tremendous impression on me to find that so many European languages were related but had diverged through regular phonetic shifts. I hurried to my aunt's, only a vew blocks away, and took Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, which I had been reading, out on the front porch and worked out the phonetic shifts for the southern dialect, used by the characters in the novel, in comparison with standard English.

When we returned West that fall, I entered the University of Washington. I was like Jack London discovering knowledge. There were so many courses I wished to take that there just was not time enough. I remember I had to "audit" my course in Old Irish, although I was the only pupil in the class. I did not get credit for it, and the professor did not get paid for it. We both did it for the love of Old Irish.

Between my Freshman and Sophmore years I went down to raise a crop of potatoes on a little ranch I had in central Oregon. I took Heine's Harzreise with me and a neighbor's son who had attended the University of Wisconsin lent me a book of Spanish short stories. While I should have been cultivating or irrigating my potatoes, I was lying under a juniper tree reading Spanish short stories or the Harzreise. The water would break out of its channels and flood my potatoes. I lost $1000 on my summer's "toil", but I came back to the university with enough German and Spanish to enter advanced courses in the lyrics of those languages. At the University of California I began the study of Russian and Chinese.

I did not study "linguistics" because no such courses were given when I was a student. Pliny Earle Goddard, then at the Museum of Natural History in New York, gave me some offprints of his work on Athapaskan and some of Edward Sapir's, and this got me started working à la Sapir – three years later I burned bushel basskets full of comparisons made in this matter in the fireplace. I had covered much of the native languages of North and South America and Oceania. A professor at Columbia University had had the good taste to recommend Antoine Meillet's Introduction for Indo-European comparative grammar and Roudet, a pupil of Abbé Rousselot, for phonetics, when I told him I might as well learn linguistics in French. Later I wore out a German dictionary getting the linguistic and phonetic vocabulary in reading similar works in German.

After getting from the Americas across the Pacific I came to the Austroasian and Sino-Tibetan languages. Because of the difficulty of these languages they offered a real challenge, and I have spent the greater part of my life on them. When I began, I had to blow the dust off the tops of the books I took out of the University of California Library, because they had never been used before. Now, some 35 years later, I have difficulty getting the books I need, for they are out to another borrower.

 

Publications.

Sino-Tibetan.

"The vocalism of Sino-Tibetan", Journal of the American Oriental Society 60 (1940), 302-337; 61 (1941), 18-31.

"Problems in Sino-Tibetan Phonetics", JAOS 64 (1944), 137-143.

"The initials of Sino-Tibetan", JAOS 70 (1950), 96-103.

Bibliography of Sino-Tibetan languages, Wiesbaden 1954.

"Studies in the morphology of Bodic verbs", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 13 (London 1951, 702-724, 1017-1031.

"Khimi grammar and vocabulary", BSOAS 11 (1944), 386-434.

"East Himalayish", BSOAS 15 (1933), 356-374.

"Further analysis of the Pyu inscriptions", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 6 (1943), 313-366 + 5 pls.

"Prefixes in Tibeto-Burmic", HJAS 9 (1945), 45-50.

"Phonétique comparée de quelques préfixes simples en sino-tibétain", Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 46 (1950), 144-171.

"L'annamite et le tibéto-birman", Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient 40 (1940), 439-442.

"Phonétique historique des langues lolo", T'oung Pao 41 (1952), 191-229.

"Newari and Sino-Tibetan", Studia Linguistica (Lund 1952), 92-109.

"The Naga branches of Kukish", Roczink Orientalistyczny 16 (1950), 467-530.

"Phonetik der Alt-Kuki Mundarten", ZDMG 102 (1952), 262-279.

"The linguistic position of Mru", Journal of the Burma Research Society 31 (1941), 58-79.

"Classification of some languages of the Himalayas", Journal of the Bihar Research Society 34 (Patna 1951), 192-214.

"Classification of the northernmost Naga languages", ibid. 39 (1953), pt. 3, 225-264.

"Classification of the Sino-Tibetan languages", Word 11 (1955), 94-111.

North American Indian.

"Penutian", International Journal of American Linguistics 13 (1947), 205-219.

