Me and my ball dress:

Bluegrass Jam

I stayed with Fred and Leon a little bit ago, and got to sit in on a bluegrass jam. It was fun. I have a video of Fred singing, but I'd have to get her permission to post it I think. I also have another video where Leon is making funny faces when she's not playing but that's not her fault because I was making faces at her and she didn't know (I don't think she did anyway) that I was taking a video.

I just finished reading Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge. I was really impressed.

Goudge has some slightly unorthodox views of religion, I think, or at least there are hints of that kind in this book. However there is a great deal of wisdom contained within its pages.

It is not a nice book at all. Happiness is elusive for most of the characters in the book. Also it holds a mirror up to the selfish, striving complaining woman that I am, and that really wasn't pleasant at all.

The lessons to be learned about the nature of love and humility are priceless. Most wonderful of is for a book to show honestly what the cost of real self-sacrificing love. I have been encouraged to work harder, and more importantly to complain less.

This book would certainly be much more appealing to women than men. I think its intended audience is women, but I do believe that a guy could learn a lot from it as well. It has its silly, sentimental moments, but has many poignant, awesome insights as well.

Progress? What progress?

What did I learn from Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples? I learned a sort of drearily hopeful thing: people have always blundered through life. Politics (at least in England and the US) have always involved crazy legislation that generally makes things worse...and yet the human race limps onward.

I learned that people are blinded by their own culture.

I learned that small mistakes have awful consequences.

I learned that few people actually do learn from history, and the mistakes of the past are repeated over and over again.

AND

I learned that the nobility, humility, power, brilliance, or virtue of some people can still inspire and fascinate hundreds of years after they lived and died, even when they seem to be on 'the wrong side' or when you've no idea which side is the right side.

Which leads to the conclusion that we should obey God and love our neighbors, be as wise we can be, and maybe not struggle too hard to always be right, because there are things we cannot see. This may be encouraging in the present chaos concerning money and politics and all that.

Keeping it Holy

Exodus 23:10-12 "Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove. Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your female servant and the stranger may be refreshed."

What is the Sabbath all about? It is about sitting on your butt and thinking holy thoughts? Sabbath also more about getting to church on Sunday mornings.

Isaiah 1:11-17

"'To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?”
Says the LORD.
'I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
And the fat of fed cattle.
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
Or of lambs or goats.
When you come to appear before Me,
Who has required this from your hand,
To trample My courts?
Bring no more futile sacrifices;
Incense is an abomination to Me.
The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies—
I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting.
Your New Moons and your appointed feasts
My soul hates;
They are a trouble to Me,
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands,
I will hide My eyes from you;
Even though you make many prayers,
I will not hear.
Your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean;
Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes.
Cease to do evil,
Learn to do good;
Seek justice,
Rebuke the oppressor;
Defend the fatherless,
Plead for the widow.'"

These people were bringing a multitude of sacrifices. Sounds like they're really on top of things. They forgot one little thing about the Sabbath, though, I think: ceasing to do evil, and doing good. While offering incense and sacrifices you can't just forget about the weak.

We all need Sabbath rest, I believe we were created (pre-fall) to need it. God made the earth in six days and rested, and we were made to do like him. So by all means rest, but consider: many of us are fortunate; we only have to work five days; we only have school fives days; overall we've got it pretty darn cushy. So give rest; don't just take it. There are lots of people who have to work on Sunday, and they dang-well can't help it because they have to keep their job. So help them however you can, and give rest to the single mother, give rest to the elderly, the poor, the miserable. Have them for dinner on Sunday, watch their kids, do their dishes, and for heaven's sake don't "keep the Sabbath" and keep someone else from keeping the Sabbath.

The worst (or best, depending how you look at it) example of this is the story I read in Touchstone magazine about a church that requested a diner to be open on Sundays so that the congregants could eat there, which forced a waitress who attended that church to work on Sunday, so she served them while they sat at their leisure. Ick. It makes me sick. (no, I don't doubt that I'm like that sometimes.)

That is backwards. They should have all been sitting together at the Lord's table in His house, serving one another and instead she misses the chance to go to the Lord's house, and they sit down and eat while she, less fortunate than they, serves them.

Baby Snatching

Keep a close eye on anyone who says "our children are our future," because they usually mean that your children are their future. Anyone who thinks that children are the collective property of the community is kooky.

