Musings of a Ciompi

Stormy Weather

2007-09-21T23:21:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting in my living room with my laptop in hand, a fire in the fireplace, and the front door open to let in the sound and smell of the rain. We've just received a sudden downpour, and, just like any time it rained during my childhood, my daddy is talking on his phone, looking intently at his computer, and simultaneously putting on his rain gear to run out into the storm and keep people's homes from flooding. He's awesome that way. This is part of what comes with working for the city's water department.
I always enjoy this aspect of the rain, not that daddy has to leave, but that everything becomes so lively. Rain has always been "an event" in my family. From the time I was little, rain meant running outside (in our pajamas if the occasion called for it) and jumping in puddles, only to come inside where mommy had made us something warm to drink. Meanwhile, daddy would shake his head at us with a grin as he was walking out the door to save some unsuspecting neighborhood from being flooded that day. Lightning and thunder meant waking up everyone in the house, pulling up the mini-blinds, and peering out to marvel at what God does.
Tonight is no less lively. I'm not quite sure why my mommy decided to take the trash out right at the height of the downpour, but for whatever reason, she did,and she is now walking around the house soaking wet, daddy is astounded by the record breaking rate, Crystal is remarking on those poor people who live right on the beach, and I am here soaking it in.

Sometimes it's nice to just be in a moment.

It's always interesting to listen from the living room because from this spot I can hear the rain in the gutter outside, and I can hear the rain falling on the tin roof in the family room. It gives off the feeling that I am listening to two different things, but it's not, only two different contexts for rain-ness.

It makes me grateful to live precisely right now. I can't help but think of The Great Divorce, and I think that if I were only 5 minutes behind, this rain storm would pierce through me like bullets. All the more reason to be grateful for "now", I suppose.

nothing is dull

2007-09-15T20:24:00.000-07:00

Driving up a hill, the sun of fire behind. I stare in my rear view mirror until I can no longer see. I look ahead so I can drive, and catch a glimpse of the electric poles that now look like the House of Parliament. Descending the hill, I mistakenly think that the sun has set. All the while Thelonious Monk is playing softly in the background, persuading me to feel for a moment. Is that smog? No. No, now it is mystical haze that envelopes the perception of a city and still participates as one of its members. I almost want to ask it what it's thinking about. Who could call this mundane? Me, only yesterday.

2007-09-15T16:06:00.000-07:00

"All thou wouldst have lies now within thee, every whit
'Tis thine - so long as thou dost never strive for it." - Angelus Silesius

"Lost to myself I stayed
My face upon my lover having laid
From all endeavour ceasing:
And all my cares releasing
Threw them amongst the lilies there to fade." - St. John of The Cross

A worthy combination...

2007-09-15T16:04:00.001-07:00

Reading St. John of the Cross while listening to Thelonious Monk.

Dr. Pepper...

2007-08-31T15:47:00.000-07:00

Quick announcement to assess the final results of the last pole taken.

Dr. Pepper tastes...

too spicey (25%)
like the nectar of the gods (25%)
more like Diet Dr. Pepper (25%)
is an oxymoronic statement (25%)

As you can see we have a complete tie. I suppose this next pole should be something a little more controversial. ;)

Angelus Silesius

2007-08-30T22:49:00.000-07:00

Go out- and so God goeth in;
Die to thyself - thou hast begun
To live to God; Be not - He is;
Do naught- His bidding's done.

Oh happiness...

2007-08-30T21:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this is me procrastinating from my school work real quick just to announce my happy song of the week. It was rerecorded on Mark O'Connor's 30 Year Retrospective album and is titled A Bowl Of Bula.
I can't listen to this song on campus because Biola has a "no dancing" policy and, well, "lead me not into temptation". But when I'm off campus...

Current Question

2007-08-16T22:33:00.000-07:00

for those who have read Manalive by G.K. Chesterton:
Is Innocent Smith a realist?

2007-08-12T23:50:00.000-07:00

Thou art the truth, the life. Thou, Lord, wilt see
To every question that perplexes me.
I am thy being; and my dignity
Is written with my name down in thy book;
Thou wilt care for it. Never shall I think
Of anything that thou mightest overlook-
In faith-born triumph at thy feet I sink.
-George MacDonald

Back from Wheatstone!

2007-08-01T10:07:00.000-07:00

The Wheatstone Academy was awesome! Hopefully, a better account (with hopefully a little more detail) will be up shortly.
As for now...I'm off to read Boethius!

2007-07-16T12:54:00.001-07:00

"Within this leaf, to every eye
So little worth, doth hidden lie
Most rare and subtle fragrancy;
Wouldst thou its secret strength unbind?
Crush it, and thou shalt perfume find
Sweet as Arabia's spicy wind.

In this dull stone, so poor and bare
Of shape and luster, patient care
Will find for thee a jewel rare.
But first must skillful hands essay,
With file and flint, to clear away
The film which hides its fire from day.

This leaf? this stone? It is thy heart;
It must be crushed by pain and smart,
It must be cleansed by sorrow's art,
Ere it will yield a fragrance sweet,
Ere it will shine, a jewel meet
To lay before thy dear Lord's feet.

-S. Wilberforce

contrary motion

2007-07-12T17:51:00.000-07:00

In my backyard there is a lovely peach tree who (yes, the personification of 'who' was intended) is just this week starting to drop peaches. When washing one of the peaches to have with breakfast this morning, something occurred to me.
I've never before noticed how peaches grow from the inside out, but they seem to ripen from the outside inward. My particular peach was somewhere in between being completely ripe, and having a few days left to go - this left the center a little hard and a little reminiscent of green. I felt much like my peach.

There is a difference between growing from within, and being softened, altered, colored, and hopefully sweetened, from the environment without. It often seems more painful to be ripened than to grow.

It made me think of how flourishing is not only an internally driven process. A person may grow a great deal by sitting alone in a room and pondering the world, but it's not the same type of growth as a person who has been slowly and thoroughly effected by the world around them. It is possible to have all of the elements, and yet not be cultivated by the fresh air and sunlight of otherness.

It is occurring to me today how wonderful it is to live in a world with all of you. I am so glad that there are those who love sunny days when I prefer rain. I'm delighted that when each day is inconveniently not what I expected, it is because there are other people that I am sharing it with. It's nice to know that the discomfort of coldness while I'm watching a sunset is because the experience is incarnate, and not fabricated in my mind. I'm happy that when a car cuts me off on the freeway, it is because there is another soul with a will other than mine that just broke into my narcissistic 'American Dream' to shout that I am not alone in this universe. It is not good to be alone.

So, thank you. Thank you to each of you who read this. I'm so glad that I don't live in a world of isolation. It's a good thing.

2007-07-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

"'No one could doubt that God is omnipotent.'

'No one, at any rate, who is in his right mind would have any doubt about it.'

'But there is nothing that an omnipotent power could not do?'

'No.'

'Then, can God do evil?'

'No.'

'So that evil is nothing, since that is what He cannot do who can do anything.'"
-Boethius

It's eerie how a man can write a book in 524 A.D. and dialog through so many of my current questions.

I must say that it's a little encouraging too. When 'Philosophy' takes the trouble to answer it, I guess 'What is a straw?' must be worth asking. :)

A Little More Lewis

2007-07-07T23:27:00.000-07:00

"If we were perfected, prayer would not be a duty, it would be delight. Some day, please God, it will be. The same is true of many other behaviours which now appear as duties. If I loved my neighbour as myself, most of the actions which are now my moral duty would flow out of me as spontaneously as song from a lark or fragrance from a flower. Why is this not so yet? Well, we know, don't we? Aristotle has taught us that delight is the 'bloom' on an unimpeded activity. But the very activities for which we were created are, while we live on earth, variously impeded: by evil in ourselves or in others. Not to practise them is to abandon our humanity. To practise them spontaneously and delightfully is not yet possible. This situation creates the category of duty, the whole specifically moral realm.
It exists to be transcended. Here is the paradox of Christianity. As practical imperatives for here and now the two great commandments have to be translated 'Behave as if you loved God and man.' For no man can love because he is told to. Yet obedience on this practical level is not really obedience at all. And if a man really loved God and man, once again this would hardly be obedience; for if he did, he would be unable to help it. Thus the command really says to us, "Ye must be born again.' Till then, we have duty, morality, the Law. A schoolmaster, as St. Paul says, to bring us to Christ. We must expect no more of it than of a schoolmaster; we must allow it no less. I must say my prayers to-day whether I feel devout or not; but that is only as I must learn my grammar if I am ever to read the poets.
But the school-days, please God, are numbered. There is no morality in Heaven. The angels never knew (from within) the meaning of the word ought, and the blessed dead have long since gladly forgotten it. This is why Dante's Heaven is so right, and Milton's, with its military discipline, so silly. This also explains - to pick up an earlier point - why we have to picture that world in terms which seem almost frivolous. In this world our most momentous actions are impeded. We can picture unimpeded, and therefore delighted, action only by the analogy of our present play and leisure. Thus we get the notion that what is as free as they would have to matter as little."

"In the perfect and eternal world the Law will vanish. But the results of having lived faithfully under it will not."

-C.S. Lewis Letters to Malcolm (XXI)

Thankful for America?

2007-07-06T22:50:00.000-07:00

For those of us who are in love with England and therefore have a slight tendency to forget our patriotism, I found this article helpful. It may even strike a chord with a Tory! :-p

2007-07-05T19:23:00.000-07:00

"The world in constant change
Maintains a harmony,
And elements keep peace
Whose nature is to war.
The sun in car of gold
Draws forth the rosy day,
And evening brings the night
When Luna holds her sway.
The tides in limits fixed
Confine the greedy sea;
No waves shall overflow
The rolling field and lea.
And all this chain of things
In earth and sea and sky
One ruler holds in hand:
If Love relaxed the reins
All things that now keep peace
Would wage continual war
And wreck the great machine
Which unity maintains
With motions beautiful.
Love, too, holds peoples joined
By sacred bond of treaty,
And weaves the holy knot
Of marriage's pure love.
Love promulgates the laws
For friendship's faithful bond.
O happy race of men
If Love who rules the sky
Could rule your hearts as well!"

- Boethius

Free Will?

2007-07-05T09:40:00.000-07:00

When it comes to the 'free will v. God's sovereignty' debate, as some of my friends will attest, in recent years I have beat the crap out of the bush. Dancing around it is hardly something I like to do. I have still traveled all the way around it for my own position, from Arminian to 'somewhere in the middle' to Calvin and beyond...all the while - beating the bush.
This is not another attempt to do that. Only very recently have I begin to wrestle with it on a much deeper level; a level that seems to temper me from jumping in the ring with my boxing gloves on. Mainly, that the discussion pertains to the character of a Person. It pertains to the characters of 'persons' in general, yes, but it isn't math; it is the reliable, yet mysteriously unpredictable Person of God. Already it sounds like a cop-out, even to me.

I don't have a position to state, it's more of an influence to ponder.

Lewis has been causing me to think about more of the presuppositions that go into such positions. I've been involved in countless debates of Calvin v. Arminian, where the issue of 'what is sin?' never even comes up.
For the moment, I'm finding a great value in more thoroughly examining the foundational assumptions of both arguments, and I'm hoping that this will help clear some of the water for me.
So far, here is an excerpt of Letters to Malcolm by Lewis. This has been a very profitable reflection for me.