"Notes on Penutian", IJAL 18 (1952), 211-216.

"Athapaskan and Sino-Tibetan", IJAL 18 (1952), 12-19.

"Tones in Wintun", Anthropological Linguistics 3 (1961), 16-29.

South American Indian.

"Algumas equações fonéticas em Arawakan", Anthropos 54 (1959), 542-561.

"Aruakan (not Arawakan)", Anthropological Linguistics 4 (1962), 31-40.

Indo-European.

"Implosive finals in Indo-European", Zeitschrift für Phonetik und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft 13 (1960), 48-56.

African.

"Phonétique comparée du Nigéro-Sénégalien (Mande)", Bulletin de l'Institut Français de l'Afrique Noire, Ser. B, Vol. 21 (Dakar 1959), 179-200.

Ancient Near Eastern.

"Pisidian", American Journal of Philology 71 (1950), 239-270.

"Lycian hrppi", AJPh 67 (1946), 252-261.

"Greek transcription of Lukian", Jahrbuch für kleinasiatische Forschung 2 (1951), 1-12.

"Lycian numerals", Archiv Orientalní 18, no. 4 (1950), 251-261.

"Some Lycian penalties", Revue Hittite et Asianique 52 (1950), 1-17.

"System of relationship in Lukian", Die Welt des Orients 2 (1959), 484-501.

Austroasian.

"Études sur l'austroasien", BSLP 48 (1952), 111-158.

And half as many more.

The wisdom of Jespersen

 One book which I bought this past year was the autobiography of Otto Jespersen, A Linguist's Life (translated by David Stoner, edited by Arne Juul, Hans F. Nielsen, and Jørgen Erik Nielsen). I think I first came across Jespersen in 2011 when I was teaching English on Jinmen Island, Taiwan, and happened to find his book The Philosophy of Grammar (1924) in the upstairs floor of a department store among a lot of books imported from China. I only read a couple chapters, but I was warmed by his friendliness and lucidity around linguistic concepts. The following year, after I started studying linguistics at Payap University in Thailand, I read in R. M. W. Dixon's Basic Linguistic Theory (vol. 1, pp.87-88) that The Philosophy of Grammar is a classic. Dixon calls it "[a]n impressive synthesis of typological theory at that point in time. Asks important questions and provides thoughtful and thorough answers. It may appear a little outdated but it is still worthwhile examining what Jespersen had to say on virtually any topic."

So late this year as I was languishing in my room here at Old World Apples, hopped onto Jespersen's profile on Wikipedia and found out that he'd published an autobiography in 1938, and that it was published in English in 1995. I scoured the internet for copies, and the ones for sale were all way overpriced, but finally I found the Danish university press that had published it, and was able to order it from there at a reasonable price. When it got here, I found a real treat in chapter 16, "Retrospect". Maybe old scholars like Jespersen have had some of the tartness seasoned out of them, and what remains is devil-may-care wisdom and advice based on life experiences. Sample the following:

On accepting one's limitations (pp.246-247)

A song at a party at the time when I was writing my Fonetik, had this to say of me:

[Otto's a mighty clever chap.

With vigour undiminished

He labours on his heavy tome,

Which never will be finished.]

Time has shown this judgement to be rather hasty; I have completed both the phonetics and other big books -- although there are several plans which I have not carried out, and for which half-finished, often very copious, drafts lie in my drawers...

This is the nub of the matter, I suppose: we are all limited and Goethe's words [("It is in limitation that the master truly reveals himself")] are only true if they are taken to mean, "[it is in recognition of his limitation that the master truly reveals himself]".

On jotting down observations (p.247)

I am above all an observer; I quite simply cannot help making linguistic observations. In conversations at home and abroad, in railway compartments, when passing people in the street and on the road, I am constantly noticing oddities of pronunciation, forms, and sentence constructions -- but more in my younger days than now, when much of what was then striking is familiar to me. I have jotted down much of what I have picked up in that way and have developed quite a skill in catching language subtleties on the wing.

