Invictus

by William Ernest Henley

I'll give this guy the award for moxie, though misdirected.  Talks big, but I doubt he can back it up when the chips are down, as they eventually will be...well, he's dead, so they already are.  I wonder what he is saying now...

Out of the night that covers me,Black as the Pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.

Henley, William Ernest. “Invictus” from One Hundred and One Famous Poems, compiled by Roy J. Cook. Contemporary Books, Chicago.1958 Page 95.

The model human

Edited by James K.A. Smith, After Modernity? is a collections of essays written by philosophers, geographers, theologians, and economists, each bringing their different types of expertise to bear on the phenomenon of globalization, each from the perspective of Christianity.  Here is a quote found in that book, in an article called "The Gift of Ruling" by John Milbank.

"Liberalism is peculiar and unlikely because it proceeds by inventing a wholly artificial human being who has never really existed, and then pretending that we are all instances of such a species.”

This is a sobering thought, not less so because it seems accurate.  What kind of society will be created when it is being created for creatures that never existed?  Any why are we heading there so fast, and without comment? 

Citation:

Milbank, John. “The Gift of Ruling” in After Modernity. Edited by James K. A. Smith. Baylor University Press, 2008.

Nietzschean view of "truth"

This is going to sound vaguely Wiki, and that is because it is.  I was looking up when Nietzsche lived to add to my timeline that I keep in my Circa (more on my timeline later, I am quite sure!) While there (on Wikipedia) I scanned down through the information and stumbled across this:

"Perspectivism rejects objective metaphysics as impossible, and claims that there are no objective evaluations which transcend cultural formations or subjective designations. This means that there are no objective facts, and that there can be no knowledge of a thing in itself. This separates truth from a particular (or single) vantage point, and means that there are no ethical or epistemological absolutes. This leads to constant reassessment of rules (i.e., those of philosophy, the scientific method, etc.) according to the circumstances of individual perspectives. 

“Truth” is thus formalized as a whole that is created by integrating different vantage points together."

Nietzsche and I would never be good conversation partners at all.  We could really only discuss what truth actually is, because our definitions are so different.  What I understand the abstract definition of truth to be is "That which corresponds to that which is as perceived by God."  I am one of those darn absolutists...there is "a thing in itself" and truth is not simply a bunch of perspectives on a topic.  The perspectives either correspond in actuality to that object, or they don't.  If they don't then they are not true.


You can see that Nietzsche and I might stumble over that point. But it might be fun, especially if we both had a bunch of coffee and were really riled up.


And, to be quite frank, I admire his mustache!





Citation:
Photo URL: <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Nietzsche187a.jpg/220px-Nietzsche187a.jpg> Accessed 24 March, 2011.
Quotation: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspectivism> Accessed 24 March, 2011.

Water in Excelsis

Water above the firmament:
    winter rain descending; the roots of vitis vivifera clutching earth.
Spring warmth:
     water drawn through vinestock, stem, and leaf; tendril, flower, fruit.
Summer heat:
     sun fierce upon the hills; in the grape now, water, glucose, fructose, tannin, acid; all beneath the thin
     firmament on which the Spirit's brooding leaves behind a bloom of yeast; Saccharomyces ellipsoideus:
     the thumbprint of the Lord and Giver of life.
Then autumn:
     basket, press, vat; sugar and yeast wantoning; earth's old September love revived:2C6H5OH+2CO2;
     fermentation; the warm must, its jaunty cap set drunkenly, rejoices in the pleasure of good company.
Here sing and brawl now
     alcohol, carbonic acid gas, acetic acid, higher alcohols, succinic acid, glycerol, and, chief among them,
Water come of age
     in the vast pots of this old Cana, where the Word, in silence, orders up new wine.
Finally:
     racking off, barreling, clearing, bottling; the long wait - for esters: alcohol and acid reconciled, wine bodied
     forth to roundness and a nose; for oxidation: tannin and alcohol softened, corners smoothed by the Spirit's
     thumb, purple shaded brown
Until
     (in Heaven it is alwaies Autumne) earth's last best gift is brought to sere and velvet elegance,
To Wine Indeed
To Water in excelsis.

