Seeing Things

"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

A Christmas Carol
~Charles Dickens

A Piece of Cake

“At the risk of trivializing the hope of Romans 8:28, I want you to think about making a chocolate cake. You begin with bitter chocolate. Then you stir in some dry, tasteless flour. Next come raw eggs and some sour milk. When you thoroughly mix these and several more ingredients and bake the batter in a hot oven, then end result is a lovely chocolate cake.
Now think about your life-the bitter, the dry, the raw, the sour, the heat.  In God's hands, these things will result in something good.  The hope of Romans 8:28 is that, in God's hands, the ingredients of our lives will always work out for our good and His eternal purposes.  Let this promise encourage you the next time you are facing the bitterness, the sourness, or the heat of life.  Know that God is in control."
~ Elizabeth George
Loving God with All Your Mind

Why Beauty Matters: Roger Scruton

My earliest introduction to modern art was probably at the Wexner Center for the Arts on the Ohio State University campus. My oldest brother was a tour guide there, so we liked to visit occasionally. As a child, I was probably most interested because there were interactive "works of art". For example, one exhibit had a refrigerator that you could open and take food out of.  Other pieces had explanations that I could more or less accept. Some I just didn't bother with.
As I've grown up and visited more art galleries and museums I've come in contact with more modern art. I suppose I've never felt sure enough to say that I think it is ridiculous, but I really don't have any esteem (is that the right word?) for most of what falls into the category.
For the past few months, I've been using a book Come Look With Me to talk with my young ESL students about landscape art. I try not to tell them what to think about each painting, or to use leading questions. Several of my students are quite intelligent (I'm not just saying that because I'm their teacher.). It has been refreshing to hear their opinions of the different pieces. When we got to the more abstract pieces, I was a little afraid to criticize, because I wasn't sure how to explain my opinion of art and beauty.
Yesterday, my husband borrowed a few books from the library. One of them was a book on beauty by Roger Scruton (a modern day philosopher and writer). This afternoon I read the introduction while waiting for Joel to finish his large cappuccino at Juan Valdez. Then, since I had ironing to do when we got back to the apartment, I decided to look for something I could listen to while working. That's when I found the following video, a documentary about the same topic as the book.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiajXQUppYY

This is not a video for children to watch.  At least not without parental guidance / editing. 
minute 16, 30 seconds of minute 26, and some starting at minute 41. 

However, for those interested in a well thought-out and clear explanation against what some people define as art, as well as a defense of beauty, I recommend that you either watch the documentary  and or read the book.

Whate'er My God Ordains Is Right

Partia on Whate'er My God Ordains Is Right

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcSf5Tzxe1M&feature=related

1. Whate’er my God ordains is right,
Holy His will abideth.
I will be still whate’er He does,
And follow where He guideth.
He is my God,
Though dark my road.
He holds me that I shall not fall
Wherefore to Him I leave it all

2. Whate’er my God ordains is right,
He never will deceive me
He leads me by the proper path,
I know He will not leave me
I take, content,
What He hath sent
His hand can turn my griefs away
And patiently I wait His day

3. Whate’er my God ordains is right,
Though now this cup in drinking
May bitter seem to my faint heart,
I take it all unshrinking
My God is true,
Each morn anew
Sweet comfort yet shall fill my heart
And pain and sorrow shall depart

4. Whate’er my God ordains is right,
Here shall my stand be taken
Though sorrow, need, or death be mine,
Yet I am not forsaken
My Father’s care
Is round me there
He holds me that I shall not fall
And so to Him I leave it all

Hiding

I'm hiding, I'm hiding
And no one knows where;
For all they can see is my
Toes and my hair

And I just heard my father
Say to my mother -
"But, darling, he must be
Somewhere or other;

Have you looked in the inkwell?"
And Mother said, "Where?"
"In the INKWELL?"said Father. But
I was not there.

Then "Wait!" cried my mother —
"I think that I see
Him under the carpet." But
It was not me.

"Inside the mirror's
A pretty good place."
Said Father and looked, but saw
Only his face.

"We've hunted," sighed Mother,
"As hard as we could
And I am so afraid that we've
Lost him for good."

Then I laughed out aloud
And I wiggled my toes
And Father said —"Look, dear,
I wonder if those

Toes could be Benny's?
There are ten of them, see?"
And they WERE so surprised to find
Out it was me! 

 

~ Dorothy Keeley 

I think I remember that I was supposed to memorize this poem one year in elementary school. 

Hungry for More

Disclaimer: My brain is a bit out of balance due to a cold. I watched the movie in Spanish. I haven't read any of the books in the trilogy.

Juegos del Hambre

Joel wanted to see why the movie is experiencing so much success, so we walked to our neighborhood centro comercial, DiverPlaza, for the 3p.m. showing of Los Juegos del Hambre. So that we wouldn't feel the effects of hunger ourselves, we stopped for granizos (slushies) before entering the theater. The other patrons chose to purchase traditional, overpriced giant buckets of popcorn.

Note to self: In the future, arrive 30 minutes late to avoid tasteless movie previews as well as silly Super C & Vitamin Zinc health propaganda.