Reading with pencil in hand (p.247-248)

I constantly read with a pencil in my hand, and when there is something I find worth noting, I put a small dot in the margin. Afterwards these things, individual forms or whole sentences, are entered on slips of paper... At the moment when something is noted down I very often have no idea what I am going to use it for, or whether it will prove or show anything of interest; quite frequently a rule or connection becomes clear to me only when I compare a number of slips which may have been written at intervals of several years; thus a system which emerges from many separate observations has not, as in the practice of some philologists, been deduced beforehand (a priori) -- a method which can easily lead one astray.

...[N]otes on small slips are a good help, because with the greatest ease they can be arranged and re-arranged and put together from various points of view, until one finds the final system. From the start it is all elastic and flexible, until it is fitted into the straitjacket of a system.

From notes to slips to drawers to books (p.250)

So when any topic comes up for treatment, I already have a fair number of individual observations and ideas to build upon... One of my pupils is said to have once depicted my procedure like this: Jespersen gradually stuffs a quantity of slips into compartments in his drawers; when one compartment is full, a little bell rings, and another book is finished. Well, it is not quite so easy as that, and certainly not everything that has been collected is put into the final version. It is a matter of discriminating between what is essential and what is inessential, that may be where my strength lies... the secret [of finding good examples] lies precisely in the fact that... I have already gathered so many examples of every phenomenon dealt with that I can reject many of the less apt or useful ones, so that only the good ones are left.

The art of presentation (p.251)

One thing that is related to my ability to weed out material, instead of pedantically wanting to include everything, is... the art of presentation. "It reads like a novel" has been said in reviews of several of my books... But in my books I am not a mere popularizer deftly presenting things that others have thought -- my books contain mainly things that I have myself observed and thought, which I have endeavored to arrange for the reader in such a way that without too much effort he will grasp the broad and basic problems and see the main lines. Although I have avoided many of the technical terms that make the reading of many scholarly works so difficult, I hope that it will be said of me that I have not dodged difficulties.

Feel free to rearrange (pp.252)

As regards the final drafting, I shall first pass on a piece of advice which [Henry] Sweet gives in one of his books: don't try to save paper; paper is cheap. So of course write on only one side. But if you are not absolutely sure of the final order of the sections, always write each paragraph, however short, on a separate piece of paper. This gives opportunity for later expansions, additions, and rearrangements.

Writing habits (pp.252-253)

Form habits of work that are as regular and practical as possible.

Relieve the reader of much time-consuming labour. So quote in the best way: in the text itself as far as possible, so that his eye does not have to glance up and down while reading...

Do not immediately number the pages of the manuscript but wait until the whole of it is finished...

Do not reread what you have written straight away, but wait until next morning, when you are more detached and look at it with fresh eyes. It is good to begin one's daily stint by looking through the previous day's work; it prepares the mind for continuing. Morley Roberts and, as far as I recall, Anthony Trollope give novelists the advice not to finish in the evening by concluding a chapter, but to write just the beginning of the next one; then it will be easier to get into the mood the next day.

Communication as labor to enable understanding (p.254)

All this is bound up with my whole basic view of the nature of language as human labour to enable one person to grasp another's thought, feeling, and will. From this there necessarily follows the evaluative view with its two poles: easy to produce and easy to grasp. The best is that which, with the least effort, achieves the easiest, fullest, and most certain understanding. But from this all the rest follows, including the ethical task of working for an approach to this ideal.

Random notes for random thoughts (p.254)

I have not used the slips of paper only for single observations or quotations; on many of them I have written thoughts, whole reflections, or series of thoughts in outline. These may often have been evoked in an odd way through an apparently random link with what I am reading, not infrequently on quite unconnected subjects, in books, periodicals, or newspaper articles. A single word or phrase may arouse thoughts in my own special field or outside this.

Thinking-walks (p.254)

I have had many good ideas on solitary walks (thinking-walks my wife used to call them, and when I was much preoccupied with a topic, she knew that either I had to walk alone or, if she was with me, she had better keep quiet, whereas at other times our conversation could be lively enough). On such walks I always have slips in my pocket and write quite a lot on them. For instance, Novial came into being mainly in the parks of Ermelunden and Dyrehaven.

