Pelosi visits Seattle

Scott St. Claire reports for the Evergreen Freedom Foundation on Speaker Nancy Pelosi's press conference at Sweedish Hospittle in Seattle. Washington congressmen Jay Inslee and Jim McDermott were also present. This was Pelosi's first public appearance since passing the House version of the health care reform bill Saturday night.

Choice quote:

Cong. Inslee... said that the number one benefit of the Pelosi plan will be increased wages for health care workers in the Pacific Northwest. Who knew? No more, he said, would they lag behind those paid in other parts of the country – everybody gets a raise!

Chao Yuenren: Life With Chaos

Click to read about Chao Yuenren, another Chinese linguist. His autobiography is called Life With Chaos. Before he wrote it, his wife wrote her story in Autobiography of a Chinese Woman, and said (in a chapter entitled "The repatriation of an expatriate"), "I want to borrow a chapter from Chao Yuen-ren's autobiography. But he has not written any."

They both had wit.

How could I help thinking of "her"?

I found this man's entry in Wikipedia while reading about his friend Chao Yuenren, who wrote A Grammar of Spoken Chinese (U. California, 1968) and invented Gwoyeu Romatzyh, the geeky Chinese romanization scheme that represents the five tones with variant spellings.

Notice that Liu invented the Chinese feminine pronoun... what an accomplishment! I thought the feminine pronoun would have been more organic. I guess Chinese was even less inflected than I thought.

What a way to die, too.

Liu Bannong
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Liu Bannong (Chinese: 劉半農) or Liu Fu (劉復) (1891 - 1934) was a Chinese linguist and poet.

A native of Jiangsu, he was an important contributor to the influential magazine La Jeunesse during the May Fourth Movement. He began writing poetry in vernacular Chinese in 1917, and was credited with having coined the Chinese feminine pronoun ta (她), which he made use of in his poems. The usage was popularised by the song Jiao Wo Ruhe Bu Xiang Ta (教我如何不想她 "How could I help thinking of her"), a "pop hit" in the 1930s in China. The lyrics were written by him and the melody by Yuen Ren Chao.

In 1920, he left China to study linguistics abroad, first in London, then in Paris. He gained his PhD at the University of Paris, with research done on Chinese tones. During his time in Paris, he compiled Dunhuang Duosuo (敦煌掇瑣 "Miscellaneous works found in the Dunhuang Caves"), a pioneering work about the Dunhuang manuscripts.

He returned to China in 1925, and began teaching in colleges. He collaborated with Li Jiarui (李家瑞) to compile Songyuan Yilai Suzi Pu (宋元以來俗字譜 "The vernacular characters used from the Song and Yuan dynasties onwards"). Published in 1930, it was a key work in the standardisation of simplified Chinese characters. He died of acute illness after a linguistic field-trip, at the age of 44. Lu Xun wrote a short memoir about Liu (憶劉半農君) after his death.

Vindit to self

You're a man, not a victim.

If you were a victim, you'd be a sacrifice.

But if you are a sacrifice, you've long since stepped off the altar.

[equivocation on the meaning of victim]

In Memoriam: William Empson

I picked up Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson off the shelf again today. I got the book a year ago after I first read about him in a survey of modern literary critics. He wrote it at age 22 while studying at Cambridge… it's a "niggling" account of double meanings in all kinds of classic English poems. Sort of a virtuosic experiment in semantics, half factual, half creative.

The way he teases out the things about a piece of writing that give it an ironic effect on certain readers endears Empson to me, especially the care with which he examines so many facts.

There on the flyleaf I read his short biography:

___________

William Empson, born in England in 1906, was educated at Cambridge University. Associated with the Auden group of young poets, he published several volumes of poetry in the 1930s and then turned his interest to literary criticism. He is best known for… etc.

Before World War II he taught English in Tokyo and Peking, and during the war years he was Chinese Editor for the BBC. In 1947 he returned to a teaching post at Peking National University and since 1953 has held a professorship at Sheffield University in England.

_____

Can you imagine my excitement? A young brainy literary hack, who went to China. And during the war years, too… such an interesting time. Could he be a role model for me?