...

Let us pause and drink to that.

Capon, Robert Farrar. The Supper of the Lamb. Smithmark, New York, NY, 1996. Pages 83-85

Beware of "Presentism"

Timothy George, in "First Things" magazine, March 2011 makes some interesting comments on our tendency toward "presentism".

C.S. Lewis noted: 'We need intimate knowledge of the past.  Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present.' For the present can become imperial, seducing us into imagining that the assumptions that rein today have always defined what it means to be reasonable, sensible, and mainstream.  Against the tendency toward presentism, Lewis observed that 'a man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; The scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.'

Citation:
George, Timothy. "Reading the Bible with the Reformers" in First Things Magazine: March 2011. Page 28.

Cook's Illustrated

Few and far between are the cooking magazines that make you more thoughtful because of the well-crafted and point-well-taken editorials of the manager of the magazine.


But such are the thoughts of Christopher Kimball, the editor of "Cook's Illustrated" magazine.  Within the first page or two of each cooking magazine, Mr. Kimball writes out his thoughts on cooking, agriculture, thinking, community.  It is like reading Wendell Berry, if he had become a cook instead of a farmer.


Here is a taste (sorry) of Christopher Kimball's writing from the Editorial on page 1 of the Sept/Oct 1998 edition of Cook's Illustrated.

"Two years ago, my wife Adrienne bought me an unusual birthday present: a beehive filled with 30,000 bees plus a subscription to Bee Culture magazine.  Since then, I hav eadded six additional hives, harvested two crops of honey, endured a few minor stings, and become an avid reader of this odd low-budget publication.  Of most interest to me was a recent article containing a survey of American eating habits.  It contained the following facts:

• The ideal food preparation time is 15 minutes.  It is estimated that it will be five minutes by 2030.

• Only one-third of women over the age of 20 bake for fun, even once per year.

• Seventy-five percent of American do not know at 4 p.m. what they'll eat for dinner.

• Three-quarters of American children do not know how to cook.

• In 1995, restaurant sales were greater than supermarket sales.

• The sources of meals consumed t home are: fast food 41 percent; restaurant takeout 21 percent; and supermarket takeout 22 percent.  This means that only 16 percent of the meals we consume at home are (presumably) home-cooked.

"Another survey, this one reported by the New York Times, found that 75 percent of those polled did not know how to cook broccoli, 50 percent couldn't prepare gravy, and 45 percent didn't know the number of teaspoons in a tablespoon.  The article went on to say that "in the last decade (the '80s), cooking has evolved into an optional activity, like skiing or playing chess." But this trend is not just a recent phenomenon.  Back at the turn of the century, convenience foods were already being cleverly inserted into published recipes, often by magazine food writers who were heavily subsidized by the food industry, a practice that continues to this day.   

"The influence of advertising on food consumption became so enormous that that one Iowa novelist quipped almost 100 years ago that "people in the United States do not eat for pleasure...eating is something done just in response to advertising." Another indication of things to come was that in the 1930s the average distance between growing fields and markets was already 1,500 miles. 

"Given were we find ourselves today (with fewer than 20 percent of the meals we eat at home being home-cooked) and despite relatively minor indications to the contrary (such as this magazine), we might begin to wonder at the meaning of the term "inconvenient." the dictionary states that it is the opposite of convenient, which itself is defined as "suited or favorable to a person's needs, comfort, or proposes." One then might reasonably ask, what is our purpose?  I suspect that recent trends would indicate that our aim is to be comfortable, to have our physical needs fulfilled as easily and quickly as possible.  Yet human history has always been driven by greater purposes than mere comfort, among them religion, spiritual awakening, freedom, and a lust for adventure.  If convenience were truly the measure of life's activities, then Lewis and Clark would never have found a route to the West Coast, Jamestown would never have been settled, men would never have landed on the moon, and Martin Luther King would never have left his congregation.  We would also be at great pains to explain the annual pilgrimage to mecca and why anyone has ever voluntarily joined the armed forces.  Boot camp is the epitome of inconvenience. 