The Great Gatsby

We read The Great Gatsby in English class. It is my favorite, so far of the novels we have read in class. Anyway, I was really proud of my essay, so I'm posting it. I think one of the reasons I felt the way I did about the book was that I had been meditating on Ecclesiastes, and Fitzgerald does a fantastic job of showing the vaporous, nature of life.

In the Great Gatsby, emphasis is placed on the emptiness of modern life. The characters float here and there, trying to fill their purposeless lives, but continually finding themselves bored by everything. Gatsby is in contrast to the bored masses of people he collects around him. However, it is Gatsby's differentness, the very purpose in his life, that dooms him to misery and loneliness in the end,

Throughout the book there is a great contrast between East Egg and West Egg and between Daisy and Tom's tranquil, soporific life and Gatsby's fantastic, lively parties. Daisy's life could be said to simply happen to her, she is a passive observer and although she is somewhat dissatisfied with her life as it is, she does not like to take action to change it. Jordan Baker exemplifies the carelessness of this set of people. When Nick speaks to her about her careless driving, she says in that case the other drivers had better be careful. Daisy, Tom, and their friends are essentially careless, and leave other people to clean up the messes they make.

Gatsby, on the other hand is not so careless. He has been planning his life in grand detail since his childhood, as Nick discovers from reading the schedule Gatsby had written in the back of “Hopalong Cassidy.” Everything he has done for the past several years has been with the purpose of getting Daisy. He has a purpose in his life which is everything to him, and he will do anything to gain his object. In the end, however, all of Gatsby's attempts at control fail miserably, his sense of purpose is insufficient to make him happy, and after his death his former friends desert him. Gatsby is, indeed, “great” in some ways, but he is ultimately as pathetic and lonely as the others.

Meanwhile, the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleberg look down on everyone. The old billboard represents God. Mr. Wilson points to it when he is speaking about God seeing what goes on. The billboard was put up by an optometrist who has long since disappeared. Likewise, God is apparently absent from the empty lives of the residents of the East and West Eggs. The empty eyes of a missing deity look down on the empty lives of people below. It would appear that, not only is there no immediate purpose in their lives, but neither have they any greater hope than whatever enjoyment can be drawn out of their own dull lives.

The Great Gatsby is an honest book, that presents truthfully the horribleness of a life without God (and thus without meaning). Lives may be bright, even beautiful, but they are brief, without meaning, and often destructive. There is no interconnectedness in life, people are not connected with one another, or with anything- there is no accountability for the damage people cause one another, and there is no change. Everyone continues as they were before, until the light goes out and they die.

Reading through Winston Churchill's A History of the English Speaking Peoples today, as I am wont to do (mostly because if I didn't, I would be in trouble- I'm reading it for school.), I came at length to the French Revolution (or at least to the beginning of it. A phrase about Rousseau struck my already troubled brain.

"Rousseau in his famous Social Contract and other essays had preached the theme of equality. Every man, however humble, was born with a right to play his part in the government of State. This is doctrine long since acknowledged by all democracies, but Rousseau was the first to formulate it in broad and piercing terms."

This idea of the right of everyone to play a part in government appears to me to be deeply ingrained in our culture and completely unexamined.

It seems to me if an "accident of birth" is not enough to entitle someone to be a king, millions of such accidents can hardly be sufficient to entitle millions of people to vote. I mean, from whence came this right?

Furthermore, when such an idea is accepted without question, it is not surprising that the populace of European countries have been known to complain that they cannot vote in US elections. After all, are they not our equals? I demand justice!

Of course, the use of the words preached and doctrine is apposite. After all, the religion of democracy grew from such ideas. I have read The Social Contract and I must admit, I merely thought it foolish. It is entirely made up, reality plays little part in the formulation of his ideas, including his history of mankind. As Chesteron wrote "[T]hey really were wrong in so far as they suggested that men had ever aimed at order or ethics directly by a conscious exchange of interests. Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, 'I will not hit you if you do not hit me'; there is no trace of such a transaction. There is a trace of both men having said, 'We must not hit each other in the holy place.'" And that is probably a better history of the evolution of government than Rousseau ever made. In any case, I still think it's rather nonsense. There was a lot of stuff about the "general will" or something, which is NOT the same as majority rule, only if someone doesn't agree, we must make him agree, which DOES sound like majority rule, and on it goes.