Well, he turned out to be a dogged antichristian, and an enthusiastic bisexual… two things that I have to guard myself against.

What a bummer.

How do I characterize him but as an interesting, gifted, fanciful man, whose life. was. futile?

I dread reading the racy parts in his two-volume biography, but look forward to the parts about typing out a play from Shakespeare for his students from memory during the siege of Peking. How did he do it?

He jostled elbows with Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and C.S. Lewis. When the Queen of England came to see him at the University of Sheffield, he wrote a masque to be performed in her honor.

You won't see his like again. And my paperback copy of Seven Types of Ambiguity even has sewn binding.

See:

John Haffenden, William Empson: Among the Mandarins (vol. 1)

William Empson: Against the Christians (vol. 2)

Selected Letters of William Empson

Abraham's faith: eternal or temporal?

Soren Kierkegaard wrote in Fear and Trembling:

By faith Abraham received the promise that in his seed all races of the world would be blessed. Time passed, the possibility was there, Abraham believed; time passed, it became unreasonable, Abraham believed....

...Abraham became old, Sarah became a laughing-stock in the land, and yet he was God’s elect and inheritor of the promise that in his seed all the races of the world would be blessed. So were it not better if he had not been God’s elect? What is it to be God’s elect? It is to be denied in youth the wishes of youth, so as with great pains to get them fulfilled in old age. But Abraham believed and held fast the expectation.

If Abraham had wavered, he would have given it up. If he had said to God, "Then perhaps it is not after all Thy will that it should come to pass, so I will give up the wish. It was my only wish, it was my bliss. My soul is sincere, I hide no secret malice because Thou didst deny it to me" -- he would not have been forgotten, he would have saved many by his example, yet he would not be the father of faith.

For it is great to give up one’s wish, but it is greater to hold it fast after having given it up, it is great to grasp the eternal, but it is greater to hold fast to the temporal after having given it up....

"And God tempted Abraham and said unto him, Take Isaac, thine only son, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon the mountain which I will show thee."

So all was lost -- more dreadfully than if it had never come to pass. So the Lord was only making sport of Abraham! He made miraculously the preposterous actual, and now in turn He would annihilate it....

And yet Abraham was God’s elect, and it was the Lord who imposed the trial. All would now be lost. The glorious memory to be preserved by the human race, the promise in Abraham’s seed -- this was only a whim, a fleeting thought which the Lord had had, which Abraham should now obliterate.

....Yet Abraham believed, and believed for this life. Yea, if his faith had been only for a future life, he surely would have cast everything away in order to hasten out of this world to which he did not belong. But Abraham’s faith was not of this sort, if there be such a faith; for really this is not faith but the furthest possibility of faith which has a presentiment of its object at the extremest limit of the horizon, yet is separated from it by a yawning abyss within which despair carries on its game.

But Abraham believed precisely for this life,
that he was to grow old in the land,
honored by the people,
blessed in his generation,
remembered forever in Isaac, his dearest thing in life, whom he embraced with a love for which it would be a poor expression to say that he loyally fulfilled the father’s duty of loving the son, as indeed is evinced in the words of the summons, "the son whom thou lovest." Jacob had twelve sons, and one of them he loved; Abraham had only one, the son whom he loved. Yet Abraham believed and did not doubt, he believed the preposterous.

Now that you've skipped down to my commentary, go back up and glance at the words in bold.

Good.

Can you explain to me why Kierkegaard's idea of Abraham's faith sounds like the opposite of that in the book of Hebrews?

Hebrews 11:8-19

⁸By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. ⁹By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. ¹⁰For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

¹¹By faith Abraham, even though he was past age—and Sarah herself was barren—was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. ¹²And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

¹³All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. ¹⁴People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. ¹⁵If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. ¹⁶Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

¹⁷By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, ¹⁸even though God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." ¹⁹Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

This was troubling to me: why is there such an emphasis in the Torah about the worldly benefits of believing and obeying God? The Ebal blessings and Gerizim curses in Deuteronomy 28 are the quintessential expression of this philosophy. If the patriarchs were really looking forward to a heavenly city, then why did God give them all kinds of livestock and servants?

Moses never said anything about eternal life... he only talked about enjoying long life in the land of one's own inheritance.

Here's the key, I think.

Hebrews 11:39-40

³⁹These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. ⁴⁰God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

In earlier chapters in Hebrews, it mentions that we have inherited promises better than they had under the old covenant. Could it be that eternal life is only guaranteed in the New Testament, so that only together with us would the patriarchs be made perfect?

Then, the promises of worldly prosperity were types and shadows of the real things which Christ won for us.

But where does that leave Kierkegaard's analysis of Abraham's faith?

Let me look back a second....

Ah, he errs in making eternity with God seem far away. For anyone, though, death could be imminent.

He also errs in making eternity with God seem small. It does seem small and irrelevant, but according to Hebrews, it was the thing that motivated him in all his wanderings. Lest it seem small, compare your perspective on eternity with your perspective on the sky when looking up through a skylight. You might only see 40 degrees of angle, but at night with a high-powered telescope you could see thousands of stars in that 40-degree sweep. Then realize that if you stood on the roof you could see 180 degrees of horizon in all directions. Then realize that it's only half of the dome, since the other half is facing the other hemisphere of the world. So... open your mind.

Third, he is too vague with the idea of "believing in the preposterous". Abraham did have tremendous faith, and he was expecting something preposterous, but only because he considered faithful the One who promised.

But Kierkegaard does get one thing right when he talks about faith for this life. If God promises something tangible, we ought to expect that tangible thing, even when it appears absurd. If not, we are kidding ourselves to think we have really believe the intangible promises.

John 3:12

I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?

I want to go to Malaysia. Especially when I hear songs like this. You'll notice some people holding up a sign, "We the Rakyat lah". The Rakyat is the people of Malaysia. Lah is a delightful intensifier originally from Chinese that hops onto the end of every sentence. Also, the three languages rapped are Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin, Tamil, and English.



Thanks to Malaysian Artistes for Unity for free downloads.

Playlist

Felix Mendelssohn - Elijah Oratorio, Is not his word like a fire?
Monkey Majik - Change
Ralph Vaughan Williams - English Folk Song Suite
Guang Liang - Tong Hua
Orson Welles, The Mercury Theatre on the Air - The Man Who Was Thursday

A kingdom of priests

1 Peter 2:9

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

This fulfills the mission statement of the nation of Israel.

Exodus 19:1-6

On the third new moon after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. They set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness. There Israel encamped before the mountain, while Moses went up to God.

The LORD called to him out of the mountain, saying, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself.

Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel."

Submit your suggestions for the new NIV

Here is your chance to offer suggestions for the new 2011 revision which will replace the NIV and TNIV Bible translations. My family has used the 1984 NIV Bible for as long as I can remember, so this is mildly earth-shattering to me. Have you found a verse that doesn't make sense, or is poorly worded? Post a comment here.

Courtesy of Better Bibles Blog.

Are his riches exhaustible?

Speech is the channel of relationships
Language is the study of speech.
Does analyzing language demythologize relationships?
Does it make them any safer? Does it unsheathe those events that we look on with wonder, and pull the meat off of them until we wonder how anyone could fall for those cheap tricks we called love and hate? Is that why I adore linguistics? From now on, any emotional or relational reductionism will come back to bite me. Rats.

Does critical study of the Bible demythologize revelation?
In both language and God's word there remains plenty of mystery for us all. But is it atomistic, emergent, or multi-faceted? If the mystery were atomistic, we'd study phrase by phrase, sniffing out every connotation, and tracing the relations between each phrase. If the mystery were emergent, we'd have to recognize it as it arises from simple parts that emit complex meaning when brought together. If the mystery were multi-faceted, it would be in every aspect, every relation, and then in the discourse styles, and the relations between different texts... in short, everywhere in abundance of complexity, visible tangles or no.

But -- treat your subject arrogantly and you'll be sent away empty, thinking there was nothing there in the first place.

Aaron was whose uncle?