"You remember the two maxims Owen [Barfield] lays down in Saving the Appearances? On the one hand, the man who does not regard God as other than himself cannot be said to have a religion at all. On the other hand, if I think God other than myself in the same way in which my fellowmen, and objects in general, are other than myself, I am beginning to make Him an idol. I am daring to treat His existence as somehow parallel to my own. But He is the ground of our being. He is always both within us and over against us. Our reality is so much from His reality as He, moment by moment, projects into us. The deeper the level within ourselves from which our prayer, or any other act, wells up, the more it is His, but not at all the less ours. Rather, most ours when most His. Arnold speaks of us as "enisled" from one another in "the sea of life." But we can't be similarly "enisled" from God. To be discontinuous from God as I am discontinuous from you would be annihilation.
A question at once arises. Is it still God speaking when a liar or a blasphemer speaks? In one sense, almost Yes. Apart from God he could not speak at all; there are no words not derived from the Word; no acts not derived from Him who is Actus purus. And indeed the only way in which I can make real to myself what theology teaches about the heinousness of sin is to remember that every sin is the distortion of an energy breathed into us-an energy which, if not thus distorted, would have blossomed into one of those holy acts whereof "God did it" and "I did it" are both true descriptions. We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument. We caricature the self-portrait He would paint. Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege.
We must, not doubt, distinguish this ontological continuity between Creator and creature which is, so to speak, "given" by the relation between them, from the union of wills which, under grace, is reached by a life of sanctity. The ontological continuity is, I take it, unchangeable, and exists between God and a reprobate (or a devil) no less than between God and a saint. 'Whither shall I go then from thy presence? If I go down to hell, thou art there also.'
Where there is prayer at all we may suppose that there is some effort, however feeble, towards the second condition, the union of wills. What God labours to do or say through the man comes back to God with a distortion which at any rate is not total.
Do you object to the apparent "roundaboutness"- it could easily be made comic - of the whole picture? Why should God speak to Himself through man? I ask, in reply, why should He achieve, the long way round, through the labours of angels, men (always imperfectly obedient and efficient), and the activity of irrational and inanimate beings, ends which presumable, the mere fiat of omnipotence would achieve with instantaneous perfection?
Creation seems to be delegation through and through. He will do nothing simply of Himself which can be done by creatures. I suppose this is because He is a giver. And He has nothing to give but Himself. And to give Himself is to do His deeds - in a sense, and on varying levels to be Himself - through the things He has made.
In Pantheism God is all. But the whole point of creation surely is that He was not content to be all. He intends to be "all in all."
One must be careful not to put this in a way which would blur the distinction between the creation of a man and the Incarnation of God. Could one, as a mere model, put it thus? In creation God makes - invents - a person and "utters" - injects - him into the realm of Nature. In the Incarnation, God the Son takes the body and human soul of Jesus, and, through that, the whole environment of Nature, all the creaturely predicament, into His own being. So that "He came down from Heaven" can almost be transposed into "Heaven drew earth up into it," and locality, limitation, sleep, sweat, footsore weariness, frustration, pain, doubt, and death, are, from before all worlds, known by God from within. The pure light walks the earth; the darkness, received into the heart of Deity, is there swallowed up. Where, except in uncreated light, can the darkness be drowned?"
-C.S. Lewis Letters to Malcolm

If anyone has thoughts on this, which I'm sure they do, I would greatly appreciate hearing them. The varying positions, and even just fragments of ideas, really help me in my attempt to see a bigger picture. Now that the bush has been mutilated to twigs, I'm beginning to see that I have a lot to learn.

Good Morning?

2007-07-03T16:45:00.001-07:00

This morning I awoke to the sound of Satan screaming at me some repetitive, unintelligible phrase in, I think it was Morse code, but in disgustingly predictable intervals ...or maybe it was just my alarm clock!

With this particular type of arrival to consciousness, the most important element of the morning is-
COFFEE!

Then, my first student of the day decided to show up 8 minutes early (I thought first students just inherently knew not to do that!). This meant that my student arrived before my coffee had finished its necessary perking
-It was a rather dangerous situation.
Thankfully, her first piece was a rather long one which gave me the chance to "listen from the kitchen" while I finished doctoring up my necessity. All in all, there was no harm done but I'm not sure if I really woke up until the second piece.

I began thinking that perhaps the problem is not the alarm clock, the early student, or the lack of caffeination...
Could the problem be going to sleep at 3:30 AM? ... nah!

At the end of the day~ a little Boethius cures a lot!

2 Peter 1:5-8

2007-07-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

"Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Whole Chapter

I had a zing...

2007-07-02T00:12:00.001-07:00

I had a revelation today as to why the substance we use to brush our teeth is called "toothpaste."

- I can't imagine ever putting something in my mouth that was called "mouth soap", "oral cleanser", "dental detergent", or any other alternative to the slightly odd yet somewhat sophisticated classic.

Sometimes the traditional is best!

2007-06-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here doing three things that I don't like that I do: (a) multi-tasking, (b) abusing blog technology to ramble about my day, and (c) doing these things while procrastinating.
I'm blogging on my laptop about yesterday's events while watching The Fellowship of the Ring when I really should be reading any of the four books that I really need to finish this summer.

Yesterday was such a great day! My music students performed in our bi-annual recital.
Teaching music lessons to such wonderful people is just so unfair. How what I do can be called a "job" is really hard for me to see sometimes.
I get to sit down each week and interact with souls created in God's image, made with a desire and ability to learn, grow, express, wonder, emote, conceive and create. I can think of few greater privileges than being able to be a part of that process. It often baffles me that after all I learn from them, at the end of the day they call me teacher. My life is truly blessed!

After the recital, it was quite a relief. When all was finished and we were back home after a long day's work, at about 30 minutes after midnight, eating a cold cheeseburger, savoring a mango wine cooler and watching You've Got Mail on the sofa pull-out was never before so appealing!

A Poem...

2007-06-29T00:19:00.000-07:00

Fair freshness of the God-breathed spirit air,
Pass through my soul, and make it strong to love;
Wither with gracious cold what demons dare
Shoot from my hell into my world above;
Let them drop down, like leaves the sun doth sear,
And flutter far into the inane and bare,
Leaving my middle-earth calm, wise, and clear.
-George MacDonald

I'm Engaged! - how to fully exercise the faculties of the soul

2007-06-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

I admit that I have been on a rather strange quest the past year and a half or so: the pursuit of being human. As if I could be anything besides human. Truthfully, I cannot be otherwise, but somehow I have found behaving "humanly" to be a most difficult challenge.

This begs the question "What does it mean to be human?" I honestly don't have a very strong or straightforward answer to that. Humanity is a mystery. Where we might see angels as having pure intellect and animals as having pure instinct, we then find this species "man" in this middle-earth so to speak where he can both aesthetically appreciate the flowers, as well as materially smell them. So what does it mean to be human?

In his book The Abolition of Man Lewis describes a third element of man, the sentiment, which is neither intellect nor instinct, stating that it is this which distinguishes man from the angels and the brutes.

Here is the challenge I face: to exercise all of the faculties of the human soul thereby fully engaging in the world. To be fully present in all facets at each given moment.

This poses a new question. Supposing one could actually achieve this level of engagement at particular times, is there then no place for "down time"? After an exhausting day, it is customary to seek a relief from the faculty that has been most exercised by enjoying some activity that excludes that particular faculty. If I've been thinking all day, the inclination would be to watch an unintellectual movie. If I have been emotional or depressed, I would desire to watch a comedy, or play a game, or do something "fun" that I sentimentally care little to nothing about. Perhaps if I had a physically tiresome day, I would be inclined to sit back and read a book.

If a holistic approach to living would involve a fully engaged soul, or a soul coherently exercising all of its faculties all of the time, then where is the place for this said "down time"?

On the one hand, I can fathom a hypothetical, healthy soul who requires no such thing, but rather whose "wellness" is a continual balance of faculties. On the other hand, I know from experience that it becomes problematic to always think all of the time; it would be like always running, or worse, always crying. Perhaps denying such down time is to make the mistake of "thinking we can do always what we can do sometimes."

If anyone has any thoughts on this, I would greatly appreciate hearing them. I'm trying to learn how one puts this into practice.

A Game of Tag

2007-06-21T23:46:00.000-07:00

I was tagged by Nick and so apparently I'm supposed to list seven facts about myself, then tag someone else to follow suit.

Here it goes:

~I acquired a preference for tomatoes by covering them with sugar, and for watermelon by covering it with chocolate (I've learned that any food can be sanctified if it is baptized in chocolate).

~I was unable to speak until I was nearly two years old; a common occurrence among geniuses.

~I resent going to sleep, therefore I do so as little as possible.

~When I grow up, I want to smoke a real pipe in a real pub with a really good book (probably T.S. Eliot!)

~My favorite weather is when it rains or when the sky feels tall.

~I love the color green, and I almost don't hate the color pink anymore.

~One of my worst bugbears is when people use words with connotations that I don't understand.

So now that the ball is in "my court" to tag more bloggers, I would tag someone else but the last tagger tagged all of my posting blog readers (some blog stockers may exist...or at least I hold out the hope :~p) So I'm thinking up a tag-back policy where I can send a nuisance back down the chain. :~)

In the meantime, I tag mle!

a new place I'd like to go...

2007-06-10T19:23:00.001-07:00

The Black Sea

On holiday

2007-05-28T01:03:00.000-07:00

I am leaving tomorrow for a much awaited holiday at Hume Lake.
Looking forward to the quiet, subdued pleasure of inhaling the beautiful.
Until I return, UTM!

Torrey: a prayer

2007-05-28T00:52:00.000-07:00

I thought I would post this prayer that was spoken last Friday over the Torrey graduates of 2007. I am so excited to participate in this program; all the more so after reading this.

.............................................................................................................................................................................

Our Father in Heaven, we bring before you today these graduates of the Torrey Honors Institute. They have spent four years with us, talking and talking and talking. They have talked in seminar rooms and in hallways, in dorms and cafeterias, in apartments and cars and churches and even here in graduation auditoriums.

So much talking.

They have also listened and listened. They have listened to professors, to pastors, to parents, and peers. They have listened to so much talking. There has hardly been a quiet moment in all these years.

Almighty God, we have talked ourselves silly, and here I am still talking. But now I am talking to you, Lord of heaven and earth, and asking, pleading, begging on behalf of all the faculty, friends, and families of the Torrey Honors Institute, that you would speak to these graduates.

Because if your voice is not the voice we hear in, with, and under all other words, then our speaking and hearing have been in vain. If your voice is not the voice we hear,
then our arguments are nothing but strife;
our counsel is nothing but temptation;
our prayer requests are nothing but gossip;
our prayers nothing but worrying out loud with you in the back of our mind;
our worship is nothing but thinly-veiled self-congratulation;
our parenting nothing but one long interpersonal battle with a dubious outcome;
our lectures are prattling, nattering, rambling on, throwing words out into the void;
our class discussions have just been jockeying for positions, posturing, and scoring points against friends as if they are enemies.

Lord God, if your voice is not the voice we are learning to listen for, then our talking and listening are just wind, noise, bad breath, and Babel. If your voice is not the voice these students have listened to during these years, then our teaching has been nothing but a hardening of their hearts, a confusing of their minds, an underlining of their bigotries and an undermining of their proper confidence.

Unless you speak we are lost. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Word of life, living Word, although this is the day when we celebrate a great accomplishment, this is the hour of our greatest need.

Save us from our own words. Save us or we are lost in endless play of the dialectic, where every word is buried by the next word, every argument is contradicted by the next argument, and every certainty is thrown back into suspension by the next turn of the conversation.

Save us from our own words. We have said some profoundly stupid things. Send to us a blessed forgetfulness so that we may nevermore remember the misleading words we have spoken, heard, and entertained in our hearts. Take those words out of the storehouse of our recollection. We are done with them, they are in your power. Whenever any of us have spoken your truth to each other, do not let us forget those words. Cause us to cherish those true words with gratefulness and attentiveness. You who are full of truth and grace, take those very words now and drive them deeper into the soil of our hearts where they can take root and grow tenfold, a hundredfold, springing up to life everlasting. Shake away from us all words that are not yours.

God the Word, visit us on this graduation day with a blessed forgetting, and more blessed remembering.

Almighty God, we commit these graduates to you so that the word of Christ may dwell richly in them. We beg this of you in the name of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, your Word, who lives in perfect love with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

A Semester Ends

2007-05-23T18:01:00.000-07:00

After completing my class final, I spent the morning twirling around my JC campus.

As I stopped under a purple flowered tree, I had the sensation that I was watching my life through a Tarkovsky film.
Flowers were falling all around me.
I felt as though the world had stopped moving all together.
I could hear the sound of construction work a few streets away.
I may have even sensed, though I can't be sure, a very subtle rain.
Perhaps a zone?
(I was waiting to hear Ode to Joy but it never came...)

Three things I've discovered:

A day is always better when it begins outside with a cup of coffee.
There is just something right about having purple flowers fall on your head.
I really need to read Chesterton more often.

...or maybe things just look a lot better when your final is over...

But I like my grass…

2007-05-16T20:12:00.000-07:00

There is a danger in believing the ever discontented claim that “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence”, however, I’ve recently discovered that there is also a danger in the (perhaps over contented) inverse that “today’s green grass is the only good.”

There are always those sheep who wander away even while the Shepherd guides, but what of the one who sits there unwilling to budge? I feel as though I am the type who would exhaust all of my resources until I would find myself sitting on a patch of dirt.

“Grazing” brings about a painful feeling of perpetual loss, yet I am grateful that “He makes me lie down in green pastures.” His rod and staff are a great comfort to an extremely unmotivated little lamb. O the greed and gluttony of hoarding my today.

Even thou canst give me neither thought nor thing,
Were it the priceless pearl hid in the land,
Which, if I fix thereon a greedy gaze,
Becomes not poison that doth burn and cling;
Their own bad look my foolish eyes doth daze,
They see the gift, see not the giving hand-
From the living root the apple dead I wring.
-George MacDonald

Shakespeare has made me think all the more on the idea that perhaps a beautiful thing must die in order to live on.

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
-Shakespeare(Sonnet I)

John 3:16

2007-05-16T14:31:00.000-07:00

Dr. Fred Sanders, the brilliant systematic theologian, delves into the theological intricacies of John 3:16.
Sadly, often upon seeing it I feel blammed with a slogan, rather than ministered to.
I was refreshed to be reminded of its inherent beauty and meaning.

2007-05-15T13:36:00.000-07:00

Ash Wednesday
(an excerpt)

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

-T.S. Eliot

The Purpose of Science...

2007-05-14T14:35:00.000-07:00

This entire semester I have been asking my astronomy teacher questions leading up to the question: “What is the goal of science?” He has humored my pestering questions pretty graciously considering that he really doesn’t seem to care much about the answers, but because he doesn’t care, he has been able to offer very little assistance to my cause as I try to get inside the worldview of the atheistic evolutionist. Well, today at nearly the last lecture of the semester, he played us a video that apparently attempted to answer that question. Here it is:

The importance of studying science is to locate orbital asteroids that are on a direct course to collide with the planet earth so that we can shoot rockets at them in order to deter them from hitting the planet, thereby prolonging the existence of the human race.

There you have it. The atheistic scientist says that the reason we should study science, like the reason we should do anything else, is to continue to exist.

All in all: the reason we exist is to continue to exist.

With all his faults, at least my teacher’s methodology coincides with his worldview. Since the only value of education is survival, and since lab assignments offer no contribution to this goal, today he gave us credit for yet another lab assignment we didn’t do. By the way, as was expected, the rest of his students greatly approved.

I thought that maybe I should write a letter to the school, thinking that they should know that one of their teachers had almost completely failed to teach. This thought was somewhat deterred when a science teacher from another department came into lab today and, in conjunction with our teacher, offered us the compromised grade so that he and my teacher could go to lunch early. Yay for teachers who live out their worldview!

Moral of their story: eat, drink and have sex. Life is nothing more than an accidental existence anyway. Hey, worse comes to worst, we are all extinct like the dinosaurs and nature/slime is stirred up and gets the chance to evolve an even more intelligent species. Isn’t that a happy thought?

How do I pray when my heart does not conform?

2007-05-03T23:48:00.000-07:00

After being teased by a good friend of mine with tantalizing snippets and paraphrases of Lewisian brilliance, I finally could take it no longer and marched myself right down to Barnes and Noble and bought Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer by C.S. Lewis.

I have been struggling for some time with prayer; when I sit down to pray, not being able to utter even a word. The book turned out to be exactly what I needed to read last week while I was out at sea on a seven-day cruise through the Mexican Riviera.

A cruise is supposed to be a time of relaxation, a time to forget all one’s troubles and enjoy the temporary bliss of having “not a care in the world”, but somehow for me, it was a time to wonder why we live at all. I wondered if perhaps I’m just too analytical to go on a cruise; perhaps it’s “not my thing” since I’m spending my time pacing on a deck when there’s a party downstairs. Then I started thinking how very odd that sounds: if pleasure is a human thing, then it really ought to be “my thing.” However, I ought to be able to see which pleasure is natural or healthy for humanity, and which is natural to fallen humanity. There is a distinction.

Exhausted from the instantly gratifying pleasure of fallen humanity, part way through the cruise I was miserable; I was actually longing for a bed that didn’t make itself twice a day, for obligations that would get me out of bed at a decent hour in the morning, and for goodness sake some kind of financial consequence that would prevent me from eating everything! It also didn’t help that the ship’s décor was comprised almost entirely of nude paintings; I can’t think of a human vice that they did not capitalize on.

It was at this time that I began to suspect the reason behind my inability to pray. Lewis addressed the difference between praying for what is on our mind, and praying for what we think ought to be on our mind. I hadn’t realized that I was doing the latter. I discovered last week that when I talk with my family, I expose my desires and my struggles, but when I pray I almost indifferently say “Thy will be done.” In this, I can pray with excellent and accurate theology and yet not live a word of it. What would it be like to pray as if God were my Abba? What would it mean to present all requests before Him and speak to the Lord on all things? If I am wrong and must pray only to turn around and repent, I still must pray.

Silence does not save me from lies and blasphemy; it just keeps me from seeing it.

This change of prayer offered opportunity to see an entirely new depth of grace. God is merciful; He forgives not only the wrong I am eager to separate myself from, my method of separation being the use of theologically submissive terminology, but He also forgives the expressions of my heart that do not submit nor conform to His will as quickly and easily as my head might suggest.

Midnight Musings

2007-04-21T00:21:00.000-07:00

So I’m sitting here wondering why I do the things that I do. My greatest curiosity at the moment however is why I wonder why I do what I do at all. It seems to be a uniquely human trait to ponder one’s own existence and be so captivated by its mystery. I can’t quite tell if my dog knows why he exists and that’s why he is content, or if he just simply doesn’t care. There are many days that I think it’s the latter, but I don’t know what either of the conditions would really look like, so who’s to say?

Conclusion: I turn on an odd record that I haven’t listened to in ages, thinking that maybe I’ll just be content to sit; content to think of someone else’s melodies and lyrics.

Nope. I’m still wondering why I turned it on.

One cannot both dissect a thing and keep it whole. We can discuss which would be the greater good in a given circumstance, but we cannot think that they are the same or that we can simultaneously have both.

I am prone to enjoying only the first type of good. I suffer the vice of, as Chesterton would put it, “trying to get the heavens into my head”, and as he says, it’s “my head that splits.” I think I err in thinking I must comprehend something in order to thoroughly enjoy it. My sister said “You don’t have to enjoy something in order to enjoy it.” As contradictory as that sounds, it really hit my dilemma on the head: I try so hard to enjoy a thing to its comprehended fullness that I often seem to fail to perhaps just enjoy, I guess you could say, the novelty of it.

Hmmm…I guess it’s something to keep working on.

PS. Here’s a poem by C.S. Lewis that, for whatever reason, encouraged me tonight.

As the Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and
through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my
turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love-a scholar’s parrot may talk
Greek-
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late)
my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was
making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is
breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other
gains.

One year ago...

2007-04-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

we were flying home from London to LA.

With all of the rain today, it makes me miss Oxford even more.

Nick and Me reading George MacDonald

The whole gang (+ jet lag!)

We don't know what we want

2007-04-18T00:14:00.000-07:00

The naivety of childhood certainly glamorizes the mundane activities of the adult life, or perhaps it is the tainted vision of an adult that refuses to remain enchanted with the commonplace. I was realizing tonight how I am no longer fascinated with “playing with my laptop”. Now its function is homework; no longer merely the sound of keys being pressed, giving the excitement of a “grown up” at work. When I was young, all I wanted was to play with the obligations of adulthood: write fake checks, pretend to sweep the floor (with or without a broom), take care of the kids (even if they really were dolls) and pretend to be too busy for idleness.

Now an adult, I often wonder if I had met my adult self when I was a child, what I would think of me. Would I envy myself at how lucky I am to have grown up, or would I be disappointed at how disenchanted I’ve become with all of my former dreams?

Even still, I cannot wish to once again be a child. As a child there was a certain glow about the world but, at least for me, the world was still very small. Even with all of the innocence and credulity a child possesses, it seems that a child’s love is limited to the size of its world.

Today I think I do not desire to trade the expansion of my world and the growing realization of otherness that comes with time and growing up, just in order to once again be fascinated by what has now to me become ordinary. I do however wish to better experience and understand the humility and faith of “childlikeness” in a way that asks “Were a child an adult, what would be enchanting to them?”

Love, Beauty and Green Trees

2007-04-16T00:21:00.000-07:00

I learned a lot at school on Wednesday; the funny thing was that most of it was not in my classroom.

I had a number of substitute teachers that day that filled in the void during my usual ten minute breaks. On a usual day, I have just enough time on break to walk outside, remember that there is in fact an outside to this industrial looking box we call a classroom, and then return within, having received the hope of an open plane without ceiling or walls; a place of fresh air and colors beyond the realm of beige and tope, a realm that awaits me after Mathematics. Wednesday however, being overwhelmed by the beauty of nature that was manifested in the campus plant life, I began to one by one be mentored by the trees.

Lately, I have been pondering the nature of love and, more specifically, the vision of romantic love: what causes one person to be so vibrant in another’s eyes, and often, to them alone, and questions of that sort; today the trees aided me in my pursuit.

There are many couples who appear to be very happily married, and yet somehow I cannot fathom spending a week, let alone my life, with either member of the duo. Sometimes it takes but one conversation for me to feel annoyed by how different they are from me (or perhaps truly, how very similar). It has caused me to feel like quite a fragmented human being actually. Why is it that I am so determined to see beauty in only one way? If a particular person is not attractive to me in some sense, I imagine they are not beautiful. Here all day long I will say that beauty is objective and is not merely “in the eye of the beholder”, and yet I live as though people that annoy me are not beautiful. It all came down to this question: is romance a rose-colored lens, or is it simply the only way to rightly see the rose? Does it see more than whom a person is, or is it perhaps the only way to see a person clearly? If romance sees someone rightly, then I really lack in general compassion and regard for others. What if everyone really is who their lover sees them to be?

As I pondered these things, I was enraptured by a very green tree out in the middle of a grassy area. I stood directly under it and stared up into its vibrantly green leaves and towering height. I don’t think I’ve ever met a tree that seemed so alive. I think that trees do sing, I just haven’t learned how to hear them yet. This tree above all other trees on campus had stolen my heart. I felt that I could have sat under it forever without boredom or loneliness. I glanced around and saw many other trees of the same type, but none compared to the vibrancy I saw in my beloved. “Could it be” I thought to myself, “that I have found the most beautiful tree of all?” I decided to experiment. “Perhaps I am seeing my tree rightly” I thought, “but perhaps I do not see the others in such a way that I can rightly compare them.”

I walked directly over to the tree across the way, the tree that, from where I had previously been standing, looked extremely dull compared to my beloved.

Remarkably, when I arrived underneath that tree, its vibrancy, though differently placed because it was a different tree, was equal to that of my beloved; and behold, now the vibrancy of my beloved had faded.

I then became aware of something I had not considered before: it is not trees that are vibrant, but light. What captured me about my beloved was not the tree at all; it was the light through the tree.

A tree is a tree. All trees are beautiful. All trees are different and react differently to the light.

If I attempt to look at the sun, all I understand is pain and blindness, but if I look up through a tree, I began to see some of the colors that the light contains.
Perhaps beautiful people are like beautiful trees; beauty and vibrancy is not contained in a person anymore than green is contained in a tree, but the light that shines through a person is beautiful and vibrant.

Not all people can be directly under all trees at once. Perhaps the point of it all is the light.

...encouraging today

2007-03-31T17:13:00.000-07:00

"Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold."
~T.S. Eliot~

2007-03-15T07:31:00.000-07:00

Proverbs 3:5-6

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight."

A Severely Merciful Week

2007-03-07T16:56:00.000-08:00

This week has had a wide range of emotion and experience; probably some of my lowest lows and some of the most impacting reliefs.
It is so hard to trust the Father when I don't know what He's doing. I think that Dante's idea of "Limbo" being the most appropriate place in Hell for the unbelieving philosopher is very insightful. I'm no philosopher, but for me, aimless wandering is torture.

I may ask for the Lord's will, but I don't really mean it. Perhaps, at best, I do actually mean it, but something else within me won't free me to surrender to it.

In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis describes Hell as being too small to contain even the smallest part of Heaven. He says, through the voice of George MacDonald, that Hell is a state of mind, whereas Heaven is reality. There's something about that description that rings very true to me; my own mind quite literally is Hell. This week I felt as if the skyline of my perspective was so small, so near to me that if I closed my eyes, I felt that I could actually reach out and touch it. I became so claustrophobic within myself, I thought I would die.

I kept thinking about the Marie Barnett song "This Is The Air I Breathe"; I really needed some spiritual oxygen this week.

What's strange but hardly ironic is that, in all of my "woe-is-me-ness", God still relieved my anxiety. I've heard so many say that "God waits on us", but I can't say that of this week. If by that they mean that He doesn't go on ahead without them, then I couldn't agree more, but it can sound as if He's twiddling His thumbs (if God actually has thumbs), waiting for me to decide to trust Him. That decision was not a luxury I had. It's like trying to decide when to breathe: as much as one can try to regulate it, it still remains need based.

In all of my floundering of "where is my life going?", He's showing me where to go, one day at a time.

I am thankful for this week and the opportunity to see, as the saying goes, "I know not what the future holds, but I know Who holds the future."

I suppose "not all who wander are lost."

an interesting type of pacifism

2007-03-05T14:37:00.000-08:00

I was pretty ticked off today as I left my Astronomy class at the local JC. Mainly because I don't particularly enjoy being call "star debris!" It is one thing if a person says "You are primarily composed of star debris", it is a completely different matter (pardon the pun) to say "You are star debris."
That's just name calling!

After my sister and I were venting to one another about how scientists don't know anything without philosophers, we decided to take up the conversation with a fellow Astronomy Lab student. We told him that we were debating a topic that came up in lecture (he didn't actually attend the lecture so we had to fill him in) and asked if he would mind sharing his thoughts on the subject. At first, he seemed very open to discussion, but his expression quickly changed to that of a vertigo experience once the topic was actually put out there.
The question posed to him was that "if matter is all that exists," (to this he gave a nod of assent), "then where is Hamlet?" "Is Hamlet at the theater where it's performed? Is it in the ink and the paper that it's written on? Is it carefully placed on the audio CD that 'contains' it?"
He looked shocked and muttered something like
"Um....you're...uh...asking...uh...way...way far out of the box questions....."(pause)"......that's kinda like philosophy."
We tried to discuss what the purpose of General Ed is if all of the departments actually have nothing to do with one another.

We had a little small talk about "what's your major?"
He asked if we wanted to be Astronomers; I said "No! Then I couldn't go see Hamlet!" I would rather be a well rounded person. If I want to be well rounded then, according to the lecture this morning, I can't be an Astronomer all of the time.

Here's the problem:
I enjoy going out to dinner and seeing a play; according to materialism the play doesn't exist, and according to certain philosophies my dinner doesn't.

Shortly afterward, we were talking with a Messianic Jewish women about the upcoming Passover and the guy, let's call him "Geoff" started asking questions about it. Since the women and I are both rather passionate about Christ's fullfillment of the Jewish traditions, it must have made us look too "religious" or something. Geoff said "Let's not start any wars over this or anything. Let's just keep it peaceful." Is it possible that somehow he didn't see that the woman and I were actually in agreement? Apparently he had been inculturated to think that religion=war. He had no problem with our beliefs, but got rather uneasy when we appeared to actually think our beliefs were true.
It made me think of G.K. Chesterton's book The Ball and the Cross. Chesterton paints these two characters, a Christian and an Atheist, who are the only two people on earth that think religion is something worth fighting about. Chesterton's brilliant story involves them running away from all authorities who are trying to prevent them from fighting to the death over their disagreements. I strongly recommend the book for anyone who tends to get stuck in there own logic.

I tried to explain to Geoff that "religion" isn't the problem. You can't just say "People fight over things that are important, therefore, if we make nothing important, they'll have no reason to fight!"
The women agreed with me, but I'm not sure that it was making any sense to our new materialistic, pacifistic friend.

Sing to Jesus

2007-03-03T22:50:00.000-08:00

I had an amazing yet semi nerve racking experience today.
My band played for a Yamaha demo at a local church. This means that we pretty much had a sound check all day while a number of different guys (with extremely sensitive ears) walked up and down the aisles and sat in various pews around the room; all the while wearing as many different expressions as you can imagine, depending on what the sound man was doing. The nice thing is that, at the end of the day, they're not listening to how well you play, only how good you sound. :~)
A few days ago, our band decided to add Fernando Ortega's song, "Sing to Jesus", to our set list . We are big fans of Fernando and of his beautiful song, so it only seemed appropriate. Little did we know...
It just so happened that John Schreiner, the co-writer and producer of the song, stopped by to demo the piano microphones. And so, we had the unique privilege of playing one of our favorite songs for one of its brilliant writers. SCARY! (and yet cool :~).
Afterward, he actually said that we sounded really good! He sat there and told us some background of why they wrote the song and what it was like collaborating with Fernando; priceless.

Romantic?

2007-03-01T18:06:00.000-08:00

There’s something that’s been bothering me that I want to get off my chest.
Why, oh why do love songs praise the little devil Cupid as if he was good?!!!
Hasn’t anyone ever read Virgil? The little infant is pretty much a murderer! (See: Aeneid, Book IV)

When a love song calls on Cupid to “draw back his bow”, isn’t that almost as inappropriate as making reference to Chucky in an attempt to be romantic?!
Is that supposed to be romantic? No, thank you!
(Ok, that may be a bit harsh, but still let us be reasonable!)

Anyway, this topic along with the story of poor Dido has had me thinking of the contrast between Didoic love (the newest word I’m adding to my fabricated dictionary) and Christian love.

Dido was afflicted with a “deadly wound” that eventually drove her to madness and suicide. She was poisoned with an obsessive need for Aeneas that could never be fully quenched. Love did not pour out of her; rather she was always grasping and gleaning all the love that she could get her hands on in order to just stay alive. This is Didoic Love.

The contrast to this would be the love of Christ. His love was actually poured out of Him. This was demonstrated in that He, rather than taking His own life, gave it up for others; greater love has no man… This is Christian Love.

Dido sacrificed nothing for Aeneas (he sacrificed nothing for her either, in fact it seems that the guy was only messing with her head; but since Aeneas is another topic and I’m here to address Cupid, I’ll continue…); her death was not for him, but was an attempt to ease her own pain. Rather than give, she only demanded of him to fill her needs.
Once again, in contrast to this we have Christ, who takes all of mankind’s need on Him and gives them all of Himself.

Christian love is free to give because, in Christ, we have all things. A Christian loses nothing by giving because his cup is flowing over. Didoic love can only take because it lacks; it is ever in need of filling the void.

When was the last time you heard a “love song” that did not express Didoic love? Unfortunately, this twisted idea seems to have become our only definition of love.

Wouldn’t it be nice to hear a real song about real people that didn’t leave you waiting for the movie credits to roll? It’s occurred to me that whenever I hear one of those songs, I’m really never compelled to think of two actual people I know. The song only makes me think of characters in a movie; these characters could be replaced with faces of people I know, but the whole of it never seems to express a plot that is true to life (much like a chick flick).

There. I feel better now.

*sigh*

Amazing Grace

2007-02-25T20:53:00.000-08:00

As you may have noticed, I haven't been blogging much lately. Class schedules and homework have had me pretty zonked. Not to mention, I've been plowing through Dante's Paradise and so I have been spending more time inputting wisdom than outputting it (although this could also be said about me when I'm talking a lot!). On a side note: Dante has won my heart with his third and final part of the Comedy. I have wrestled with Dante through the whole Comedy thus far, but Paradise is really opening my eyes to the work as a whole. I have about eleven cantos to go, so I'll try to put up more on Dante when I'm finished.
The real reason for this post is to announce that there is a brilliant new movie out. If you're looking for something to do, go see Amazing Grace. I found this movie to be very impacting and well done. It was refreshing to see a movie not so much plugging "Christianity", but demonstrating actual Christian truths. I thought the film displayed a lot of creative and interesting dialogue that raised it above the unfortunately typical relation between good content, and cheesy quality.
I have to run and so I don't have time to say more, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the film.

What a mysterious God we have!

2007-02-03T00:18:00.000-08:00

A God of perfection…and of passion?

Somehow I see what is perfect as boring. I seem to think that if God is sovereign, then life is uninteresting. I see Christ as a historical “figure” rather than a living Person.

How wrong I am.

Here are some excerpts from the book of Hebrews, chapters 1 & 2, that captivated me tonight.

“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”

“Of the Son he says,…you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions”

“You are the same, and your years will have no end.”

“Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one origin.”

“For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

I tend to think that since God is God, He is the perfect helper; but I say this so simply and almost unaffected. I fail to recognize that it is “because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” I fail to remember that he became our “merciful and faithful high priest” by making the “founder” of our salvation “perfect through suffering”.

Since God is unchanging, I don’t know how to reconcile that at a particular point in time Jesus became, not only the Second Person of the Trinity, but begotten of God. “Today I have begotten you” –Psalm 2:7.

The Person of Jesus Christ is an ever growing mystery to me.

On Parables and the Power of Story

2007-01-22T23:50:00.000-08:00

I just finished a paper on the topic of 'The Power of Story'. I've posted it below and would be happy to hear whatcha think!

...................................................................................................................

“Stories don’t affect people.” That was the boy’s response to questions regarding his recently exposed choice of novels. “After all, just because I listen to a villainous tale, doesn’t mean that I will become a villain myself.” It may be true that not every story, when heard, will immediately result in imitative action, but actions are not the only possible effects. From fairytales, to the works of famous novelists, to the wisdom of ancient philosophers or of simple parables, the tales we hear may influence the principles by which we live.

To hear a story is to observe a scenario -- not just any scenario -- but a scenario where the author’s ideals and principles are displayed as true. In life, all of the scenarios we see are true; that is, they are actual scenarios and therefore they correspond to reality. Within a story, however, the author creates a sub-reality which he controls; he controls the cause and effect. It is the author who decides whether justice will prevail or the villain will be praised; whether altruism is admirable, or cowardice is wise. We, as observers, fall victims to his view. We cannot help but be affected by the situations we see, because every observation is interactive to some extent. For, what is observance but an active state of consuming information?

Once information is noted, something must be done with it. The principles of any story may be accepted or rejected, but once they have been observed, they cannot be ignored. They must be sorted. If one is aware of this, then the information may be handled based on true principles; but if a person is unaware, his principles may be decided by those of the story. Whether a reader decides well or foolishly, he has been affected by his observation in one way or another. What has been seen cannot be unseen; one can only decide what to do with it. In this way, all stories affect people.

Now, to what extent one is affected is a new question. One might say “Ok, so it may affect me, but those effects are not significant to my actions. It is not like someone is teaching me to harm people”. Methodologically, the speaker is right, he is not being taught to harm, but this is not a question of method, it is a question of principle; this is not about teaching one ‘how’ to act, but ‘why’ to act. However small the principle may appear, one must not think that the acceptance or rejection of any principle is without influence over one’s actions. On the contrary, it is on principle that our actions are decided. Every action is based on a view of how one sees the world. Viewpoint is influenced most by cumulative subtleties. Just as habitual physical training toward a particular skill is done by repetition, and is done incrementally for the purpose of submitting the body to the mind with decreasing resistance, so habitual training of principle is repetitive and incremental but for the purpose of submitting the will to yet a higher authority: the authority of ‘ought’. This poses the new question: “What ought I to believe?”

Let us for a moment reminisce on the education of our childhood; back to the first days of our cognitive reasoning, at which stage we were most impressionable. It is no accident that our mothers told us bedtime stories from the first stages of our awareness; indeed they did well. After all, what child learned of courage by being told that there is some opposition that one must overcome, regardless if one feels capable or inclined to, and when overcome, this is done by courage, and courage is a virtue? No, we were told the fairytale of the brave Knight, who faced the dragon and every other obstacle and force of evil; who was subject to great danger, even danger unto death. But this Knight, this Knight of knights, overcame all of his adversaries to save the princess who had been long locked away in a tower, awaiting her rescuer. In this, we as children learned the meaning of courage long before we were ever given a name by which to reference it. It was simply the standard, nay, the triumph of every hero. And what wide-eyed boy who hears this story is not overtly inclined to save the princess himself? It was not directly explained to him that he ought to; he knew that from the story. The story had contextualized the meaning of the virtue.

This is partly what makes a story so powerful, and also what makes it potentially dangerous. A story, by nature, does not come in to oppose, but to instruct. It needs neither defense nor explanation because it comes to us in our childlike state and takes us by the hand as if to say, “Come with me; I want to show you something.” This is why George MacDonald, said “I do not write for children, but for the childlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.”[1] As Virgil comes to Dante in the “dark wood,” so do our stories to us, saying, “I think it best you follow me for your own good”[2]. Only let us be mindful of our guide and whether or not its patron is Truth.

An argument has two sides; a story has one. An argument can promote intellectual assent, but can it influence the will to care for that assent? It tells us what to think, but can it show us why to fight? In this regard, the smallest fairytale can devote more hearts to the love of virtue than the strongest ethical argument that is devoid of its context. It is not the screams that change our minds, but the whispers; it is not the obvious oppositions, but the subtleties that change the world. Our Savior did not come in the form of a ruler, but of a babe. It is stories that educate us in principles, and therefore, habitual consumption of poor stories is cumulatively detrimental to one’s principles and, consequently, to one’s actions as well.

This persuasive power of story was demonstrated in Gustave Flaubert’s novel “Madame Bovary”. Flaubert paints the young Emma Bovary as an imprudent woman whose ideas of the relationship between a man and a woman were shaped by romantic novels. He carries these notions to their natural consequences which spiral further and further downward toward insatiable passions and lusts. Like the progress of Dante’s descent into hell, Emma’s actions result in deception and betrayal. Flaubert proposes that the romantic novels of Emma’s youth educate and instruct her life’s principles and therefore actions. What is remarkable about Flaubert’s novel is that he himself was placed on trial for writing the explicit “offense to public morals” displayed in Madame Bovary’s character, demonstrating that the society of the day also agreed that story is influential to one’s principles.

If all stories are thus persuasive, shouldn’t they be avoided? No, for one thing we could not escape our consumption of stories even if we wanted; life itself is a story, and as characters made in the Author’s image, we imitate Him by telling stories ourselves. We cannot help but learn by what we live. Additionally, just because a story has the power to be dangerous doesn’t signify that the medium itself is bad, only that, in the famous words of Spider-Man’s uncle “With great power, comes great responsibility.” Let us use the art for good and not for evil, for story can be persuasive toward good as well. Indeed, who faults the mother for telling the Knight’s story, or who faults the child for believing it? All of history is telling the redemptive story. Since the fall of man, however, we must examine our influences, weighing them according to our principles.