"So why are Americans so lacking in spunk when it comes to the kitchen? After all, the rest of our life is consumed with "inconveniences" - like raising children and commuting to work.  Perhaps we are lazy about our food because, for the first time in history, we don't have to cook to eat.  Or perhaps we no longer find anything enlightening about the process of preparing food.  Going to the moon is worth the effort; making chicken Parmesan is less noble. 

"Recently, as I was checking the hives, I took a moment to watch the bees building the honeycomb, the workers swarming over the beeswax foundation, engaged in an endless series of repetitive tasks.  I began to wonder hoe bees see their short, hard lives.  Maybe they dream about flying through a warm summer evening, laden with nectar, floating weightlessly down to the hive entrance, or perhaps they fall asleep thinking of fields of bright purple clover, orange and yellow Indian paintbrushes, and apple trees bursting with fragile white blossoms.  The buzz and rich moist air of the hive must act as a thick blanket, enveloping them as they sleep.  And at the end of their life cycle, a mere six weeks at the height of the season, they must dream of the work itself, of building a honeycomb and filling it with thick goldenrod honey. 

"These are good thoughts - of hard work, of building a home, of working side by side with others.  these are also the dreams of cooks, of those of us who have traded comfort of hard work and instant gratification for knowledge.  In the kitchen, much like bees, we build foundations an fill them with sweet dreams that will be remembered by the next generation of cooks who will stand in our kitchens, preparing our recipes, long after our work is done." (1)

Citation:
(1) Kimball, Christopher. "Busy Bees". Cook's Illustrated #34. Sept/Oct 1998. Pg. 1.

Cancer is limited

When we were at the UNC NICU, another preemie parent said, "Everything is going to be okay."  I'm not sure what he meant by that, but I thought about it a lot afterward, and decided that he was right, regardless of what the hospital moniters were saying about our son.


On the halls of the Mayo Clinic, someone else agrees with me:

"Cancer is so limited. . .It cannot cripple love,It cannot shatter hope,It cannot corrode faith,It cannot eat away peace,It cannot kill friendship,It cannot silence courage,It cannot invade the soul,It cannot reduce eternal life,It cannot destroy confidence,It cannot shut out memories,It cannot quench the spirit,It cannot lessen the power of the resurrection. 

Though the physical body may be destroyed by disease, the spirit can remain triumphant. If disease has invaded your body, refuse to let it touch your spirit. Your body can be severely afflicted, and you may have a struggle, But if you keep trusting God's love, your spirit will remain strong. 

Why must I bear this pain? I cannot tell;I only know my Lord does all things well.And so I trust in God, my all in all.For He will bring me through, whatever befall. 

Our greatest enemy is not disease, but despair."

Alduous vs. Huxley

I recently have been looking at the parable of the seed in Luke 8, and this illustrates the seed sown among the thorns...

































Citation:
www.egodialogues.com/words-language/huxley-orwell.php, accessed 1/31/2011.

Famous World Ideologies, as explained by references to cows

In a simplistic way, this clears things up.  Maybe great for an early homeschooling "Government and Society" class:

• Feudalism: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
• Pure Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you all the milk you need.
• Bureaucratic Socialism: Your cows are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs the regulations say you should need.
• Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.
• Pure Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
• Real World Communism: You share two cows with your neighbors. You and your neighbors bicker about who has the most “ability” and who has the most “need”. Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.

• Russian Communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.
• Perestroika: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the “free” market.
• Cambodian Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
• Militarianism: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
• Totalitarianism: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.
• Pure Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.
• Representative Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
• British Democracy: You have two cows. You feed them sheeps’ brains and they go mad. The government doesn’t do anything.
• Bureaucracy: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
• Pure Anarchy: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.
• Pure Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
• Capitalism: You don’t have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don’t have any cows to put up as collateral.
• Enviromentalism: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.
• Political Correctness: You are associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war mongering, intolerant past) two differently – aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.
• Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

Citation:
Alien Times. "Famous World Ideologies, as explained by references to Cows". Online Posting. July 2001. <http://www.alientimes.org/Main/FamousWorldIdeologiesAsExplainedByReferencesToCows>. 
Accessed 28 January 2011.