What I was saying in the last paragraph is this: Whether it makes sense, whether it is poorly reasoned is irrelevant; it is doctrine, and it may not be questioned.

Of course, "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." but self-evident is not the same as obvious, and that argument depends on, "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." The thing is that, while men are created equal, they are never born equal. This is why fairness and justice rarely look the same. It would be fair to take Jimmy's eight blocks and give half of them to Stephen, but it would hardly be just, because it's stealing. In any case, I think everything goes crazy when you abandon simple rules (you shall not steal) in favor of "the greater good" 'cause from then on, you're just making stuff up.

How 'bout some folk music?

I was reading an article and it was kinda cool. So I'm sharing it.

Here's the first video mentioned in the article:



Here's the second:



I especially like the line in "Roots" "And we learn to be ashamed before we walk, of the way we look and the way we talk." That's what multiculturalism does. It's not about appreciating other cultures it's about being ashamed of your Western cultural roots.

I can't believe I hear people say things to the effect of "Yeah, they may have believed that at the time the Bible was written but it is impossible to believe in this day and age." As if time makes any difference in what's true or not!

But seriously shouldn't we be more credulous in this age when what was impossible yesterday may just be possible, and even simple today or tomorrow?

And, when you give it serious thought do you think the people in first-century Judea were really unaware, for instance that it was impossible for a virgin to conceive? It sure seems like Mary was aware of that. Joseph too, for that matter.

The only reason they believe miracles and we don't is that we have long ago written off miracles. We can explain everything. And if we can't explain it; it didn't happen. Because we really understand why physics works. And why we're here. And all the rest.

Chicken fried

You know I like my chicken fried
Cold beer on a Friday night
A pair of jeans that fit just right
And the radio up

Well I was raised up beneath the shade of a Georgia pine
And that`s home you know
Sweet tea pecan pie and homemade wine
Where the peaches grow
And my house it`s not much to talk about
But it`s filled with love that`s grown in southern ground
And a little bit of chicken fried

(Chorus)

Well its funny how it`s the little things in life that mean the most
Not where you live or the car you drive or the price tag on your clothes
There`s no dollar sign on a piece of mind this I`ve come to know
So if you agree have a drink with me
Raise you glasses for a toast
To a little bit of chicken fried

(Chorus)

I thank God for my life
And for the stars and stripes
May freedom forever fly, let it ring.
Salute the ones who died
The ones that give their lives so we don`t have to sacrifice
All the things we love
Like our chicken fried

Cold beer on a Friday night
A pair of jeans that fit just right
And the radio up
Well I`ve seen the sunrise
See the love in my woman`s eyes
Feel the touch of a precious child
And know a mother`s love

-The Zac Brown Band, Chicken Fried; Here's the music video.

The bolded text shocked me the first time I heard it. My goodness, is he saying he's glad people died so that he could have the following things?!?! Obviously, it's figurative- they didn't die for that. All the same it would appear that he is saying it was for that lifestyle, etc. How pathetic, doesn't he know that they died for freedom, and justice, and humanity?

Then again, what does that even mean? Those are abstractions. Maybe it's better to die for chicken fried.

Utilizing words

A pet peeve of mine is people who employ the word "utilize" when they could save a few syllables and use "use." Not that it matters any more, but they aren't the same.
I found this on Dictionary.com

tr.v. u·til·ized, u·til·iz·ing, u·til·iz·es
To put to use, especially to find a profitable or practical use for.
Usage Note: A number of critics have remarked that utilize is an unnecessary substitute for use. It is true that many occurrences of utilize could be replaced by use with no loss to anything but pretentiousness, for example, in sentences such as They utilized questionable methods in their analysis or We hope that many commuters will continue to utilize mass transit after the bridge has reopened. But utilize can mean "to find a profitable or practical use for." Thus the sentence The teachers were unable to use the new computers might mean only that the teachers were unable to operate the computers, whereas The teachers were unable to utilize the new computers suggests that the teachers could not find ways to employ the computers in instruction.

Does it matter? Not in the grand scheme of things. Do I care? You bet your fuzzy pink socks I do!

Thank you and goodnight,
Sarah R, Deputy Commander, Vocabulary Police

Whose wish?