There is a difference between a story’s being true in the sense that it accords with actual scenario and true in the sense that it accords with actual principle. Where life’s stories are necessarily in accordance with both actual scenario and true principle, stories of a man’s devising may turn out to be neither. There are three things an author may write. One, he may tell us a story of a knight who never existed, who ran home to safety at the sight of danger and was there praised for his prudence and bravery. This would be false in both regards; it was not a real knight, and it was not a real virtue but rather a misrepresented vice. Two, he may relay an actual story, and, if he remains faithful to its scenario, it would be true in both regards; he would merely be channeling the information from a reliable source, that of the real. The real is consistent in scenario and principle. Or, three, the author may relay a story with scenarios that have never literally occurred in history, but relay the true principles by which all real stories abide. For the rescuer need not have been a real Knight, the damsel not a real princess, the tower not a real structure, and the foe not a real dragon in order to abide by real principle, but instead the Knight may have been a carpenter, the princess a people, the tower a human nature, and the dragon itself may be death and hell that was “swallowed up…in a mighty duel.”[3] [4] Stories may give us new eyes to see old truths.

It is safe to infer it was not by accident that in the final book of The Republic, Socrates chose to conclude his dialogue with a story, “I will tell you a tale.”[5] After hours of debate and question, Socrates saw fit to present not a thesis, but a myth. Let us also consider that it was prophesied of the Christ, not that he would open his mouth in systematic theology or ethical argument but that, “I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old.” [6] For the Scriptures say "the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate"[7] and “anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."[8] But Jesus said, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children”[9].

And so we see that fairytales, novels, myths and parables, all possess not only length and width, but also depth; they can be read not only from start to finish, in a two-dimensional way, but also from surface to depth. By its layers, a story accommodates the incremental maturing of the soul seeking understanding.

Therefore let us sit, as children before the Father, with wide eyes and open ears at the feet of the Author of life’s story, the Great Storyteller, Who with a passion in His voice and a spark in His eye, leans down low and whispers, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…”

[1] George MacDonald’s essay on The Fantastic Imagination

[2] Inferno - Dante (Canto I, line 112)

[3] “The Freedom of a Christian” – Martin Luther

[4] Note: It is also possible for an author to write a story that is based on actual scenario and yet has false principles, but in order to succeed at this, the author must alter the actual scenario to some extent in order to suit his agenda; this would place the story once again under the first category of being false in both regards.

[5] The Republic: book XII - Plato

[6] Psalm 78.2

[7] 1 Corinthians 1.19

[8] Luke 18.17

[9] Luke10.21

a good question

2007-01-17T22:58:00.000-08:00

I found that the advertisements in England were very thinker-friendly. Where most of the ads I see in America have a tendency to invade one's personal space by jumping out and stabbing the imagination, I found that the ads in England (or at least those I saw in my limited experience there) were more compelling toward a second thought.
I believe this ad was at a bus stop just outside of London, but at the local mall in America a few days ago, I couldn't help but wonder this question myself...

I'm an old martyr!

2007-01-17T19:01:00.000-08:00

I've discovered how to turn this whole 'old-maid' business into a noble cause.
The answer: posterity.
That's right. If you think about it, the longer I'm a prospective old maid, the longer my children can postpone the pressure of the title. Apparently I'm following in the tradition of my recent ancestors. My Grandma was married a year younger than my Mommy was, and if I put it off longer still, then the longer the better, right? ... well, all in moderation of course.

You know the saying:

"if you can't beat 'em...pretend you're not beating 'em on purpose"!
(That may not be the most popular version)

I'm an old maid!

2007-01-09T17:22:00.000-08:00

I had a few moments of self-pity last week as I realized that last Thursday I became an old maid.
Yes, on January 4th I was officially the age my mother was the day she got married but alas, I am not. This makes me an old maid.
My married sister was trying to question me on the whole matter (and I still don't think she understands), asking me if, since she was beyond that age when she got married, was she then an old maid? What kind of question is that? "Was I an old maid when I got married?"...as if!
I then had to explain to her that both "marital status" and "old-maid-ness" are retroactive titles. She is now married and therefore has never been an old maid, whereas if I never marry, then my "old-maid-ness" dates back to last Thursday.

*sigh*

Happy New Year!

2007-01-01T02:21:00.000-08:00

Another year past, and on to another.
In one sense, I’m glad to be moving forward; I’ve come to see the future as having so much promise and excitement: never knowing what tomorrow holds. But on the other hand, I think I will miss 2006 in an entirely superficial way. Here’s the thing: the number 6 looks so similar in form to the number 0 that whenever writing out the date, I am impressed with its fluidity. I suspect that I will miss this common, circular theme as I write the date this coming year. 2007 looks so odd with its obtuse ending.

But hey, when you compare the 2 and the 7, there is a slight similarity hinting on a symmetry of sorts!

Yay for 2007!

Sweet Afton

2006-12-30T23:28:00.000-08:00

Lyrics by Robert Burns

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,

Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen,
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forebear,
I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair.

How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighboring hills,
Far mark'd with the courses of clear winding rills,
There daily I wander as noon rises high
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.

How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow;
There oft as mild Ev'ning weeps over the lea
The sweet scented birk shades my Mary and me.

Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides,
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,
As gathering sweet flow'rets she stems thy clear wave.

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays,
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

What’s a Straw?

2006-12-30T22:37:00.000-08:00

Ok, that may sound like a really stupid question (or at least it has to a number of the people I’ve asked recently), but it is actually driven by a sincere curiosity of a much more relevant sort.

Dictionary.com’s definitions: 1: “a tube, usually of paper or glass, for sucking up a beverage from a container: to sip lemonade through a straw.”
2: “a thin paper or plastic tube used to suck liquids into the mouth [syn: drinking straw].”

So here’s the next question I have for the dictionary:

“You’ve described what it’s ‘made of’, and you’ve described what it ‘does’, but is that what it 'is'? What ‘is’ it?”

Philosophical application: is Reductionism true? 'Is' something equal to the sum of its parts?

Also, if a straw was to be irrevocably bent, would it remain a straw?

Beloved

2006-12-30T17:43:00.000-08:00

Words and music by Derek Webb

“Beloved these are dangerous times
because you are weightless like a leaf from the vine
and the wind has blown you all over town
because there is nothing holding you to the ground

So now you would rather be
a slave again than free from the law

Beloved listen to me
don’t believe all that you see
and don’t you ever let anyone tell you
that there’s anything that you need
but me

Beloved these are perilous days
when your culture is so set in its ways
that you will listen to salesmen and thieves
preaching other than the truth you’ve received

Because they are telling lies
for they cannot circumcise your hearts

Beloved listen to me
don’t believe all that you see
and don’t you ever let anyone tell you
that there’s anything that you need
but me

Beloved there is nothing more
no more blessings and no more rewards
than the treasure of my body and blood
given freely to all daughters and sons”

(From the album “She Must and Shall Go Free”)

God, a gentleman? God forbid!

2006-12-28T02:07:00.000-08:00

Here I am on another sleepless night, as once again anxiety grasps my heart in my chest and I am filled with terror of my very self. I cry out to the Lord, “God, save me from myself!”, and what does my prescribed theology reply? “God will only save you as much as you allow him”. I cry out for salvation from my enemy, and I am told “don’t worry, the only thing that stands between you and your Savior is your enemy; get past him and it’s all good; you can run straight into the open arms of Christ”. If God so courteously accepts my rejection of Him that I can hinder His mercy on me, then where is the God of Hosea that brings back His whore of a wife from her prostitution? Where is the gospel when I see that I am that whore?

I am starving for good news.

If Christ can save me from everything except my own will, then I am damned! Where can I find consolation when I see that my will is corrupt? Where can I find rest?

Does not Paul say that “it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose”? * If Paul is convinced that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”**, then wouldn’t that “anything else” also include my corrupted will?

Why do I still say that I am strong enough to resist Him, or that a corrupted will, He will not resist?

I ponder and ponder; I try to be a “better Christian”. I look to the virtues, I look to the law, I try to read the scriptures and devote myself to others, but alas! I am still wretched. God help me!

Is it possible that Christ’s death paid for all this as well?

Colossians 2:13-15 “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

Galatians 1:6-9 “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!”

Galatians 3:1-5 “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?”

Galatians 3:10-14 “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law." Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith." The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, "The man who does these things will live by them." Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.”

Galatians 3:21-25 “If a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.

Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.”

It seems there is a great danger in attributing spiritual fruit to human effort, or thinking that somehow fruit gives life to faith. It is not fruit that gives life to a tree, but the tree that gives life to the fruit. Though a tree without fruit is a dead tree, it does not constitute that if only the tree could muster up some fruit it would live. Likewise, a faith without works is a dead faith***, but that does not mean that the faith died because works died, or that if the works could somehow be mustered, then the faith would be revived.

A faulty definition of “the Christian life” will result in the amputation of parts of the body because they don’t qualify to bear the name “Christian”.

Let me not forget that faith itself is a gift of God.****

In a book by C.F.W. Walther on “The proper distinction between Law and Gospel”, his 17^th thesis states: “The Word of God is not rightly divided when a description is given of faith, both as regards its strength and the consciousness and productiveness of it, that does not fit all believers at all times.”

………………………………………………………………………………………

*Philippians 2:12 &13 “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

**Romans 8:38 &39

***James 2:26

****Ephesians 2:8 & 9 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”

What is true faith?

2006-12-25T21:47:00.000-08:00

I was reading this evening in the Heidelberg Catechism, and found that the 21^st question and answer is precisely the question I’ve been asking as of late.

Q. What is true faith?

A. It is not only a certain knowledge by which I accept as true all that God has revealed to us in his Word, but also a wholehearted trust which the Holy Spirit creates in me through the gospel, that, not only to others, but to me also God has given the forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness and salvation, out of sheer grace solely for the sake of Christ’s saving work.

Beneficial and Unsightly Objects

2006-10-26T01:18:00.000-07:00

Today I lay on my back in the grass of an island, in the middle of a shopping center parking lot. I was later quite grateful I had lain on a blanket once I realized that my grassy location was directly outside of a pet shop and was apparently a place to which their furry little friends frequented quite regularly. I’m normally rather indifferent to a clear sunny day, being as I am so partial to clouds and overcast weather, and today was no exception. This compelled me to reconsider my inconsiderate behavior towards what turned out to be in fact a very charming, subdued blue sky. As I put down my book and looked up, my first observation was that there were two objects (besides the blue sky) that were present in my vision; two objects that I rather quickly began to resent. The most inconvenient of the two was the sun, which hinders even the most sincere attempts at direct appreciation, being that it is quite physically impossible to observe without pain; the other was a very dull and unsightly streetlight post (which I will refrain from calling a “lamp post” on the basis that I’m rather fond of the term and would hate to forever associate the wretched, brown, florescent-bulbed fixture with such a preferable sentiment).

Before true observation of the above sky, I thought to myself how sad and inconvenient that I would be unable to view the previously unappreciated display without these two object’s interference. But as I began to see beyond them, I also began to feel a sort of camaraderie with them and became increasingly grateful for them as though they were the last two material objects in existence. The cloudless sky, the uninterrupted blue, the bottomless upwardly abyss of unchanging and unrelenting color, pulled at my mind in a way that caused me to feel as though I might forget everything else, indeed I may have forgotten, were it not for those two objects. I went on to feel that I might have forgotten my own name were it not for the additional recurring interference of a light breeze blowing my hair in front of my face, hence obstructing my view, and reminding me that I too was observing the scenario, I was not some substance merely floating in it.

Here I lay down hoping to be pleasantly enraptured with a keener awareness of beauty, but instead I found myself disturbingly entranced in a color that mercilessly captivated my consciousness. The disturbation was not entirely unpleasant, but it did feel rather involuntary.

What’s odd to me was that rather than walking away confused as to how or why the sky, which had been previously only comforting and friendly to me, had so quickly become mystical and alluring to me for some unforeseeable end, I walked away feeling grateful for the mundane, unsightly objects, that while bearing the weight of disappreciation continue to protect the unsuspecting little conscious mind from an overindulgence in the abstraction of the color blue.

Christ the Sun

2006-10-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was reading in my Martin Luther devotional “Faith Alone” and for some reason or another I opened it up to October 6. I once asked a Christian friend of mine “What is the gospel?” and he said that he didn’t think it could be stated that specifically. Upon reading this, I thought to myself “yes it can; and that’s it”.