Notes at night (p.254)

I have also worked with slips of paper at night. In Jægersborg, when I shared a bedroom with my wife, I accustomed myself to writing thoughts down in the dark in pencil (not on ordinary paper slips, but on special ones of cardboard). As a rule these night slips contain only a single word which in the morning sets off a whole train of thought that might otherwise easily have been forgotten; it may also remind me of something to be done during the day. Here at Lundehave, where I have my own bedroom, I can of course switch on the light for such jottings without bothering anyone. Particularly while working on Analytic Syntax I would frequently wake up thinking of some sentence or sentence type: Have I included that one? And how is it to be analysed and symbolized? This led to disturbed sleep and was an important factor in the mental strain and exhaustion which was evident in the summer of 1936.

Habits of sleep and work (p.255)

In my younger days I used to read much at night and consequently got up late. During my period as a teacher, however, I combated this by always making sure that my lessons were in the morning. As a professor I had to get up early on the days I had lectures from 9 o'clock: I had to leave Gentofte station at a little after eight, and it took me twenty minutes to walk there. But I might not wake up properly until I had almost finished dressing, or during breakfast, or even while walking up the hill along Bernstorff Park. But on the days when I did not have to go to the University, I slept in late. I have long since shaken off these bad habits, and for many years now I have consistently kept to the rule that I do not work seriously after about eight o'clock or so, often indeed not after our evening dinner at about six. I get out of my bed without fail at half past seven, sit down to breakfast at eight, then read newspapers or the day's mail, then work until exactly eleven, and then walk until a quarter past twelve or thereabouts (only in exceptionally nasty weather is the walk curtailed); lunch at 12.30 is followed by a rest on the sofa... At 2, 2.15, or 2.30 I am up again and as a rule work until dinner-time, but nearly always with an additional walk of 30 or 45 minutes, when there are no afternoon visitors. I like if possible to walk my seven kilometres a day.

On answering letters (p.255)

A habit, not quite consistently adhered to, is on Sunday morning to answer those of the week's letters which have not required an immediate response. But I prefer to reply at once, because then one does not need to read them through again and can at once consign most letters to the waste-paper basket.

On daily reading (p.255-256)

For some years I made it a rule every day to read something, whether much or little, in one of the languages that are not exactly a picnic to me. Although there were days when it amounted to very little, it all added up, and in that way I managed to read most of the Odyssey, some of Plato, Calderón, Tolstoy, some Old Norse, the Gothic gospels with the Greek text, Holberg's Latin epistles, etc. It was fairly easy to maintain such a habit when life followed its daily routine, but once the habit had been broken by a longish journey, it was hard to get started again.

On forgetting (p.256)

I have written and published so much that I oftentimes cannot remember whether something about which I know I have reached conclusions has found a place in my published works, or whether it exists half-finished in one of my manuscripts for lectures or the like... 

It happens now and again when I dip into one of my earlier books, that I say to myself in amazement: What a lot you knew about that topic in those days. The reader may take this admission as he pleases, as an expression of vanity or as evidence of my poor memory.

On toning down criticism (p.257)

I am probably by nature of a critical cast of mind... Many of my best ideas have come to me when I have been reading or hearing the opposite views of others. In reviews and in books I have therefore often been polemical; it is my nature to put forward objections as sharply and definitely as possible and I may not always have expressed myself in as considerate a manner as possible. Here, however, I must thank my wife; she did not read much of my strictly scholarly works, but where possible, particularly in lectures, minor articles, and letters, she toned down over-sharp comments and persuaded me to see the justice of this. So I think I can rightly say that I have had, and continue to have, a good personal relationship with all those whose views I have publicly contradicted. (With perhaps a solitary exception.)

The fruits of progress (p.258)

I am happy that in my long life I have seen the introduction of telephones, bicycles, typewriters, fountain pens, cars, water closets, lifts, electric light, sound films, gramophones -- and not least: radio. And I am sure it is also a good thing that nowadays in Denmark we can eat tomatoes, bananas, and grapefruit, which were unknown in my youth. There are some points, after all, where the world progresses!