"'I see,' said John, 'But what was the second interpretation?'
'In the second,' said Reason, 'the bridge signifies the giant's own favorite doctrine of the wish-fulfillment dream. For this he also wishes to use and not to use.'
'I don't see how he wishes not to use it'
'Does he not keep on telling people that the Landlord is a wish-fulfillment dream?'
'Yes. Surely that is true- the only true thing he did say.'
'Now, think. Is it really true that the giant and Sigismund, and the people in Eschropolis, and Mr. Halfways, are going about filled with a longing that there should be a Landlord, and cards of rules, and a mountain land beyond that brook, with a possibility of a black hole?'
Then John stood still in the road to think. And first he gave a shake of his shoulders, and then he began to laugh until he was almost shaken to pieces. And when he had nearly finished, the vastness and impudence and simplicity of the fraud which had been practiced came over him all again, and he laughed harder. And just when he had nearly recovered and was beginning to get his breath again, suddenly he had a picture in his mind of Victoriana and Glugly and Gus Halfways and how they would look if a rumour reached them that there was a Landlord and he was coming to Eschropolis. This was too much for him, and he laughed so hard that the broken chains of the Spirit of the Age fell off his wrists altogether. But all the while Reason sat and watched him
'You had better hear the rest of the argument,' she said at last, 'It may not be such a laughing matter as you suppose.'
'Oh yes- the argument, said John, wiping his eyes.
'You see now the direction in which the giant does not want the wish-fulfillment theory used?'
'I'm not sure that I do,' said John.
'Don't you see what follows if you adopt his own rules?'
'No,' said John very loudly: for a terrible apprehension was stealing over him.
'But you must see,' said Reason, 'that for him and all his subjects disbelief in the Landlord is a wish-fulfillment dream.'
'I shall not adopt his rules.'
'You would be foolish not to have profited at all by your stay in his country,' said Reason, 'There is some force in the wish-fulfillment doctrine.'
'Some, perhaps, but very little.'
'I only wanted to make it clear that whatever force it had was in favour of the Landlord's existence, not against it- specially in your case.'
'Why specially in mine?' said John sulkily.
'Because the Landlord is the thing you have been most afraid of all your life. I do not say that any theory should be accepted because it is disagreeable, but if any should, then belief in the Landlord should be accepted first.'" C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress, Book 4, Chapter IV

To reason or not to reason

"In the warmth of the afternoon they went on again, and it came into John's mind to ask the lady the meaning of her second riddle.
'It has two meanings,' said she, 'and in the first the bridge signifies Reasoning. The Spirit of the Age wishes to allow argument and not to allow argument.'
'How is that?'
'You heard what they said. If anyone argues with them they say that he is rationalizing his own desires, and therefore need not be answered. But if anyone listens to them they will argue themselves to show that their own doctrines are true.'
'I see. And what is the cure for this?'
'You must ask them whether any reasoning is valid or not. If they say no, then their own doctrines, being reached by reasoning, fall to the ground. If they say yes, then they will have to examine your arguments and refute them on their merits: for if some reasoning is valid, for all they know, your bit of reasoning may be one of the valid bits.'"
C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress, Book 4, Chapter IV

What is the colour of things in the dark?

"'You said that there were two things to say,' said John, 'What was the second?'
'The second was this. Did you think that the things you saw in the dungeon were real: that we really are like that?'
'Of course I did. It is only our skin that hides them.'
'Then I must ask you the same question that I asked the giant. What is the colour of things in the dark?'
'I suppose no color at all.'
'And what of their shape? Have you any notion of it save as what could be seen or touched, or what you could collect from many seeing and touchings?'
'I don't know that I have.'
'Then do you not see how the giant has deceived you?'
'Not quite clearly.'
'He showed you by a trick what our inwards would look like if they were visible. That is, he showed you something that is not, but something that would be if the world were made all other than it is. But in the real world our inwards are invisible. They are not coloured shapes at all, they are feelings. The warmth in your limbs at this moment, the sweetness of your breath as you draw it in, the comfort in your belly because we breakfasted well, and your hunger for the next meal- these are the reality: all the sponges and tubes you saw in the dungeon are the lie.'
'But if I cut a man open I should see them in him.'
'A man cut open is, so far, not a man: and if you did not sew him up speedily you would be seeing not organs, but death. I am not denying that death is ugly: but the giant made you believe that life is ugly.'
'I cannot forget the man with the cancer.'
'What you saw was unreality. The ugly lump was the giant's trick: the reality was pain which has no colour or shape.'
'Is that much better?'
'That depends on the man.'
'I think I begin to see.'
'Is it surprising that things should look strange if you see them as they are not? If you take an organ out of a man's body- or a longing out of the dark part of a man's mind- and give to the one shape and colour, and to the other the self-consciousness, which they never have in reality, would you expect them to be other than monstrous?'
'Is there, then, no truth at all in what I saw under the giant's eyes?'
'Such pictures are useful to physicians.'
'Then I really am clean,' said John. 'I am not- like those.'
Reason smiled, 'There, too,' she said, 'there is truth mixed up with the giant's conjuring tricks. It will do you know harm to remember from time to time the ugly sights inside. You come of a race that cannot afford to be proud.'" C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress, Book 4, Chapter III