I want to say that, sadly, I found Luther’s terminology to be rather blunt; almost taking me back a little (how inexcusably sheltered I am from the severity of the law!). In fact, that’s actually one of the things that I love about Luther’s writings: he doesn’t sugar-coat the death blow. Luther unleashes the law to mercilessly slaughter all boasting and brutally strip all haughtiness in order for the gospel to heal and console; then, and only then, can the gospel truly be the “good news”.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’” Galatians 3:13

The gospel – the most loved and comforting doctrine of all – doesn’t focus on our works or the works of the law. Rather, it shows us the incomprehensible, inexpressible mercy and love of God toward us, who are unworthy and lost people. The merciful Father saw that we were oppressed by the curse of the law and held under it. On our own and through our own efforts, we never could have freed ourselves. He sent his only Son into the world. He put all the sin of all the people on his Son and said, “You will be Peter, who denied me; Paul, who persecuted, blasphemed, and acted violently; David, who committed adultery; the sinner who ate the apple in Paradise; the thief on the cross. In summary, you will be the one who committed all the sins of all the people. Make sure you pay for these sins and make atonement for them.”

At this point the law said, “I find Christ to be a sinner – the one who has taken the sins of all the people upon himself. I do not see sin on anyone else except him. Therefore, he must die on the cross.” Then the law grabbed him and killed him.

Since this happened, the entire world has been cleansed and atoned of all sin and freed from death and all evil. If everyone in the whole world believed, God would see only purity and righteousness. This is because Christ would have taken away all sin and death. And even if there were any remnants of sin remaining, God wouldn’t see them because of the brightness of Christ, the Sun.

Another’s thoughts on time

2006-10-19T08:26:00.000-07:00

Ecclesiastes 3

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil--this is God's gift to man.

I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.

Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work. I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?”

Quotes from "Phantastes" by George MacDonald

2006-10-19T08:07:00.000-07:00

“Chained is the Spring. The night-wind bold
Blows over the hard earth;
Time is not more confused and cold,
Nor keeps more wintry mirth.

Yet blow and roll the world about;
Blow, Time – blow, winter’s Wind!
Through chinks of Time, heaven peepeth out,
And Spring the frost behind.”
-G.E.M.

.......................................................................

"Through the realms of the monarch Sun
Creeps a world, whose course had begun,
On a weary path with a weary pace,
Before the Earth sprang forth on her race;
But many a time the Earth had sped
Around the path she still must tread,
Ere the elder planet, on leaden wing,
Once circled the court of the planet’s king.

There, in that lonely and distant star,
The seasons are not as our seasons are;
But many a year hath Autumn to dress
The trees in their matron loveliness;
As long hath old Winter in triumph to go
O’er beauties dead in his vaults below,
And many a year the Spring doth wear
Combing the icicles from her hair;
And Summer, dear Summer, hath years of June,
With large white clouds, and cool showers at noon;
And a beauty that grows to a weight like grief,
Till a burst of tears is the heart’s relief.

Children, born when Winter is king,
May never rejoice in the hoping Spring,
Though their own heart-buds are bursting with joy,
And the child hath grown to the girl or boy;
But may die with cold and icy hours
Watching them ever in place of flowers.
And some who awake from their primal sleep,
When the sighs of Summer through forests creep,
Live, and love, and are loved again;
Seek for pleasure, and find its pain;
Sink to their last, their forsaken sleeping,
With the same sweet odours around them creeping."

-George MacDonald

The Wind and the Moon

2006-10-19T08:05:00.000-07:00

Said the Wind to the Moon, "I will blow you out!
You stare
In the air
As if crying Beware,
Always looking what I am about:
I hate to be watched; I will blow you out!"

The Wind blew hard, and out went the Moon.
So, deep
On a heap
Of clouds, to sleep
Down lay the Wind, and slumbered soon,
Muttering low, "I've done for that Moon!"

He turned in his bed: she was there again!
On high
In the sky
With her one ghost-eye
The Moon shone white and alive and plain:
Said the Wind, "I will blow you out again!"

The Wind blew hard, and the Moon grew slim.
"With my sledge
And my wedge
I have knocked off her edge!
I will blow," said the Wind, "right fierce and grim,
And the creature will soon be slimmer than slim!"

He blew and he blew, and she thinned to a thread.
"One puff
More's enough
To blow her to snuff!
One good puff more where the last was bred,
And glimmer, glimmer, glum will go that thread!"

He blew a great blast, and the thread was gone.
In the air
Nowhere
Was a moonbeam bare;
Larger and nearer the shy stars shone:
Sure and certain the Moon was gone!

The Wind he took to his revels once more;
On down
And in town,
A merry-mad clown,
He leaped and holloed with whistle and roar—
When there was that glimmering thread once more!

He flew in a rage—he danced and blew;
But in vain
Was the pain
Of his bursting brain,
For still the Moon-scrap the broader grew
The more that he swelled his big cheeks and blew.

Slowly she grew—till she filled the night,
And shone
On her throne
In the sky alone
A matchless, wonderful, silvery light,
Radiant and lovely, the queen of the night.

Said the Wind, "What a marvel of power am I!
With my breath,
In good faith,
I blew her to death!—
First blew her away right out of the sky,
Then blew her in: what a strength am I!"

But the Moon she knew nought of the silly affair;
For, high
In the sky
With her one white eye,
Motionless miles above the air,
She never had heard the great Wind blare.

-George MacDonald

Pondering the silence of reason

2006-09-25T18:01:00.000-07:00

“As a man who, rejoicing in his gains,
suddenly seeing his gain turn into loss,
will grieve as he compares his then and now,

so she made me do, that relentless beast;
coming toward me, slowly, step by step,
she forced me back to where the sun is mute.

While I was rushing down to that low place,
my eyes made out a figure coming toward me
of one grown faint, perhaps from too much silence.”
-Dante (The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto 1)

I was rereading part of Inferno the other day and was stunned to find that someone had been sneaking around in my room and putting new phrases into my Dante book! I’ve probably read that canto close to fifteen times now, and I never thought of what Dante meant by the line “grown faint, perhaps from too much silence”; when did he put that there?!?! Anyway, it got me thinking of how Dante uses Virgil (the figure he sees coming toward him) as a symbol of human reason that guides him through hell. What does Dante mean by describing human reason as “growing faint, perhaps from too much silence”? Does this mean that reason grows faint not from exhaustion, but by neglect? Does this mean that “reason” is to be exercised in order to grow or even be maintained, and that when silenced, slowly degenerates?
Does anyone have any thoughts?

?Contradictions?

2006-09-23T22:29:00.000-07:00

What is time anyway? Do you ever find that you’re just tired of it? What does that even mean? How can I be tired of change and at the same time tired of the same old thing? I seem to have an insatiable desire for stillness & motion, peace of mind & intellectual stimulation, community & at the same time solitude…the seemingly contradicting cravings go on.

I feel alone in a crowd and yet invaded by my own solitude; too tired to sleep, bored of my busyness. What’s the deal?

I feel as though a small yet intricately essential element of my logic has been broken, not that it’s broken beyond repair, but it’s definitely dysfunctional at the moment.

I recently finished the book “The Ball and The Cross” by G.K. Chesterton (an excellent book that I would highly recommend and never claim to understand!), and came to see that the center of Christianity, the cross, is a paradox. Why would I be surprised that I have conflicting ideas, when the fundamental doctrines of our faith are founded on conflicting ideas; not the sort that truly conflict, but the sort that George MacDonald would say requires the task “to combine two propositions, both apparently true, either at once or in different remembered moods, and to find the point in which their invisible converging lines would unite in one, revealing a truth higher than either and differing from both; though so far from being opposed to either, that it was that whence each derived its life and power.” I’m finding that by meditating on the person of Christ, the Word that became flesh, fully man & fully God, the perfect Lamb that became sin for us, I am resolved to these sorts of “two propositions” as, not illogical, but super-logical meaning that it is “higher” than logic yet at the same time not opposed to it!

My sister gave me Isaiah 26:3 to think about the other day and I’m beginning to think it holds the answer.

“You will keep in perfect peace
him whose mind is steadfast,
because he trusts in you.”

The Beauty of Otherness: the consolation of discomfort.

2006-08-18T13:08:00.000-07:00

During one of my small group discussions at Wheatstone 101, one of the mentors proposed a question:

What if you could live the rest of your life in a perfect dream? You know, the kind of dream that once you wake up from it, you wish so badly it was real. What if living in this had no negative effects on your soul and at the end of your life, not having the freaky realization of waking up, you would simply die and go to heaven? Would you pick the dream?

Many of us found this to be a complicated question to answer; after all, why not?
It brings us to the question of “what is the purpose for pain and discomfort?” If there were “no negative effects on your soul”, why not choose ease and pleasure?
A few of us chose the dream, but three of us rejected it and oddly enough, for three different reasons.

Reason one: the dreamer would be confined to experiencing only what they had experienced in their actual life up until the point where they entered the dream; meaning that if the dreamer had never been to Turkey, they couldn’t really experience going to Turkey in their dream because it would only be what they imagined of Turkey, it couldn’t possibly be Turkey itself since they had never been. The dream would provide no real discovery.

Reason two: no matter how it seems, the dream isn’t real. Reality is better, if for no other reason than that it is Real, and we ought to want what is better.

Reason three: I will go further into this reason, since this is the point of my blog:
The dream eliminates all possible otherness. In the dream there is no fellowship. If you reach for a person, you are touching yourself; if you laugh at their remark, you are indulging in your own humor. You can gain no new vision because you can suffer no defeat; like some madman who plays chess only with himself and expects to win.

Have you ever experienced the quiet discomfort of another person’s presence; that vivid otherness? Have you ever experienced the beauty in their unpredictability? The subtle and constant awareness, that they are not yielding to your preferences; they are not thinking your thoughts. They have a vision that is outside of you. If I were in my own dream, that discomfort, that overwhelming consolation that I am not alone, would be gone. The dreamer is confined to the hell of his own comfort.

Beyond this, there is another element: that of actually yielding to another. Not only would I never be surprised by something someone said to me because there is nothing in my world that is unknown, but likewise, I surprise no one else. Not only can I not experience the discomfort of another not yielding to me, but I can yield nothing to another. How can I give? Were I to attempt to simulate self sacrifice in order to give to another, I would be giving only to myself!
The more altruism, the more narcissism; the more generosity, the more greed.

What does it mean to love one “another” if there is no an-"other” and no love?

Wheatstone Academy

2006-08-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

Well, I’m finally home; I say “finally” not as a relief from some long and relentless experience but as a long-awaited, and at the same time feared, sigh that culminates the cascade of beauty that envelops the beholder into a world previously unknown but now only un-apprehended.

I’ve spent the last two weeks in San Diego at the Wheatstone Academy for both the 101 and 201 conferences and the experience was I think life changing. I think I expected I would come to see different things, but I could not have anticipated coming home to seeing the same things so differently; it’s me that’s different, and yet it feels that the world is changed. How can I describe an experience that changes the way I experience all things? What is there to say? I’ve been somewhat taken back, almost startled a little by how unpredictable I now find myself; I am engaging in conversations that I’ve previously shied away from; and my former fears have lost their substance and are beginning to diminish. I’ve always been one to introvert at the first sight of discomfort, but now, now I almost find myself embracing it! Ah! What will I do next?

During the first week I was there, as we were once again taking the long walk across campus from the cafeteria to our dorms, I had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Reynolds (the founder of the Wheatstone Academy and the primary lecturer). The things he said impacted me greatly, and the more I review them, the deeper their meaning. He spoke to me much about courage which at the time I found somewhat odd. I expected he would tell me information about the dialectic and encourage me to “think harder” or something. Instead, what I got was that it doesn’t require intelligence to learn the dialectic, it requires courage. You don’t need to be “smart” you need only to be brave enough to follow the argument wherever it leads. It seems that I thought my difficulty was that I didn’t know what to do; it turns out that, like Frodo, “I know what I must do; it’s just that I’m scared to do it”. I am concerned more with my being right than I am with finding the truth; I’m afraid to be wrong. Reynolds told me to have courage, and reminded me that “there are sins of omission as well”. The spirit of fear is overwhelming; thanks be to Jesus Christ who “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”

How liberating is the good news of our salvation in Christ alone! How liberating that I am not merited by being smart or right, but in Christ. How mystical, that in Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”.

So, what is there to say? Not as much as there is to ask.

“What a beautiful discipline it is to strain to find value in others’ perspectives and to strain to find fault in our own.”-Mark R. McMinn

2006-07-14T10:34:00.000-07:00

These are some excerpts from a book my mommy is reading by Mark R. McMinn; I’d never heard of the guy before, but some of this stuff rings all too true and seems to me to really hit some things on the head. I heard a similar analysis by Jerry Root when he said that reason is the weakest element of the soul; that when we sin, it is our reason that attempts to justify our actions. Remarks anyone???

"One way to combat our presumptuous thinking is to actively search for ways we may be wrong, to deliberately look at things from another perspective and find the error in ours. We need to see our capacity for self-deception. We are sinners, broken in every way, and when we grasp this truth, we begin to see that others may be right and we may be wrong."