Overall, I think they did a good job on the movie. The good guys were good, but flawed. The bad guys were obviously bad, but had some draw to make them believable.

The contrast between the town and the capital is interesting to look at. To use the word humble to describe the townspeople isn't quite right. They are in humble circumstances, but are still proud enough to live as orderly a life as possible. They are a proud people in a simple town. The city is modern, and its people are ostentatious. They are obviously as thoughtless as the fatuous host of The Games. The director didn't have to put much effort into convincing us of this. You don't want to be like them, except perhaps our heroine's cool counselor with the gold eyeliner.

Just? We are relieved when the man in charge changes the rules for the benefit of our team, but when they change them back, our first impulse is to think it is not fair.

Right? The competitors are being watched. Appearances can help or hurt them in the games. There is a reward for actions that appeal to the audience...encouraging deceit.

Effective. Perhaps it doesn't mean much to say that I trembled and cried at points. That isn't anything out of the ordinary for me, even with tacky movies. What surprised me was that as I reflected on the experience, the feelings filled my body, threatening to force out some emotional response again: revenge for Rue, the wrong of K's deceitfulness, and the realization that the end of this Hunger Game was only the beginning.

Time-less

C.S. Lewis, in his second letter to me at Oxford, asked how it was that I, as a product of a materialistic universe, was not at home there. 'Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or wd. not always be, purely aquatic creatures? ' Then, if we complain of time and take such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest?

It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed at it -- how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren't adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home.

A Severe Mercy
The Severe Mercy page 203
Sheldon Vanauken

Adjectives

One day in early March in a class in world civilisations I pointed out that no textbook writer was ever purely objective and that his particular bias could often be discovered through his choice of adjectives. Among my examples was that of an 'enlightened emperor' of China who, doubting his own religion, invited missionaries of other religions into China to present their beliefs. The class was puzzled. The emperor, I said, might be called 'open-minded' but to call him 'enlightened' -having the light of spiritual truth -when he did not, in fact, believe anything, must mean that the author, if not simply careless, must hold that to believe in nothing was to have the light of truth.

A Severe Mercy
The Barrier Breached
page 130
Sheldon Vanauken

Answers to Prayer

In the course of a discussion about the efficacy of prayer, he [C.S. Lewis] made the point that it was altogether healthier to find yourself being used as the answer to someone else's prayer And he told the story of his nagging impulse to go and get an unneeded haircut, finding when he gave in to it that his barber had been steadily praying that Lewis would come by.

A Severe Mercy
Thou Art the King of Glory
page 110
Sheldon Vanauken

Far down the ages now,
Her journey well nigh done,
The pilgrim Church pursues her way,
And longs to reach her crown.

No wider is the gate,
No broader is the way,
No smoother is the ancient path
That leads to light and day.

No feebler is the foe,
No slacker grows the fight,
Nor less the need of armor tried,
Of shield and helmet bright.

Thus onward still we press,
Through evil and through good,
Through pain, or poverty, or want,
Through peril or through blood.

Still faithful to our God,
And to our Captain true,
We follow where He leads the way,
The kingdom still in view.

~ Horatius Bonar

Scotland

JESUS, THY BLOOD AND RIGHTEOUSNESS

Jesus, thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
With joy shall I lift up my head.

Bold shall I stand in thy great day;
For who aught to my charge shall lay?
Fully absolved through these I am
From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.

When from the dust of death I rise
To claim my mansion in the skies,
Ev'n then this shall be all my plea,
Jesus hath lived, hath died, for me.

Jesus, be endless praise to thee,
Whose boundless mercy hath for me—
For me a full atonement made,
An everlasting ransom paid.

O let the dead now hear thy voice;
Now bid thy banished ones rejoice;
Their beauty this, their glorious dress,
Jesus, thy blood and righteousness.

Trinity Hymnal (Blue)
#439

Caedmon's Hymn

Now we must praise heaven-kingdom’s Guardian,
the Measurer’s might and his mind-plans,
the work of the Glory-Father,
when he of wonders of every one,
eternal Lord, the beginning established.
He first created for men's sons heaven as a roof,
holy creator; then middle-earth
mankind’s Guardian, eternal Lord,
afterwards made- for men earth,
Master almighty.

All praise to thee, my God, this night

All praise to thee, my God, this night,

For all the blessings of the light;
Keep me, O keep me, King of kings,
Beneath thine own almighty wings.

Forgive me, Lord, for thy dear Son,
The ills that I this day have done;
That with the world, myself, and thee,
I, ere I sleep, at peace may be.

O may my soul on thee repose,
And with sweet sleep mine eyelids close;
Sleep that may me more vig'rous make
To serve my God when I awake.

When in the night I sleepless lie,
My soul with heav'nly thoughts supply;
Let no ill dreams disturb my rest,
No pow'rs of darkness me molest.

O when shall I in endless day
For ever chase dark sleep away,
And hymns with the supernal choir
Incessant sing, and never tire!

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him, all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heav'nly host:
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

~ Thomas Ken, 1637-1710


can be sung to Tallis' Canon