Yes, Aaron the high priest and brother of Moses was uncle to Rahab's husband.

And while we're at it, how do you think Amram, Moses and Aaron's father, reacted when he heard that God disapproved of marrying one's aunt? It's possible that Amram was there at the foot of Mount Sinai when the law was given. He lived 137 years, and supposing he had Aaron at age 27 and Moses at age 30, Moses would have been 81 when the law was given and Amram would have been 111.

Lev 18:12 'Do not have sexual relations with your father's sister; she is your father's close relative.'

Life as Art

C.S. Lewis said, "No art lives by nature, only by acts of voluntary attention on the part of human individuals. When these are not made it ceases to exist." (English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, p. 124)

By Art I take a category far wider than painting and music. It includes any human expression that puts meaning into the physical world, for our senses on display.

This is a constructionist view, that art does not exist apart from man and his creativity. Also, even when it does exist, the meaning, the key must be maintained. Maybe there is a universal affinity from expression to receiver, so that any viewer of art, at any time in history will "get it". Maybe there is a cultural affinity. Maybe it's even idiosyncratic, so that anyone of the same temperament will "get it".

While all we share the same passions, we don't express them in the same way. Some even have passions that defy transmission because of the uniqueness of the experience. But we all have language to pass along the key.

Now, can our lives be art? G.K. Chesterton in The Man Who Was Thursday commented on an artsy, Bohemian neighborhood that if those who lived there were no artists, at least they were works of art. But are we our own artists? To what extent do we exercise the freedom and creativity built in us by God almighty to cultivate meaning through our physical existence? Do we recognize it when we do? What message do we send? Doing your makeup, dreaming up and planning events, shaving or not, relational diplomacy, correspondence, finance -- giving -- it's all Art.

Does it stand opposed to the Potter's work in our lives?

Is it more important to make meaning, or to yield obedience in faith, to be made meaningful?

It's so small -- maybe the art we make of our lives will end up like the molecule of oxygen that receives the spent electron at the end of cellular respiration. A leftover, minuscule leftover, but so good at taking out the trash in a grander scheme. For without it the chain reaction that makes energy usable to our cells would stop. But in every respect, all the oxygen molecule does is receive and move out.

Back to the nature or foundationalist versus constructivist argument: all nature sings, but what do we hear? When we hear it is good, we praise a good God -- and when we hear it's not quite right, arrhythmic or out of tune... deatheningly bad, we mourn our sin that brought nature to such a state with us. Such is the message of nature for those who listen. Need we add more with our art?

And what might we add? Art or order? There's no room here to write about how order is both found and imposed, both in dominion before the Fall and in survival after the Fall. But order is at last a gradient of Art, aligning meaning like points on a snowflake, in the physical world on display before our senses... order differs from art in which passions it seeks to express and satisfy.

For life as art, by receiving, giving, enjoying, and expecting the impossible from the Potter who can do all things, return with me to reading Soren Kierkegaard's meditation on Abraham's faith in Fear and Trembling.

Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God

Here's a snip-review I wrote for Facebook's Visual Bookshelf. I have three more chapters to go before I'm through, and I'm growing more sick of it than I was at first. Still, there is a high power of human description.

Review of Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

A blend of perceptive author-speak with vivid negro-speak. She tells of awful lifechoices and lingering dreams, pioneering from hopeless setting to tragic setting but with a gentle imagination. Is the boss-man's wife really proud or is she stifled? Is the low-life really that low? Should death have to come bef...ore empathy? Of stereotypes made and dissolved, the one debunked is the black victim as a stooping, scraping monolith. Choice and passion make it so individual. Which is why Zora was too radically conservative for the New Deal.

"She often spoke to falling seeds and said, 'Ah hope you fall on soft ground,' because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed."

Book collecting

Went to Goodwill with part of my family tonight to look for Halloween costumes. It's the first Halloween we're hitting the streets, ever, and the reason for the change is "Tract-and-Treating". We're going out tomorrow night with armloads of Bible-laced candy to reach neighbors in their houses. Only I never settled on a costume. Instead, I made off with some new books:

The NY Public Library Science Desk Reference (1995)
Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

I could have got the new verse translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but I thought I might already have it in my Norton Anthology. I'll have to check. For Whom the Bell Tolls is copyright 1940, but it's a reprint by Blakiston, not the first edition by Scribners. Oh well... I hope it's good, anyway. Andrew Pudewa once said it's a clever title for a dull book. Lesson: the value of a book is in its content, not in its covers.

Digression: how far can I go in writing like Tristram, and how far should I?

Doctrine Challenge: Original Sin 2

I fell off the band wagon. (This means I didn't post yesterday.) Last night was apologetics meeting; before I was reading whatever traces remained online of Shane Claiborne's scurrilous book Jesus For President... and also mining newspaper editors' email addresses for sending out the Come What May press release. I was kicking myself for not checking the deadlines weeks ago. Then after apologetics, I zonked out on the floor in front of the fire... and then woke up and went to bed at 12:30. No lesson, except that making excuses is as old as the original sin. "This woman you gave me..."

This morning I unknowingly slept in till 7 something. I came down at the call to "take care of email x for person y"... and found Dad making soup for breakfast. It was my job, but he bailed me out.

Today I sent out press releases to 13+ newspapers in the Portland area. Not bad once you get into a routine. Made arrangements for this, that, and the other thing related to the CWM event. Went to choir practice in the evening. Did some more editing, since we need to get an email blast out for an organization tomorrow morning.

And I made orange peel granola. It's in the oven right now. Laura and Teresa will be proud of me.

Lesson: Adam sinned and we suffer the consequences. He slept on his watch, and we all wake up dead in sin. Even while we were oblivious, though, Christ died for us. His life-sustaining power enables us to sustain others.

Doctrine Challenge: Original Sin 1

This morning I got a surprise IM from Jon Winslow, with a challenge to meditate on and live out just one doctrine for one week. He badgered me so, that after thinking it over, I remembered signing up to teach about Original Sin at next week's apologetics meeting. That gives me eight days to learn it and apply it.

My first thoughts on original sin:
"To remain in Adam all die, so in Christ, eternal life is nigh." If Adam didn't represent us all in bringing sin into the world by his disobedience, then how could Jesus represent us all in bringing salvation by his perfect obedience? Why would he need to bring it to us all, if our inherent badness wasn't so universally inherent?

My sister Teresa recommended I read Shane Claiborne's book Jesus for President. I ordered it from the library, so I should be reading it in a few days. In the meantime, though, I read his four appendices off of http://jesusforpresident.org. Eventually I found an excellent response/review/critique to that book and Claiborne's previous book The Irresistible Revolution by Tim Ragsdale.

Ok, the guy's a nut. He's a hippy, a liberal, near-Marxist peace-and-love radical non-resistant Christian. I suppose his stuff is related to Original Sin because he thinks true disciples have to fight poverty on systemic levels and individual levels, as an evil. What's really missing, though, is personal responsibility. Everybody has to find out that they are spiritually bankrupt before they enter the kingdom of heaven. Until that happens, you can tear down the rich all you want and it will still be a zero-sum game.

Yesterday I needed to find out the legality of drawing chalk art on public sidewalks in Portland. According to the Portland Porcupine site, it's usually ok because it's not permanent. It can be a great tool for education or protest when used against abortion. I did hours of research, compiling laws upon regulations upon guidelines upon news articles. It has been done before, but technically it could fall under the definition of graffiti. I called the official in charge; her name was Marcia. She confirmed that the city considers sidewalk chalk to be graffiti unless one has authorization from the property-owner adjacent. They're not so strict about kids drawing in front of their own houses. When I asked for further clarification, she suddenly got suspicious. "What do you want to know for? What are you planning to do?" I told her I was writing a story. "For what?" Uhh, my blog. Which is pretty much why I'm writing this now. "And you said your name was David who?" Nathan... Straub….

From this I gather that knowledge of Original Sin, and experience with its universal effects, makes people quite suspicious of others. Marcia just didn't want me to cost her extra time cleaning up graffiti because of the information I got from her. Well… outlines of infants on the sidewalks of an abortuary will at least give you something cute to look at as you scrub them away.

In review:
1. Adam's Original Sin established all of humanity in a state of spiritual and moral destitution.
2. In the same way, Christ's obedience established all (redeemed) humanity as beneficiaries of grace and righteousness.
3. Original Sin means your problems are inside you, not in the system. You could have the perfect conditioning, and still be a fool, just because of inherited sin nature.
4. Experiencing the universal effects of Original Sin makes us mistrust others.

I just broke out some books that might help on this topic:

Jonathan Edwards, The Doctrine of Original Sin... in Works V.1
John Piper, When I don't Desire God
John Piper, The Justification of God

Hopefully, I'll get some answers from these.

The Woman's Cause is Man's

Tennyson wrote a long, epic poem called The Princess. Within it, there is a section where the prince is trying to woo the princess, after she had failed in her experiment at starting a feminist girls-only school. The prince made this speech. I came across it while I was studying for the GRE Lit. in English exam in the Norton Anthology of E. L. (major authors one-vol. edition). It represents a high-flown but well-conceived view of male-female complementarity and points out that the way to stop sexist oppression or victimization in society by either gender, is through a harmonious marriage. Marriage is where one supports the other, the other protects the one. And together, because they are different, their union makes more progress than they could on their own. This kind of lifestyle means more than feminist or chauvinist theorizing, protesting, litigating, or book-writing (although Tennyson did write a book).

'Blame not thyself too much,'I said, 'nor blame
Too much the sons of men and barbarous laws;
These were the rough ways of the world till now.
Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know
The woman's cause is man's: they rise or sink
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free:
For she that out of Lethe scales with man
The shining steps of Nature, shares with man
His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal,
Stays all the fair young planet in her hands--
If she be small, slight-natured, miserable,
How shall men grow? but work no more alone!
Our place is much: as far as in us lies
We two will serve them both in aiding her--
Will clear away the parasitic forms
That seem to keep her up but drag her down--
Will leave her space to burgeon out of all
Within her--let her make herself her own
To give or keep, to live and learn and be
All that not harms distinctive womanhood.
For woman is not undevelopt man,
But diverse: could we make her as the man,
Sweet Love were slain: his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference.
Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;
Till at the last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words;
And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time,
Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be,
Self-reverent each and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities,
But like each other even as those who love.
Then comes the statelier Eden back to men:
Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm:
Then springs the crowning race of humankind.
May these things be!'
Sighing she spoke 'I fear
They will not.'
'Dear, but let us type them now
In our own lives, and this proud watchword rest
Of equal; seeing either sex alone
Is half itself, and in true marriage lies
Nor equal, nor unequal: each fulfils
Defect in each, and always thought in thought,
Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow,
The single pure and perfect animal,
The two-celled heart beating, with one full stroke,
Life.'
And again sighing she spoke: 'A dream
That once was mind! what woman taught you this?'

Notes from Church campout

Here's my first post here in a long time... this Sunday my family and I went to the HoFCC church campout at Metzler park somewhere down by Molalla. It's an hour and a half drive and it was hard to sleep in the van. Anyway, Nathan Garvey preached from the story of how Absalom met his death at the hand of Joab and his men in 2 Sam. 19.

Nathan focused on the consistent pride and arrogance of both Absalom and Joab.

"Pride is rebellion against, and unbelief in, God's sovereign will.
Humility is obedience to, and trust in, God's sovereign will."

"Until we understand the effect and consequences of our pride, we'll never understand the value and significance of the cross."

Books I've added to my library recently:

Ibsen, Henrik. Four Major Plays
Cawley, A.C. (ed.) Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays
Willey, Basil. The Seventeenth Century Background
Albee, Ernest. A History of English Utilitarianism
O'Neill, Eugene. The Later Plays of Eugene O'Neill
Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: the American West as symbol and myth
Marlow, Christopher. The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus
Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim's Progress

Latest theological reading:

John Calvin, Institutes 3.19 "Christian liberty"
Institutes 4.13 "Vows"

Martin Luther, "Introduction to Romans"
Treatise on Christian Liberty