"Not only are we presumptuous, but we are often wrong in our thinking. Social scientists have described various sorts of thinking errors: we filter out important information while focusing in on selected details; we misconstrue things by using mental “shortcuts” based on what is most available in our memories; we create rigid mental stereotypes and then falsely interpret the world in light of our preconceived ideas; and we are vulnerable to making foolish choices when information is presented in a misleading context. In short, we are quick to make up our mind, often wrong, and easily manipulated."

"Our prideful capacity to think wrongly and to justify sinful choices is terrifying. Not only do we need others to help us think well, but we also need enough humility to accept what they have to say."

“This is not a call to retreat from thinking. Let’s celebrate our capacity to think by studying, reading, reasoning, and engaging in rich and lively dialogue with others. But let’s remember that our reasoning is part of our sinful state and thus vulnerable to error. We need each other to help us think better than we might alone, and we need enough humility to admit our need for others. And if we are humble enough-or if we become humble enough through the tragedies of life-our reasoning will help lead us down the dusty path and into the arms of the One who granted us this great gift in the first place.”

- Mark R. McMinn

knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;

2006-06-25T19:05:00.000-07:00

Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but originality is the highest form of imitation! Indeed, there is “nothing new under the sun”; hence, why I am now going to quote T.S. instead of make any attempt at originality. :~)

“The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.”
~T.S. Eliot (Choruses from ‘The Rock’)

While camping at Hume Lake up near Kings Canyon, I had the opportunity to go almost every morning into the Christian Camp there (which we affectionately call “town”) and sit on the bridge from which you can see one of the best views of the lake; probably one of my favorite views in the world. I would often sit there and read Eliot. What’s strange to me is that I can read Eliot and not understand what he’s talking about, but when I see a particular beauty or understand some previously hidden concept, I find myself reciting him. It’s as if he states in advance the only appropriate expression of what I am yet to experience. I find that I can’t understand him unless, even if I can’t yet express it, I have already experienced what he’s talking about. Anyway, anyone have any thoughts on the excerpt??? I always get more out of Eliot with a little dialogue. :~)

More Afterthoughts...

2006-05-24T18:48:00.000-07:00

This picture is taken in the meadow of Christ Church in Oxford.

For me, this was one of the most memorable views of Stradford-Upon-Avon. After seeing Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, we took a walk down by the peaceful river Avon; definitely a highlight of the trip!

This was a little corner in the town of Bath; I found it charming that all of their street lights have a yellow glow, like a painting.

We stumbled upon this spot in Edinburgh, Scotland. I was truly captivated by its natural blue-fairy-glow!

The Eagle and Child pub in Oxford. The official meeting place of the "Inklings" consisting of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien etc.

More of Scotland...

This is a picture taken from the balcony of the farmhouse where we stayed in the Cotswolds.

Afterthoughts of a home half-remembered…

2006-05-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

This is a little street in Oxford; it had such character, as if just by being there it knew more than I could hope to ever learn about that magical place.

View of the ocean and the city of Edinburgh, Scotland from part way up the hill at the end of the Royal Mile. It was fascinating to wait, and watch how quickly the shadow of the clouds moved across the open field and across the city.

This was one of the many times that we experienced this enchanted image- that of the moon through bare branches; something that Sheldon Vanauken described, along with countless other images, as the "pain of beauty".

This is the field we had the privilege of seeing twice, whereas our original plan was not to see it at all. Going the wrong direction can certainly have its share of perks.
It was here that we decided that this grass was in fact delighted to be green. There was such gaiety about the little field, as if it never grew tired of laughing at itself and others (some who happened to be lost); as if each moment it was reinvented and couldn't escape the simple humor of being exactly as it is.

Christ Church

2006-05-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to figure out how this whole picture thing works.
This is me sitting inside the gate of Christ Church in Oxford!

True Knowledge

2006-05-21T00:53:00.000-07:00

Ok, so what’s the deal with my “knowing” something without “knowing” it?!

I am extremely exhausted by my worldview and am grieved to find that my list of “beliefs” often never find their way into it!
Scary, how I can “believe” God is sovereign and yet still live as if my life is in my hands; I “believe” I am saved by grace alone through faith, and still I try to earn my Heavenly Father’s favor; I say that materialism is false and that fairytales are reality, and yet I live as if life is dull and un-enchanted! How safe it is to “believe” hard, theological truths when they hold no effect or transformation, but what if I really believed? Would things be different?

I’ve heard Dr. Reynolds talk about the importance of a fully integrated worldview, and now I’m coming to see how I lack that. Sometimes I feel as though when faced with deception, I scarcely put up a fight. It’s as if I don’t even have to reject the truth in order to embrace the lie; all I need is to look at them separately and alternately in order to maintain them both without a compromise of conscience. That I unknowingly do this has me a little freaked out!

It seems much easier to study theology with one’s head than with one’s faith. Logic doesn’t require trust, true logic only asks for agreement; but how much harder it is to truly rely on what is to be exclusively believed.

Indeed, I know nothing; for even what I “know”, I don’t “know”!

Exploration and Simplicity

2006-05-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
And easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea’s throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always -
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

-T.S. Eliot (from "Little Gidding")

Good Morning!

2006-05-04T08:18:00.000-07:00

Well, this morning I experienced a new kind of insomnia, one that is rarer for me. This is the kind that, rather than prohibiting one from falling asleep, compels them to wake up. As a result, I’ve been up since 4:30 ish. I had a lovely morning beginning inside with a fire in the fireplace to the sounds of Nickel Creek, which eventually lead me to outside on the swing, watching the sunrise and reading T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”. Yes, poor me. :~)

I find poetry to be so illuminating; “the inner freedom from the practical desire”. It’s refreshing to take a few moments of the day to look through enchanted eyes, at the world we live in, only in which we fail to truly live.

I keep pondering the present; in it I find so much liberty, purpose, and just peace of being and yet it seems to be the one “place” of which my memory fades the quickest. Why do I wait for life to begin? Is it because my life began before my “consciousness” so to say? Am I awaiting the birth of my mind because in some way I wasn’t cognitive to experience it? I suppose, like Dante, we all wake to find ourselves in a dark wood, not knowing how we entered.

I long to dwell in the realm of the present moment; stillness without fixity, motion without movement, that place where the “dance” is. But, it seems that the best I can hope for is a reoccurring but temporary illumination.
I must conclude, then, that “human kind cannot bear very much reality”, and be grateful for the mere moments in which I see “the moment”.

“Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.”

-T.S. Eliot

“Coming to England was like coming home, coming to a home half-remembered – but home.” - Sheldon Vanauken

2006-04-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back and as you may have been able to guess, blogging didn't exactly happen; internet can be somewhat hard to come by over there, and it can get a little bit pricey too.
What an amazing trip! I'm sitting here at my computer drinking my third cup of Yorkshire tea this morning (although that's not too bad, considering that it's really around 5 pm in London! :~).
Our trip consisted of seeing England, Wales and Scotland; I don't know how I shall ever recover!!! Some of the most amazing sites I've ever seen or imagined. We came to agree that beauty educates the soul, time can stand still, and that regardless of what people say, the grass really is greener on that side of the fence.
The expression we came to that seemed most befitting was that in England, everything is more itself; green is greener, blue is bluer, and that perhaps even beauty is more beautiful. Is this all just an ignorant enchantment with a dream??? Some would say so, but I cannot.
At one point along the trip, although we got off the bus at the proper station, we did not walk in the proper direction to get to our Travel Lodge. As a result we walked past this long VERY green field; absolutely beautiful! (the real beauty was that, since we were going the wrong way, we inevitably had to go back again which gave us the opportunity of partaking in it twice). When seeing the grass, I couldn't help but think of Chesterton and his declaration that leaves are willfully green. As Chesterton would put it:

"I found the whole modern world talking scientific fatalism; saying that everything is as it must always have been, being unfolded without fault from the beginning. The leaf on the tree is green because it could never have been anything else. Now, the fairy-tale philosopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely because it might have been scarlet. He feels as if it had turned green an instant before he looked at it. He is pleased that snow is white on the strictly reasonable ground that it might have been black. Every colour has in it a bold quality as of choice; the red of garden roses is not only decisive but dramatic, like suddenly split blood. He feels that something has been done.”

We concluded that our grass seems obligated to be green whereas in Europe, the grass is delighted to be green.
I suppose the question remains: is it us or is it Europe that is enchanted?

Well, now I’ve finished my fourth cup of tea and am ready to go out for my second walk of the morning. Yes, perhaps this trip has brought about a change: this morning I walked around the block by myself for the first time (well… me and Darcy). Amazing how liberating it is to not live in fear.

“Not fare well, but fare forward, voyagers”!

~Camlost~

To England and Beyond!

2006-04-04T05:19:00.000-07:00

Sorry for my lack of posting; I’ve been preparing for a trip that begins in approx. 45 minutes! Therefore, I must be off…I’ve got a plane to catch!

I’m hoping to keep some kind of update going on around here while I’m gallivanting around England and Scotland, but I really don’t know what the next two weeks are going to look like. Here’s hoping; if I can't, then when I get back I’ll be talking about it for weeks anyway.
Blessings to all!

2006-04-01T00:48:00.000-08:00

“It [the historic Church] has always had a healthy hatred of pink.”

-G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)

More T.S.

2006-03-25T00:09:00.000-08:00

Well, so much for my attempt at blogging every day. I was working so hard to get it posted before midnight, but there were just too many words. Anyway...I guess I'm ahead of the game for tomorrow (or I guess technically "today"). :~p

I didn’t realize that T.S. Eliot actually wrote a poem about me! (or at least part of a poem)
I have to say that I was a little stunned when I read it…
He definitely hit some things on the head.

“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to
conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot
hope
To emulate-but there is no competition-
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under
conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

-T.S. Eliot

The Maniac

2006-03-23T23:15:00.000-08:00

An excerpt from Chesterton on Mysticism and Madness-

“Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say “if you please” to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health. As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers.
Symbols alone are of even a cloudy value in speaking of this deep matter; and another symbol from physical nature will express sufficiently well the real place of mysticism before mankind. The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility. Detached intellectualism is (in the exact sense of a popular phrase) all moonshine; for it is light without heat, and it is secondary light, reflected from a dead world. But the Greeks were right when they made Apollo the god both of imagination and of sanity; for he was both the patron of poetry and the patron of healing. Of necessary dogmas and a special creed I shall speak later. But that transcendentalism by which all men live has primarily much the position of the sun in the sky. We are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid confusion; it is something both shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and a blur. But the circle of the moon is as clear and unmistakable, as recurrent and inevitable, as the circle of Euclid on a blackboard. For the moon is utterly reasonable; and the moon is the mother of lunatics and has given to them all her name.”

-G. K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)

Definitions???

2006-03-22T21:52:00.000-08:00

Does philosophy encompass theology, or does theology encompass philosophy?
(Webster had an interesting view, but I'm not quite sure if it's sound)

Quote of the Day

2006-03-22T21:47:00.000-08:00

“Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?”

-G.K. Chesterton

2006-03-21T10:52:00.000-08:00

“O sun that shines to clear a misty vision,
such joy is mine when you resolve my doubts
that doubting pleases me no less than knowing!”

-Dante (Inferno)

Love (/Throw Baby!)

2006-03-13T08:03:00.000-08:00

Lately I’ve found myself to be pondering love. Perhaps it has something to do with the books I’ve been reading (A Severe Mercy, Romeo and Juliet, The Four Loves etc.).

Due to the modern disgrace of the word via “love songs” or “love stories” which generally show very minimal content of altruism (that still turns out to be only a shell that harbors all sorts of narcissistic perversions of self sacrifice- i.e. see Romeo and Juliet!), I’ve discovered that I’ve come to “throw out the baby with the bath water” as it were. I am only recently coming to see that real Love is quite other than what is portrayed by some of the Narcissistic Perverts themselves that we call “Hollywood”.

A novel concept has just hit me: instead of joining the feminine version of “Club G.R.O.S.S” (revision: Get Rid Of Slimy guyS…pardon the Calvin and Hobbs :~p), why not simply recognize that Hollywood wouldn’t know a real baby if it slapped them in the face! Why throw out real Love with the garbage (or bath water) when they really don’t know anything about it? Anyway, to continue…

“A Sever Mercy” is probably one of the best and most difficult books I’ve ever read.
I’ve found my vision (not only of love, but also of beauty) to be altered.
The grass is greener; the sky is bluer; cold wind tastes sweeter and the sensation of its temperature is fresher on my skin.
To have a “God of Love” takes on a very new meaning when “Love” is properly defined.
Indeed, this Love is greater than hope; greater even than faith.

In step with beauty and love is the medium by which it is perceived: time. As such, I have been unavoidably engaged in a time warp of sorts; which, of course, compels me to quote T.S. Eliot:

“Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always-
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.”

-T.S. Eliot (taken from “Burnt Norton” –“The Four Quartets”)

"Love is itself unmoving, only the cause and end of movement" "at the still point of the turning world" "and do not call it fixity" "there the dance is", "and there is only the dance"...

Beauty Strikes Again

2006-02-15T12:22:00.000-08:00

This is my attempt at salvaging an epiphany I experienced during a conversation. Rather than try to explain it, here I just expressed utterances that may or may not strike any resemblance to what was actually and originally so impacting to me. ……………………………………………………………………………………………

What is the experience? Where joy and pain collide in a moment of bliss, not the bliss of selective concentration, not the bliss that is devoid of real pain, or real sorrow, but the bliss that is broad enough to encompass all things, and yet says they are good.
Let us call this encounter beauty, for lack of any other name.
Is beauty a moment? What is moment? Is moment not just a vain definition derived in the longings for permanence by a body weighted down by time? This moment of beauty cannot be contained in the mind of one so weighed down, as this realm of motion yields little sympathy to us travelers who yet remain un-acclimated to our environment, until all that remains of a moment is as a fixed memory. Fixity is lifeless, indeed what if it is impossible? After all, does time yield to any man?
A memory is only the illusion of fixity, a lifeless portrait of what was yet alive. A moment of beauty cannot be recalled in its true splendor, indeed any a poor soul’s attempts at recollection only taints, with this illusion of fixity, what was everything but.

Perhaps there is a realm, a realm where “past and future are gathered”. With the air and color of Elysium, what would be the “High Countries” itself, “concentration without elimination, both a new world and the old made explicit, understood in the completion of its partial ecstasy, the resolution of its partial horror.” -T.S. Eliot
We call glimpses of this realm “moments” because they are ever passing. We cannot grip them on this earth anymore than on this earth a man may be suspended by a ray of light. But still in our mind, in our memory, in our hopes rests a place, perhaps realer still, then our day to day illusions of purpose?

“Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.”

“Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.

Time past and time future

Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.”

-T.S. Eliot

Efficiency and our Culture

2006-02-02T19:33:00.000-08:00

I’ve been analyzing culture and worldview lately and, with the help of discussion with others, found some interesting observations.

It seems that our culture in this day and age is run on the premises of efficiency; efficiency based on the ratio of effort and sacrifice to values and rewards. The primary flaw in this system is that we also live in an age that remains quite ignorant of what is truly valuable. We base our system on sacrificing some benefits for the sake of others; this in itself is an understandably necessary evil, however, if one sells his birthright for a bowl of soup then it makes one wonder if he had any understanding of the value of his birthright to begin with.

Here we are as Americans living in a culture that is motivated by the pursuit of ease; our modern technology being constructed less for the purpose of research and progress as much as for how these inventions can provide us with more luxury, and essentially less thought. We no longer need to know how to grow food, how to prepare meals, how to provide for, construct and maintain a family; we only need to earn money. On a side note, it’s no wonder that we consider ourselves occupationally defined. We no longer ascribe to the systems of old, stating our introduction as our name followed by either our geographical heritage or our genetic ancestry. Now we simply say “I’m a teacher”, or “I’m a doctor” or “I’m a musician” or whatever we happen to consider our societal function. It also makes an amount of sense to me that marital infidelity is sky rocketing when spouses are no longer directly reminded of their loyalties every time they lift a finger in their occupation. When a husband’s job was to build a house and literally “put food on the table” and a wife’s job was to prepare meals for her family and run their home why the husband was away, their “occupation” was directly related to their marital roles. But when our society for the sake of efficiency, drives us to specialize in one particular field of expertise and not to be a whole and well rounded person, it seems to be very easy to separate one’s job and one’s family life, leading to an attempt at serving two masters.

To go back to the original observation, it seems that what we are willing to sacrifice for this ease is of an inestimable value. The character that is built from old fashioned hard work, the rewards of discipline and preparation, the beauty of chastity and fidelity are immeasurably more valuable then the short term “benefits” of ease, financial success, and technological “progress”. Birthright can’t be seen, and soup smells enticing, but what is the greater worth?

I wonder if perhaps efficiency is a misguided ideal. In truth, you always get what you pay for; you always appreciate more what is waited for. Perhaps “efficiency” is an attempt at cheating the system by sacrificing the priceless for immediate gratification.
I don’t pretend to have the fix for this culture’s problem, but I find it profitable to analyze it in comparison with other cultures of the past.

These are not original ideas; I’ve only been listening and discussing these matters with a number of people lately and thought I’d try to put it down.

God is sovereign; may He be glorified even in man’s folly.

Riddles In The Dark

2006-01-28T19:55:00.000-08:00

"This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down."
-J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit)

Does anyone remember the answer to the riddle?

Thomas Stearns Eliot

2006-01-23T20:59:00.000-08:00

I have been extraordinarily impacted by someone who died 21 years before I was born and that I had never heard of before last week. A friend introduced me to T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” and I haven’t quite recovered. Being a fan of the Western school of thought, I thoroughly enjoy basking in the precision of logic and the mathematics, as it were, of thought. I find myself however having a strong tendency to constrain all trains of thought that don’t quite match up to my interpretation of logic. If that didn’t make sense, then welcome to my world!

What I mean is this: I can’t quite listen to what doesn’t make sense to me; I find myself constantly having to alter the ideas before they are even fully developed in order to make an attempt at progressive thinking. I find myself having to ignore the possible distractions in the room, distractions in my mind, distractions inherent to the topic itself…the list goes on; rather than taking in everything at hand. (…hmmm “distracted from distraction by distraction”???…) It’s as if I already have the picture that I’m looking for and I’m just looking for the puzzle pieces to get me there. Eliot however shows no trace of such things. It’s as if his mind is free roaming and is guided (by providence it would seem) to what turns out to be logic! This has thrown a glitch in the beautiful mechanics of all of my narrow-mindedness…what is to be done?!?!?!

Anyway, I’ll spare you the drooling and babbling in a stupor about how my old way of thinking turns out to be incomplete.
Impacting excerpts that have opened for me a window to a world…

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.”

“Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.”

-T.S. Eliot
(taken from “Burnt Norton” -“Four Quartets”)

Appreciation

2006-01-02T22:41:00.000-08:00

It seems that true appreciation is a learning experience. Not merely that one must learn how to appreciate a particular thing, although I believe that too is true, but that appreciation itself is somewhat comprised of learning.

I find for instance that I appreciate things the most the more aspects by which I encounter them. My family for example, means more to me each day as I see them in different lights and see yet more methods of God’s craftsmanship at work in them. Marriage likewise seems to produce greater love and appreciation (or so I am told) the more life experience it has endured. When looking at a piece of art or listening to a piece of music, I find that there isn’t some fixed appreciation that stands the test of time as the sole beauty that lies within it. My appreciation for it changes as I myself change and learn to value other things that I had formerly never known it possessed.

It is no wonder, then, that there is such a narrow minded appreciation of beauty these days when there is such an abominable lack of learning. There is an enormous generation gap based on our inability to appreciate another’s preferences I think primarily because each generation forgets more and more how to learn.

Why is it that we generalize different sects of what particular type of music we like? And even more astonishing to me is how, when asked, many people would only ascribe to one genre of musical preference. Where is the variety? Why can’t we all appreciate, even if it is not with favoritism, at least the common attributes of beauty that can be found amongst the diversity?

It seems that when beauty became preference, we began to see preference as the only beauty. How then can I appreciate that which I don’t prefer?

I long for the learning that wakes up each day as though there were a new world to be looked at. The world is different today because I am different today and because, now that I have seen life in one particular light, perhaps I am equipped to see it in another. How can I expect a greater appreciation of life until I am willing to release the tight grip that I have on my own vision and preference?

I actually find the same to be true when dealing with the appreciation of the Gospel. How can I appreciate the truth of the Gospel or bask in the multi-faceted reality of God when I have a box of my preference in which my “god” must abide? He does not exist for my good pleasure, but quite the reverse. If I could but let go of valuing only what interests my immediate preferences, perhaps I would find that there is more beauty in the Gospel than my box could ever accommodate.

Happy New Year!!

2006-01-01T15:07:00.000-08:00

Wow, I can’t believe it’s 2007!!!!!!

Ok, ok so I know it’s not technically 2007, but it might as well be since time keeps passing by so friggin’ fast. I actually wrote the date as 2003 a couple of months ago.

Well, I’m either living in denial or living in the past; either way…I’M OUT OF IT! (Nick…no comment!). Hope everyone who’s not blogging is doing well…yep, that seems to just about cover everyone I know.

The Mercy of Change

2005-12-28T17:02:00.000-08:00

I’m beginning for probably the first time in my life to have the hope that change is indeed a good thing.

“Change is good” is a disclaimer that I’ve put on things that make me uncomfortable, but it’s not something that I rest much weight on when I’m alone in my mind. Change eats away at my comfort and all that I hold dear; it invades, unapologetically, into the way I would have things be and mercilessly rips all of my desires out of their plausible condition, crumbling them to dust in my hands. I fear it because it seems to care nothing for me; if it was anything save indifferent to me, I would suspect that it pursues my destruction before its own interests.

What I am coming to see however is that “change”, “circumstance” and “situation” are nice words that I use to disguise their true identity as the hand of God. My resentment toward my “circumstance” is nothing other than me despising God Himself because I’m not getting my way; likewise, my fear of “change” is nothing other than my lack of trust in God’s provision.

If God “works out everything in agreement with the counsel and design of His [own] will” (Eph. 1:11) then nothing that happens can be in disagreement with His counsel or design. If nothing happens against His design, then everything that happens is congruent with His intent. Therefore, any complaints are complaints to Him directly; circumstance “just works here” so to say.

Thus, the man-centered method of justifying the things that disappoint and injure me is to say that “God never intended this for me” which while making God into a kind of Santa Claus that can fill my stocking with goodies but isn’t allowed to give me coal, is supposed to make me feel better because at least God still “wants me to be happy”. On the other hand, the God-centered approach would be to say that God is just and can do whatever He pleases; that what I, due to my small and foggy vision, now consider a negative circumstance is really something very good for me. It says that God is sovereign and that, although He may want for me to be happy, He’d rather I be saved. Which reminds me of a quote (I believe by C.S. Lewis) “God will save us; at whatever cost to us and at whatever cost to Himself”.

How beautiful, that God is more than benevolent; that He pursues us as a jealous lover and is determined to rescue us from our prostitution. That He infiltrates the walls of my den of iniquity and pulls me out of the mire.

Indeed, I may fuss and kick about the change in my surroundings, but I dare not say that God does not love me.

Beauty Part II

2005-12-20T11:49:00.000-08:00

I was just noting that on my last "beauty blog" I mentioned sunsets as possessing beauty, but said nothing about a sunrise. This was due to the fact that I haven’t been up to see one in…well, anyway; due to the oddity that as of this morning I was up early enough to actually see a sunrise, I can now competently conclude that it too may be part of beauty's multi-faceted occurrences.
In short, this morning's sunrise was beautiful...and for once I was actually awake to see it.
Ah, it reminded me of the good old days before the musician hours kicked in (not that I'm out all night playing shows, I just can't shut off the brain unless it's daytime...pathetic really).

Beauty's Vocation

2005-12-15T22:12:00.000-08:00

A thought came to me the other day with regards to the occurrence of beauty; where it is, and how it came to be. I am not going to address my lack of definition with regards to what beauty is, and therefore this may turn out to be completely ridiculous; how can one consider an attribute’s vocation if they are unaware of its essence?

Regardless, here it is…

What if beauty is objective because God is objective? What if it is appropriate to add to our list of God’s cant’s (i.e. God cannot lie, God cannot sin, God cannot create a rock to big for Him to pick up etc.) that it is also impossible for God to be un-beautiful? What if everything that God touches (hence, everything that was created) possesses some amount or form of beauty because of the Author; maybe it cannot be otherwise. What if it is impossible for God to make an ugly thing?

If God cannot make an ugly thing, then the only ugly things are things of His secondary causation i.e. sin. God created man, and though scripturally speaking, sin is not outside of God’s control, or ultimately His plan, it is still very clearly it is man who sins, not God.

I often marvel at the beauty of a sunset; not so much because it is beautiful, but because its beauty seems to me somehow unnecessary. God could have made a functional “day’s end” that did not have to burst with color and life and footprint’s of a realm untold; or could He??? Maybe it is impossible for God to create an ugly function; perhaps every function He created is yet beautiful because beauty is the medium by which He proclaims and creates all things. Beauty is His fingerprint, and He leaves it upon everything He touches.

It has helped me to breathe in each day, looking at everything as possessing an uncontainable beauty that could not have come from a person's own subjective assessment.

Scatter Brained

2005-12-15T20:46:00.000-08:00

As a result of wishing to not get side tracked from the topic of the Gospel on my other blog, I have decided to start a seperate blog for other thoughts as well to get my scatter brained ideas out in the open; perhaps shed a little light on the subject (I suppose I’m the “subject” needing a little light). If anyone wishes to join me, feel free; otherwise...I'll be here entertaining myself.