Scheduled Posts

From henceforward I shall make scheduled posts whenever I feel like it. This way I can save up material instead of dumping it all at once. So I tell blogger when I want it to post a post and it does so.
No, I did not get up at 4:30 to make this post.

Brief Update

On Resident Aliens, I read chapter 2 and it is becoming evident that it's a liberal book, but I still think there are quite a few pearls of wisdom in there. It is somewhat a matter of presuppositions, though; it's the sort of thing where you'll tend to read in your own views when the author is using words quite differently.

My little sister meanwhile is a budding classics scholar, she said something like this the other day, "Aeneas is the slave of duty, just like Frederick from Pirates of Penzance."

Worth noting

``Sir Jasper Finch-Farrowmere?'' said Wilfred.
``ffinch-ffarrowmere,'' corrected the visitor, his sensitive ear detecting the capitals." P.G Wodehouse, A Slice of Life

If you don't know the mistakes of the present you're doomed to...?

The most appalling thing about reading history or at least about reading a good history is that you discover that people don't think the same way now that they used to, and back then they didn't think the same way as their ancestors. It makes you somewhat suspect that perhaps Reason isn't Supreme after all. I mean, the ancients had reason, the medievals had reason, and the enlightenment philosophers had reason, but reason never brought them to the same point.
The frightening thing is that we can't see the past the way those living in it saw it, and we never will. It makes you wonder if you're just a product of your age just as they were products of theirs. Then you say "Nah" and go back to watching the presidential debate.
Postmoderns would say that there's no way out. You're trapped. You can't think differently if you try, and you're not to be blamed, unless you are a white, male, capitalist oppressor. That is your fault.
But if you really know your history, it will do something for you. You may be able to see more than just the mistakes of the past. You may see the mistakes of the present.
Oh, and back to my other point about Reason. A modern examining the past ought to despair because he has been led to believe that it is pure Reason that makes him think what he thinks. He may, if he is honest, discover that it isn't.

Real Christianity

I've been reading bits and pieces of a book we have floating around our house called Resident Aliens, which claims in it's subtitle to be "A provocative Christian assessment of culture and ministry for people who know that something is wrong," and it may well be just that. I've only made it through the first chapter and so far it's been insightful. I know nothing about it's authors, had never heard about it before, but it's first chapter is certainly enough to keep me reading. I'll probably post more about it; it's quite quotable.

Who cares, modern theologians asked, whether or not Jesus walked on water, or Moses split the Red Sea, or Christ bodily rose from the dead? The important matter is not these prescientific thought forms but the existential reality beneath them. Everything must be translated into existentialism in order to be believed. Today, when existentialism has fallen out of fashion, the modern theologian is more likely to translate everything into Whiteheadian process theology, the latest psychoanalytic account, or Marxist analysis to make it believable.

"We have come to see that this project, though well intentioned is misguided. The theology of translation assumes that there is some kernel of real Christianity, some abstract essence that can be preserved even while changing some of the old Near Eastern labels. Yet such a view distorts the nature of Christianity. In Jesus we meet not a presentation of basic ideas about God, worlds, and humanity, but an invitation to join up, to become part of a movement, a people. By the very act of our modern theological attempts at translation, we have unconsciously distorted the gospel and transformed it into something it never claimed to be- ideas abstracted from Jesus, rather than Jesus with his people." Resident Aliens, Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon