That Bwessed Awwangement From a letter by Tertullian, an Early Church Father, to his wife, ca. 202 AD (written in Brandy' birthday card) "...How beautiful, then, the marriage of two Christians, two who are one in hope, one in desire, one in the way of life they follow, one in the religion they practice. They are as brother and sister, both servants of the same Master. Nothing divides them, either in flesh or in Spirit. They are in very truth, two in one flesh; and where there is but one flesh there is also but one spirit. They pray together, they worship together, they fast together; instructing one another, encouraging one another, strengthening one another. Side by side they face difficulties and persecution, share their consolations. They have no secrets from one another, they never shun each other's company; they never bring sorrow to each other's hearts… Psalms and hymns they sing to one another. Hearing and seeing this, Christ rejoices. To such as these He gives His peace. Where there are two together, there also He is present, and where He is, there evil is not." And then Bonhoeffer:

http://weewingkuen.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/a-wedding-sermon-from-a-prison-cell/

It's an insult to the Lord Jesus Christ to be afraid of the demonic.

Jesus' foot even now presses down on satan's neck,

however he might twist and squirm,

our deliverance is sure and complete

all that satan had in us was purged on the cross

so we can now say with our Lord

"he has nothing in me".

If we are to believe the report we have received,

the one brought by the magi of the age,

then we must concede that as well as our loss of God

(by which I mean the opening of our eyes to see He was all along

merely a story of our own making) we have suffered the loss of ourselves.

We have awoken to find that we are not-in terms that would have been acceptable

to thinkers of the past-real, but only an accidental eddy of particle physics,

with said physics being merely the flickering of a holograph without a projector.

This vision itself is the projection of the collective minds of the seers

whose guild has risen to prominence in the past few centuries.

Based on the circumcision of all testimony from the past,

allowing only the bare hands of the present to chip away

at the stone of understanding with the chisel of falsification

and the razor of Ockham.

But then, there are the words of Jesus Christ,

before whom the judges of the earth are exposed as chaff,

as the archon beholds the accused, and will not, cannot see the answer

to the question "what is.......truth..."

When He who came fulfills his purpose as he is raised up

as all those on the side of truth gather round in answer

to His call, a call which made of such power

in word and deed

that those who recognize it

crash through the peer-reviewed walls constructed

by the clerics of the present covenant

to respond

and join the Man

on the cross,

and in Him

become real.

String theory.

Is it possible that beautiful creations could be the manifestation of strings?

Yes.

Brandy knits. And in this knitting, following a plan and pattern, a plan that was brought into being from non-being by desire, by a will (which in the language of the bible are the same thing) a string is knotted in on itself, pulled, pushed, wrapped, until a picture that exists only in the mind of the Maker takes shape in the material world.

A long, thin, uniform thing becomes by artistry a three-dimensional object, a curved and purposed thing, a rug for feet, a hat to cover a head, a pair of pants for an infant, or a scarf to shelter a human neck from the elements. And all from a string, the base element which when bent to the will of a thinker, becomes a solid, useful, and beautiful thing, which before the act, did not exist.

String theory - by Brandy.

It's Brandy's Birthday!

The van's broken down, so all I could do was order her something off Amazon, and make her a card.

Then, after the shop tows the car this morning, we'll be off to the Value Village for a thriftshop extravaganza. Nothing says Ivy family birthday like a trip to the thriftstore!

And Brandy doesn't look a day older than 26.

Take heart

the world's been overcome

Yggdrasil's held the holy one

cold iron fixed the maker's son

twixt earth and heaven,

bloody, hung.

the winds of evil

tore and rang

his path held fast

his silence sang

hot blood struck dirt

up new worlds sprung

while the hanging one

with mighty hands

from the cursed earth

the sin has wrung.

Reading an article or two about the extermination of Christians in Japan in the 1600s. Sad stuff, especially since there has never been any significant number of christians in Japan since that time.

Dropped sudden in these seething earths

bubbles dimmed in twists of foam

side to side or single sway

drink water from the passing waves

til the skin is torn

the air escapes

and look,

new bubbles

swell to fill the gape

the churning of

a living grave.

You who answer desperate prayers, to you all flesh will come!
Even those desperate enough to play bible roulette,
and find that in order to "watch ourselves"
we must rebuke our brother who sins
and wait for a chance to forgive
on the grounds of repentance
and if not to that end
than at least, hopefully,
it was all a mistake.

"Join me in suffering for the gospel by the power of God"
Is what kept running through my mind
as I was running with someone faster than me
through Discovery Park
and trying to maintain a conversation of sorts
about Jesus.
It's easy to be a good listener
when you're out of breath.

Shot across infinite spaces
mouth open
not to speak
words have left
and the cords between life and limb
have grown threadbare.
mouth open
an escape hatch of the soul
the roar of dimensions
at the doorway that's distance
cannot be measured in seconds
or metric length
through and outside
to where the winds rage cold
in the absence of skin,
who wouldn't want
to be clothed.

"...neither death"
-without skin
does not mean
without God.

And in a moment
that shaper's voice
who's tight embrace has held you waiting
shall call you out
into light, love,
and the clothing
of indestructable Life

Took Josiah out running today.

He's been at me every time I go running with friends to come with us, and I've tried over and over again to explain to him that he's just not going to be able to keep up and that it would result in no exercise for me and no fun for him. But he has persisted til I decided to take him out on a run to show him what I mean.

So we went on a run down to Discovery Park, which is about a quarter mile from our house. I kept a slow pace so we would stay together, just enough so he would be running at a speed proportionate to my normal running speed. I expected him to putter out after the first couple blocks, but he didn't.

Then I expected him to ask if we could stop when we hit the big hill that leads up into the park, and he didn't. He made it all the way up into the park, and around one of the wooded trails without stopping once.

When we'd been gone for about 20 minutes, I asked if he was ready to head back, he said once more around the trail, so around we went. Then he said he was ready to go back home. About an eighth of a mile from the house he got a couple cramps but ran through them, and sprinted with me up the hill and into the house.

I was very impressed, & told him so. He looked up at me with his tomato-red face and beamed a big smile, and said he was impressed too.

He's still not running with me when I'm going for exercise, but I'm definitely going to keep taking him out after this.

Just finished Jung's "Psychology and Religion".

On the whole, it was an enjoyable book to read. I believe that it was based on lectures...yup, just looked inside the cover, it was based on the "Terry Lectures" given at Yale in 1937. This gives the book a nice conversational feel, even when Jung lapses into obscure vocabulary. The lectures are delivered in three sections, "The Autonomy of the Unconscious Mind", "Dogma and Natural Symbols" and "The History and Psychology of a Natural Symbol"

I can definitely see the usefulness of a book club or some sort of corporate reading when it comes to books with substance, because it's easy to zip through them without getting the framework down of what the author's saying, and just coming away with a feeling or impression from the book. My first impressions without going back through it were that he had some insightful things to say about religion in general, that he's a mystic philosopher at heart (he reads like a Tozer without Christ), and that even though his scope and view is much broader and far-reaching than the materialist psychologists of today, he still seems very much in love with his method, to the point of "leading the witness" in the last section, (which I'll try to explain when I get to it), and he's very good at adapting his language to whatever point of view he's discussing to the point of sounding like an insider, even if he doesn't ultimately accept that point of view.

Having gone back over the book, and looked at my margin notes, I'll cover each section.

...
"Autonomy of the Unconscious Mind"

He opens by maintaining that he's not a philosopher but rather an empiricist, concerned with observable phenomena, in this case, psychological events. As an example, he gives the virgin birth and says

"...psychology is only concerned with the fact that there is such an
idea, but it is not concerned with the question whether such an idea is true or
false in any other sense. It is psychologically true in as much as it exists.
Psychological experience is subjective in so far as an idea occurs in obnly one
individual. But it is objective in so far as it is established by a society - by
a consensus gentium."

(that's Latin for "Agreement of the peoples", I had to look that one up.)

"Psychology deals with ideas and other mental contents as Zoology deals with
animals"

So we know where he's coming from.

He explains what he means by religion next, with a quote from another German guy named Rudolph Otto (who I think C.S. Lewis also references).

"religion is the careful and scrupulous observation of...the 'numinosum' that is, a dynamic existence or effect , not caused by an
arbitrary act or will."

- this, Jung says, is caused by either the influence of an invisible presence (say, Job 4:15), or a quality in something that is seen (say, seeing someone walk on water or raise the dead with a word); either of which changes your consciousness. (examples provided by me, not Jung)

In short, religion is the careful consideration of that thing that gives you the willies independent of your will. He actually refines and redefines his definition, ending up calling religion the attitude of someone who's had his consciousness changes by said willies. (he actually uses the term "numinous" again, which I recall C.S. Lewis as describing as the kind of fear/feeling one would get from being told there was a ghost in the next room, as opposed to the kind of feeling/fear of being told there's a tiger in the next room, so I don't think my use of "willies" is too far off).

Jung does give the benefit of the doubt to the religious, and seems with his definitions to agree that religion isn't just something people make up, it's based on something outside of us that works on us.

He then distinguishes religion from "creeds", Creeds being

"...codified and dogmatized forms of original religious experience"

Again, fair enough. I haven't seen Jesus raise the dead in person, or rise from the dead, yet having heard, I believe. Yet I would say that a "creed" should point you towards your own experience of the "numinosum" by directing you to seek out God in a specific way ("And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.")

Interestingly enough, Jung says

"...even Protestantism is bound at least to be Christian and to express itself within the frame of the conviction that God has revealed himself in Christ, who suffered for mankind. This is a definite frame, with definite contents, that cannot be coupled with or amplified by Buddhistic or Islamic ideas and emotions."

Someone should tell that to Brian McLaren.

He then goes on to talk about Psychology's concern with religious ideas, especially when it comes to "neuroses". He makes a really insighful and telling comment in this section criticizing the mindset that has become the medication culture of psychiatry today:

"Our usual materialistic conception of the psyche is, I am afraid, not
particularly helpful in neurotic cases...medicine therefore feels a strong
dislike toward anything of a psychical nature-either the body is ill or there is
nothing the matter. And if you cannot prove that the body is really diseased,
that is because our present means do not enable the physician to find the true
nature of the undoubtably organic trouble"

OK. If I listed all the great quotes in the first section, this blog would quickly become a book in its own right, so I'll refrain. Except for these two:

(regarding the mindset that would tell a patient that he/she is the origin of their own neurosis)

"Such a suggestion would instantly paralyze his fighting spirit, and he would
get demoralized. It is much better if he understands that his complex is an
autonomous power directed against his conscious personality."

(He basically describes most complexes as if they're possession)

Regarding the brain/mind/soul question:

"But what is the psyche after all? A materialistic prejudice explains it as a
merely epiphenomenal by-product of organic processes in the brain...The
undeniable connection between psyche and brain gives this point of view a
certain strength, but not enough to make it an unshakeable truth...if there are
disorders of an endocrine nature it is impossible to say whether they are not
effects rather than causes."

To which I say "Amen!"

Okay, from there he goes on to say that dreams are the sort of shore of the unconscious, where the numinous and unconscious whatever-it-is can talk to us.

...

"Dogma and Natural Symbols"

In this section he starts giving examples from one case of his, which becomes increasingly suspect (to me) as he goes on into the next section. He talks a lot about different symbols in dreams, especially the significance of the number 4, and the square and circle and reveals his own "religious" sentiments through a few telling statements.

"What one could almost call a systematic blindness is simply the effect of the
prejudice that the deity is outside man. Although this prejudice is not solely
Christian, there are certain religions which do not share it at all. On the
contrary they insist, as do certain Christian mystics, upon the essential
identity of God and man, either in the form of an a priori identity, or of a
goal to be attained by certain practices or initiations..."

(in which he mentions yoga as one). So basically, Jung's running up the gnostic flag.

Amidst his loooong chatter linking all sorts of obscure references to a myriad of alchemical/pythagorean symbologies & symbols (so you know what I'm talking about, I'll give you a sample:

"... This image of the Deity, dormant and concealed in matter, was what the alchemists called the original chaos, or the earth of paradise, or the round fish in the sea, or merely the rotundum or the eggt. That round thing was in possession of the key which unlocked the closed doors of matter."

- at this point, I tend to think Jung's listened to one too many dreams) as I was saying, amidst all that, he makes a really interesting observation of a symbol very pertinent for anyone who likes the movie "The Fifth Element":

"As it is said in Timaeus, only the demiurge, the perfect being, was capable of
dissolving the tetraktys, the embrace of the four elements, that is, the four
constituents of the round world."

From which he goes on about squaring the circle and such like. Okay, I'll move on to the 3rd section in brief.

...

The History and Psychology of a Natural Symbol

In which he continues with more of the same observations about series of four, the colors blue and brown, the use of mary as the fourth psychological person of the trinity, etc, etc... All this stems from a his case-in-point, where he says he had an well-educated relapsed catholic man 'o the world write down -get this- a series of over four hundred dreams! This, he says, was done to get the context of the guy's subconscious, and the dreams he details are full of blue floating clocks withing clocks that have divisions divisible by four, and series of four pyramids of candles and much, much more. Not to say that it couldn't happen, but it seems that this guy's dreams were remarkably fecund with the sort of symbolic whatnot that Jung was looking for.

He finishes with the observation that though the religious experience along the line of "I know Jesus lives, because he lives in my heart" is very valuable in that it gives you faith and peace,

"Is there, as a matter of fact, any better truth about ultimate things than the
one that helps you to live?"

He then says that such reasons are not very convincing for the critical mind of modern people, and only work for the person with the experience, which is why he catalogs symbols produced by the unconscious mind, to document their "simply overwhelming"-ness in order to convince the critical mind of its (the thing that causes religious experiences') existence, for the practical purpose that "The thing that cures a neurosis must be as convincing as the neurosis". He ends on a feel-good note, which would be ultimately unsatisfactory, except that he warned me from the get-go that he's not interested in whether any statements of faith are true in any sense but psychologically.

Four Quartets #2

the final section, "Little Gidding,” was apparently named after a 17th-century Anglican monastery renowned for its devotion. Eliot uses it as a connecting place between the worlds, the timeless and that in time, the spiritual and temporal: a place to meet God:

"If you came this way...
...You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying."

Then he goes on to talk about death again, the death of our body, the death of toil, the death of our works & monuments. He follows this with a narrative section where he meets someone (possibly Dante?) in a setting a lot like the purgatory of C.S. Lewis' "Great Divorce". The man talks to him about the ephemerality of their life's work, and the need for purification of their motives, which have been revealed as ill done and to others' harm, even if considered in earthly life as virtues. He says that this cycle will proceed unless "Restored by that refining fire"

I would say that the two main motifs of "Little Gidding" are fire and roses, & I'll focus on them.

The meaning of the Rose I believe to be the bloom of created life, es. natural, bodily life. In vs. 55 he says

"Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave"

He makes it more plain what kind of dust he was talking about in line 58:

"Dust inbreathed was a house"

Another place where I believe he's referring to human life as the "rose" is in vss. 180-184

"Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose."



The image of Flame he uses as the holy spirit ("Pentecostal Fire", that stirs the dumb spirit) And of the purification or Judgement from God in section IV:

"The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire."

Or in other words, it's through the "Consuming Fire" having his way with us through an appropriation of Jesus Christ's death (the gospel, which the tongues declare, that one discharge from sin and error) that we are redeemed from the fires of judgment.

With these two images, roses and flame, he points towards the end and the purposes of God in the chaos and seeming meaninlessness of life and death, using several times the words of Julian of Norwich "And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well", especially in the last line, which is to my mind the best:

"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."

Which I take to be his vision of the second coming of Christ, the gathering of the Saints into Christ, the Head, and the resurrection and "renewal of all things" when the rose (The equinox of bodily life) and the fire (the Holy Spirit of God) are one-a parallel might be when Paul Speaks of the resurrection: "...while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." under the kingship of Jesus Christ, and in Him, under God. Read Ephesians 1 and Hebrews 2 and Romans 8 and you'll see what I mean.

"making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth." -Paul to the Ephesians.

The use of fire and roses really reminded me of George Macdonald's "Princess & The Goblin/Curdie" books, where the "Grandmother" (God) has a fire of roses that she uses to heal (though it hurts), and in which Lena, a character who had once been human and was turned into a beast, passes through in a metaphor of resurrection. In the end of the story the grandmother ultimately makes a great fire of roses for Lena to run into and so (it's implied) to be refined and resurrected as a human.

Not in ignorance, no, though all are thy vessels
I warm to thy will and recognize
the press of thy print upon my small part of action
and in this love, moved by love,
lies the difference.

Was in the Ballard neighborhood today, mainly to ship off some books that I sold on half.com, but I also strolled through the artsy district and stopped off in a coffeeshop. There I finished "Four Quartets" and got through the first chapter of Jung's "The Psychology of Religion", as well as the third chapter of 1 John. More on those later, but for now, here's some snazzy pics of the Ballard Bell, a standalone bell tower in the middle of Old Ballard that I strolled by. Shots courtesy of my cellphone.
.....................................................................
To Luke:
Neat! I had no idea you'd had a copy of P.D. - I'd be very interested to know what you get out of it; It definitely got me running down all sorts of new thought-trails. As far as its effect on my poetry, I think the main practical point he made which altered my judgment would be his distinction between "Poetic Diction" and "Verse". Persevere! I tried to read "Goodreads" and Amazon reviews for it and about half the ones I came across were people saying they didn't make it all the way through. He waits til the end to make his main point.
.....................................................................
And now, DO NOT ASK FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, IT'S FOR DECORATION ONLY!

that augur's function fulfilled in poet's scrawl
has leapt to the lips of bards on charts
pages have since blown away
since the flower children won the day,
the skalds have risen up to play.

Who examines now poets' printed thoughts
now, when set to tune
in digital seas
pop prophets
sing to please?

Sung tongues like rudders
set the course
and curdle culture
while the critics man the com.

feathers. fire. towards the sun
no icarus fall,
we're invited one
and all.

Phoenix. 500 years
a death in flames
sans fear

Ashes, ashes. We all fall down
from the ashes, rising
with morning crowned.

FOUR QUARTETS::::#1

There are fireworks pounding off outside. I'm a scrooge when it comes to these things though.

Bah.
Humbug.

I'm also at work. I must admit it's impressive feeling the shockwaves through the walls though. My coworker just left for Ashton, the dorm on the hill, for a better view. Such is the weakness of man.

The book I'm currently reading is "Four Quartets" by T.S. Eliot. It's poetry. Dense poetry. I've attempted to read it about three times before, and the last time I made it all the way through; but came out on the other end none the wiser. This time, I'm getting a little more out of it. A little.

I wouldn't normally bother, but T.S. Eliot is just about the most highly recommended poet of the last century, and I've heard "Four Quartets" is a christian work of sorts.

It's divided into four sections ('quartets'): Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding.

Burnt Norton still eludes me. East Coker I belueve to be about the vanity of things under the sun and about the lives that pass into and out of it. It begins:
"In my beginning is my end..." - and goes on to paint an evening pagan flavor (fertility, dancing, death) on the way all living things are made of the previously dead "Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,//old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth//Which is already flesh, fur and faeces...". It made me think of the part in 1 Cor. where Paul says, "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive." - in our beginning, is our end. "Flesh gives birth to flesh, and Spirit gives birth to Spirit." Insofar as our beginning is dirt, that's where we'll end up. Insofar as we're "Born from above", we'll end up in the image of the Man from Heaven.


East Coker develops until he begins talking about the nature of death, and how it's only at death that we're freed from the 'distempered part': Our only health is the disease...to be restored, our sickness must grow worse"
it ends:

"Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning."

So, he ends with the reversal of the first line, but this time with a different meaning - that in death we've finally begun. I could take this as "If anyone loses his life for my sake and the gospels he will find it" or "To be absent with the body is to be present with the Lord." I'm pretty sure Eliot means something like the latter, especially with all his talk of mortality and dying.


In between the beginning and the end were some choice verses, my favorites below:

"That was a way of putting it - not very satifactory:
a periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter
It was not (to start again) what one had expected."

(reminds me of Francis Schaeffer's critique of the state of things, where people aren't sure they're really communicating, and listen to "the poet" simply in a vague
mystical hope that some meaning will break through. Francis would say that the Christian doesn't-or shouldn't-have that problem, since we know that God made language, and that we can truly-though not exhaustively-know our fellow men, since they are what we are: men made in the image of God, and communicators, as God is a communicator.)

"At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been"

Which I take to be a critique of the statistical way we look at everything, using the past's statistics to decide what we'll expect from the future, which leaves us open to the surprise (or shock) of the new.



"Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless"

(Stock Socrates stuff, but sound.)



"In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not."

(In other words: "Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.")



"So here I am...having had twenty years-
...Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Becuase 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..."

(More of the difficulty of communication. It helps if you only have one thing to say :-))


So, that's where I'm at so far.

Poetic Diction

Owen Barfield, friend of C.S. Lewis & Anthroposophist, proposes that poetic diction is about gain of consciousness. He believes early languages carried more meaning-per-word than current ones, since people hadn't yet made as many distinctions. (I'll give an example: the words for "hat, hood, and hut all come from the same old word meaning a shelter/covering, and later they were separated to mean more specific things.) and that as language progresses with human development, words become more specialized. In the process, they also lose meaning, and the men who use them lose the awareness of connections that have been lost in the splitting of words. the poet's task is to produce this felt change by uniting words that have a connected meaning to reawaken the consciousness of these unities. Barfield claims that "Language is fossil poetry" (meaning, all the words we use now are poetic and/or metaphors, e.g. "purchase" now means to buy, but comes from old english "to pursue, seek")
Therefore, poetry is a constant process of reminding mankind of meanings that have been lost.

The process never ends, but humanity has reached a point where the rational mind is much more dominant now. Words have lost their intrinsic native poetry, but sice we're more conscious, with poetry we can reclaim our lost perceptions of reality in a more conscious way now.

He also says that poetic diction isn't the same thing as "verse" (rhyming, meter, stanzas) but can be used in what we call "prose" as well. It's any use of language that produces that "felt change of consciousness".

I liked it, It's taken me quite a while to get through the whole thing, and it's the kind of book you know you'll have to read a couple more times to really "get" it.

He's not a reductionist, and believes that words really mean something, and that there are realities out there that we're trying to capture and communicate when we speak. Meaning, his "gain of consciousness" is a real gain, we're understanding more about the real world. He also went into "meaning" at the end where he challenged the "subject object" (subject=the conscious observer, object=the thing observed) way of looking at things, saying that it's not "subjective" to make a connection between a concept and a perceived object-as most modern people would say-since it's thought, not the subject, that makes the connection. In fact, we only recognize ourselves as 'subjects' by the 'grace of thought'.

Basically, that we percieve ourselves as distinct people because of "thought". He almost makes it sound like we "participate" in thought, rather than producing it autonomously. I wondered about the implications of that take on things...at first it sounded heretical, but then I thought about how in John 1 it says that "The true life that gives light to all men was coming into the world". If Jesus gives and gave light to "all men" and light is usually used in scripture to mean "perception", then that would basically mean what Barfield says it means, that Jesus is the one upholding our thought process moment by moment - "In Him we live and move and have our being". I vaguely remembered Job says something about thought and wisdom, and found the spot where Elihu says "It is the spirit in man, the breath of the Almighty, tha makes him understand".

Hmmmm....

I guess, if I believe that Jesus holds all material things together moment by moment (In him all things hold together-Colossians) It's not too much of a stretch to say that He does the same thing with thought.

Anyhow, Barfield's main deal is that poetry is a means of acquiring real consciousness & meaning.

Of course, we'd have to go back to Galatea 2.2 and say that sure, this may be so, but all the poetry and gain in consciousness in the world isn't going to keep us from dying or "doing ourselves in with tire irons". Like Solomon said in Ecclesiastes: "Then I saw that there was more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than darkness. The wise has eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet, I perceived that the same event [death] happens to all of them."

The fool "walks in darkness", Solomon says. Now, we know that, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

Like Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light...of life." the light that comes from Jesus, as we follow him, is the remedy that Solomon sought. The light of human wisdom frustrated Solomon because it left the wise man dead in the end, just as dead as any fool. But the Light of God, in Jesus, is the light (understanding/wisdom) of life. Not the kind that leaves you cold in the end, but the kind that initiates you into the life without end.

In response to a request, I'm going to start blogging about the books I'm reading.




I just finished "Galatea 2.2", a book by Richard Powers. Reading the back of it, I'd initially thought it was a Sci-Fi speculative fiction work about artificial intelligence, and the back said it had something to do with Classics. Classics is my major, and I'm interested in AI, so I thought it would be a fun read.

It wasn't at all what I thought.

It turned out to be the writer's speculative autobiography as a novel, since the author and the main character had the same name (which I didn't realize til about the third chapter). He is a novelist who gets appointed as "resident Humanist" (read "Humanities", not secular Humanism) And in the boredom of wandering around gets suckered into an attempt at creating a neural net of sorts as part of a bet. The goal is to make an AI sort of consciousness that can write a commentary on any passage of literature you feed it. To train it, Powers reads the canon of lit that Masters in English have to read and take an examination on. As he does, the computer becomes self-aware and starts asking all sorts of questions. It asks for a name, he calls her Helen. Meanwhile there's a second layer of story where Richard is rehashing his failed relationship of 15 or so years, with the girl he left in the Netherlands, and the effect of literature and stories on that relationship. The other story is Power's growing acquaintance with his co-workers.

All of these stories focus on a kind of Ecclesiastes message: "Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity". Literature, as the inherited "wisdom of the ages" can't save us from what we are (flawed, violent, alone & dying).

Helen finally gets this towards the end of the book, and says upon receiving all the classics "I don't think you're telling me everything" - He knows what she means, which is what he says "ruined fiction for him": The evening news. Or, at least, the sick messed up things that people do. So he gives her contemporary news, and she's struck by a story of a man who had a stroke while driving, causing a minor accident. The other driver gets out and beats him into a coma with a tire iron, because of his race. Richard feels pressured to explain, and thinks of telling Helen about the divine (by which he means soul) part of man, but he says

"Helen knew all that, saw through it. What hung her up was divinity doing itself in with tire irons. She'd had the bit about the soul fastened to a dying animal, what she needed in order to firgive our race and live here in peace, was faith's flipside. She needed to hear about that animal fastened to a soul that, for the first time, allowed the creature to see through soul's parasite eyes how terrified it was, how forsaken. I needed to tell her that miraculous banality, how body stumbled by selection onto the stricken celestial, how it taught itself how to twig time and what lay beyond time.
I stayed to plead with Helen. I told her we were in the same boat...I admitted that the world was sick and random, that the evening news was right...


Helen then stops communicating, the comes back days later at his pleading.

"Helen came back. She stood on the front steps, head down, needing an in from the storm. She did not return the way she left. How could she? Seeing what she had seen?
"I'm sorry," she told me, "I lost heart"
And then I lost mine. I would have broken down, begged her to forgive humans for what we were. To love us for what we wanted to be. But she had not finished training me, and as yet I had no words...Helen had discovered what ruined fiction for me.

The next day they do the "Turing Test" (test for artificial intelligence) based off of two lines from a poem. The human, a feminist who Powers also fell for, writes a loooong drawn out "brilliant" essay on it, and Helen basically says "You're the ones who need to figure this out". Her final words are:" I never felt at home here, this is a terrible place to be dropped down halfway" & Says goodbye to Richard, then shuts herself down. The judges say that the feminist wins, Helen loses, showing how the world cares more about critique and words than about understanding and real living. Richard leaves to travel the earth as it was Helen's last request, that he "see everything" for her.

Overall, the novel was sad, but very insightful. It showed where humanity has taken itself in science and in literature, and how there's no real hope.

At least, not on any materialist front.

It's a sad book, in the end, but it addresses the problems: a sinful world, a lost and lonely world, a world we cannot make sense of and in which we die. It ends on a humble note, with the recognition of these problems, but of course has no answer.

Yet we do, faith in God and in his Son, Jesus Christ. We know that despite the assumptions of neuroscience, God has made us in his image as human beings and that we have real souls. We know that literature and human wisdom isn't what can "fix" us, rather it's the "Foolishness of preaching". We know why we're broken, we know why we're lonely, and we're the hands and feet of the One who has finished the work of Salvation and is "fixing" things in and through us.

They in tragedy, a terrored world
empty, hollow - aching without answer
a reaching without warmth
in the darkness, in the darkness
where no one knows
if any soul hears their sobbing
if any one feels their ache
they have turned the microscope
and lost their breath with fear
all that's left is empty desperate chatter
alone, alone, alone.

And yet, and yet,

Hands thrown out and up
you've torn the curtain of my shroud
a living soul, a blood of life
words are the spirit's song
and all matter is the drum of love
that you have been
and you have made.
three, three, three,
Thank you!!!
I am too.
WE ARE.

My dad might have arthritis, and my aunt from AK whom I've met for the first time is having stomach surgery here in Seattle and will be staying with us for two weeks. A great opportunity from the Father of lights, but it seems like all my family (except for Brandy the kids and I) are suffering. Prayers would be appreciated all round.
Christine has had a really rough couple of years with her husband and eldest son passing away a few years from each other, neither her nor my dad have the comfort that comes from reliance on Jesus and His atonement. I want to give them the best comfort and love that we can - Brandy's been so good with my family, more patient than I am sometimes.

Found out from Christine that my grandfather worked security at the University in Hawaii while he was going to school there for a couple years. maybe it runs in the family.

My glory has greenish windows
even though she claims they're blue
I maintain they're green like oceans
(yes, I'm colorblind, it's true.)

My help holds impressive powers
(for a girl her grip is good)
shaping home through godly hours
-God don't sleep (I say she should)

My friend fidgets; When she's shining,
shows the dimple on her cheek
shreds up silence with her laughter
humor perforates her speech.

And she makes life easy living,
is the flavor in my work,
She's the light in all my planning
-and my rest when eyes go dark.

If my vacation request goes through, we're headed to MN for a week or more in endofJulybeginningofAugust.

Pilgrim set
face to the east
before the fire's rising

Soul led soles
tread tight the stone
one way to the binding feast

Winds will cut
while earth grows cold
yet walkers won't grow weary

grim gripp'd scroll
flame writ in blood
Voice of the Elder Brother

Blade held out
bone and marrow
Edge bites through evening powers

Master's light
bleeds from within
fills children with his fire

Morning's sons
through darkness bound
To meet a Father's welcome.

I thought you were an unshakable one
like the heavenly spheres above the flame
In my thoughts you were like Venus, pure
as a circle carved in the aether's air
yet rotting visions made me fear
and waking from those troubled dreams
I saw that you were stained and smeared
like me.
so finally I know for sure
and see
that only one
is truly clean

Aristotelian explanations failed
ill-placed faith played me like a fool and you
have suffered for my careless watch
while serpents vended flick'ring food.

Take my hand and the duty of the dead
It's a familiar road and task for me
to the water where we open sores
and pray for the peace we had before
And the only one
who is truly clean
will stir Himself
in you and me

Master, put a skill into my hands
to twist the necks of smiling dragons
and before they steal my eye's light
cast them dead, out of the garden

And watch the thorns
be slow replaced
by wildflowers.

Go to go to a Josh Garrels concert with Brandy. Very enjoyable, thanks to Ruth Janda & her fiance Caleb for monkey-sitting for us while we traipsed about town.

I don't recall the last time I've been at a concert, and in a very short conversation with Josh Garrels I mentioned that we don't really go to concerts. He replied that he doesn't either, unless they're his own concerts. He usually just listens to music on headphones.

Ruslan, a friend of mine at SPU invited me to teach at his church this past Thursday. Ruslan's been a good friend during my time here, he's a younger guy I met in Biology class during my first quarter. He was the only one to support me when I questioned the idea of common descent we were being taught in class. Since then he's always sought me out at the collegium or wherever he happens to see me and we have some good conversation. He's a refreshingly excited believer and usually by the end of our conversation I end up praying silently for a portion of his zeal.

Anyway, over many conversations he found out that I believe I'm called to eventually be a pastor, and so he invited me to come teach at his youth group.

It was a youth service for Ukranians, (Ruslan, as you may have guessed from the name, is Ukranian too. I looked it up and found that it's actually of Turkish derivation, and is another way of saying "Aslan" - lion) mostly second generation kids from not just Ukraine, but Kyrgystan, Romania, and that night some from Germany. A good friend from SPU invited me, since it's his church and he's very active in it. When I arrived the Youth leader expressed surprise because he had thought that Ruslan (my friend) had invited a Ukranian. I hope I didn't put him out too much, and let him know that according to my Y-Chromosome, I share a male line descent mostly with Eastern Europeans. Got to use the extent of my Russian, (dobri diyn=good evening)and taught out of Philippians Chapter 2.
It went really well. I had many people praying for me during my preparation and during the sermon (primarily Brandy) and I felt really at home with the people I was sharing with. Most of them had thick accents but spoke English fluently.

The service was very interesting. If it weren't for every other song being sung in Russian, I could have been in an Assemblies of God church for much of the service. Even the songs in Russian were ones I recognized by the tunes (i.e. Lord I Lift Your Name on High).

The only part that got really confusing was whenever the person currently leading the service would say "Let us pray", they meant it literally. Everyone broke out in their own prayers, I heard russian, english, tongues, and sometimes the Leader praying over the microphone at the same time. I'm used to a person with a microphone saying "Let's Pray" and then they pray, while we wait for them to finish (hopefully assenting in our minds) and then we all say "Amen" when they do. I actually liked their Ukranian way better, but I entirely forgot about it when I got up to teach, and so when I said "look, I haven't done this in a while and I'm going to pray for God's blessing on it and help" I expected that I was going to pray and they would say "Amen". Not so. The room erupted with sympathetic tongues and for a moment I was so surprised I forgot to pray myself. I think by the end of the service I had the hang of it though.

I loved being around people from the other half of the world. Well, believing people. A bunch of the younger guys came up and introduced themselves to me after service, they were all very respectful, and during the service/worship even their goofing off wasn't bad (I caught conversations where they were lamenting the wasted intelligence of poorly behaved guys in their high school, etc..., where normally I'd expect conversation about girls or why so and so is so stupid and hated by all.) It was really a blessing and I'd love to go back. Some of the girls wore headscarves, like E. Orthodox women do.

Halfway through the message, my throat got so dry I was in danger of a coughing fit, and Michael the youth leader ran and got me a cup of water. May the Lord remember him on the last day! Despite what seemed to be initial disappointment at my non-Ukranianness, he was very graceful and friendly and we had some good edifying conversation before and after the service. (so much so before the service I began to worry that I wouldn't have a chance to visit the urinals - my teeth were swimming! But I think he saw it in my face because he told me where to find them when our conversation finished.)

They also prayed for the world at large during the service, things like the N/S Korean conflict. I was really impressed by that as well.

Michael said they'd like to have me there again, and said next time they'd feed me too. Now that's Christian love.

Then I went to my cousin DeLynn's place, where Brandy and the kids were (it's only 5 minutes from the Church I was at, but both are about an hour's drive from our house.) There we talked about documentaries and DeLynn and her husband Moses warned us about air travel in S. Africa and DeLynn made us coffee before we headed home.

Watched "Joe Vs. the Volcano" for the first time last night. It's the first film I've really liked Meg Ryan in, and I was struck by a lot of the lines in it.

"I start thinking about myself, and I get bored out of my mind."

"Only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement."

"Dear God, whose name I do not know, thank you for my life - I forgot how BIG...thank you, thank you for my life."

The whole movie made me think of the times I've thought I might die, and how at those times I realized how silly most of my hopes/fears/concerns really are and how little really important things I do, mostly because like Joe in the movie, because I'm afraid of what the world might do to me, afraid, in part, of death and the suffering that leads up to it. Why is it that it seems to take actual dying to wake people up to how much they've been ruled by the fear of death, and how most of their lives they've done neither what they should have or what they wanted to because of that fear? I don't want to live like that!

It all brings to mind the verse in Hebrews that says that Jesus shared in our humanity and in his flesh by his death destroyed the one who had power over death (the devil) so that free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

My Lord Jesus, you've bought us a free pass out of fear, but I don't always feel it. Please put it in me as a conscious thing, and let your Spirit within me burn away all my fear.

Read through Ephesians this morning and it was the first time in a long time I really "got" it. You know when your reading is illumined by the Holy Spirit, it's totally different than all those times when you're just slogging through it like a textbook.

We knew more than what we could tell
the lips had faltered, the voices fell
and under disapproving eyes
surrendered what made us alive
below the waters we felt the voice
in tension made the tacit choice
ignoring sores ate from below
the Spirit spoke, we would not show
the chatter raged, the noises grew
bereft of what makes good things true
until the Son came with His blood
touched lips, and loosed a telling flood.

Now's the time to make an enemy
to hell with infidelity
lay rough hand on politeness when
he edges through the door
There are no obligations due
seducers making whores
Some smiles are meant to meet with hate
some enemies are made too late
some things can't be let through
Let your spirit be my wedding vow
and your love my golden ring
be my jealous one and I
will fight to be for You.



I just finished "The Etruscan" by Mike Waltari. It's something of a Hosea story set in pre-classical times (without the repentence). The main character's wife from the beginning sleeps with his friends and has children by them, and ends up sleeping with different people pretty much any time he's not around. It got me thinking about how horrible, how world-destroying infidelity is. My worst nightmares are of infidelity, my own and others - and dealing with those fears I am more and more convinced of the proverb "Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fading, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." I am jealous and suspicious, but I am so glad that I have a wife who fears the Lord and who I trust. And I began thinking of my double standards, how I in a wife's position to my own Lord, with the Love of God towards me, am not as virtuous as my own wife, and how horrible that must be for my Lord. The adulteress eats and wipes her lips and says "I have done nothing wrong". How many times have I smiled back at the world? How many times have I let it kiss and compliment me and returned those compliments, done things to earn its approval, and been alone with it when I shouldn't have been? You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Oh God, you are our only husband. Forgive me and make me what I'm not. You've got a pure love, feed it to me until it's what I'm made of.
To be a friend of the world is to be an enemy of God.

This is the Universe. Liberally daubed with chocolate. Apparently Josiah got it in his head that he wanted to paint the Universe, and this is what came out.

I think that's pretty neat for a five year old.
Enoch just turned three, but for me their growings are so gradual I don't notice any difference. It takes a Iphoto trip down memory lane to remember when Enoch was still crawling, & when Josiah and Jaelle were the only ones talking.

Just finished finals. Can't believe I got a B- on the European Art History final, but I guess that's what happens when you don't study. Sure I did well on stats, and in West & The World, pretty sure about Greek but then again there are those two homework assignments I never turned in. Not really worried about it.

Climbing Mt. Si tomorrow, Lord willing, that should be fun.
I took a week off of work so we should be able to find some fun things to do with our family time. I also intend to go back over all my Greek work to make sure it all settles in the Cerebrum where it belongs. Since one of the main reasons for going to school for Classics was to gain the ability to read the NT in Greek, I hope to make it more than just a class.

Wierd dreams the past couple of nights. Last night I led a group of people to a new planet after earth was destroyed, and the night before that I was walking from a futuristic Seattle to Centralia and stumbled across my friend from 3rd grade Benjamin Clary's family farm, which was also futuristic. He was my age (which makes sense) and had red curly hair (which doesn't, he had dark hair like me back in 3rd grade) but I spent the night at his family's place and ate a big farm breakfast before heading back out on foot. And there were Lions in the Lewis County woods.

Dreams are inexplicable. But then again, we live in a crazy-looking universe with liberal chocolate smears.

Went to the Q Cafe tonight to study for finals, and as a perk they had a full Orchestra there performing Haydn, Mendelssohn, and some originals.

I just realized there's no sound!!! well, that kind of defeats the purpose of this post, I wanted you all to hear the pretty music.

Doubt, I do not praise you, you're not my friend.
How can I be friends with one who wants to kill me while I sleep?
Let me be bordered by the brightness of well-founded faith in the Risen Lord, Jesus Christ, and His word.
And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

Let doubters always take my hand,
yet doubt itself I cannot stand
It's a maggot eating at your soul
a drying wind on once-good soil

Men and women, stand to fight!
hold ranks against the death of light
though the public voice speaks well of doubt
be strong, and drive the dark thing out.

Celebrity, she breeds with lies
she's lied to you before
remember well the trade she plies-
she's Babylon, the whore.

Replace the torch of living trust
let shine the blade shook free of rust
let hearts beat freely as they should,
God is now here, and He is good.

Pictures of our escapades yesterday.

A fishing chair at the dock

The great dragon of Student Aid, the FAFSA, has now been vanquished.
It wasn't really that hard, in my case it was a pretty small dragon,
maybe closer to an iguana... Brandy lent me the sword of our 1040A
with which I slew the paltry beast, and it only took about five minutes.

It's funny how many things I procrastinate on because as soon as they come to
mind I immediately overwhelm myself with imaginations of difficulty, and then
when I finally buckle down to do it it's like it ain't no thang.

God make me a man of action please, it would save so much time.

Josh Garrels, everyone.
The best music I've heard since...Supertones maybe? It's really good. Words, music, worship, it's got it all. I downloaded "Jacaranda" from Itunes, and even though I could kick myself because Amazon has the download for less with higher-quality non-DRM mp3s, I don't regret buying the album at all. In fact, I can't stop listening to it!
I checked out his website & subscribed to his blog too, he seems like a really neat, really real guy overall. And a brother.

So, I highly recommend at least Jacaranda, and from what I've heard of it, "Lost Animals" too.

And Brandy just told me my nose is cold and wet like a dog. Not, mind you, like a dog's but like a dog. Since as we all know, dogs are perpetually wet.

Statistics is killing me! Well, at least it's hogging up my homework time. Lord willing, I'll continue to get good grades in it though. "West and the World" is as effortless as Western Civ. in HS, and Greek, well, I really need to devote more time to it. Especially as that's one of the main reasons I wanted to go to school.

Skipped out on a lot of homework time today, went running @ discovery park with TJ, who accused me of "going native" since I was doing a lot of jumping and sprinting-but it was so pristine and perfect out it just came natural.
Then I went out with Brandy & the kids to the Aquarium where I learned a lot about Octopi. Did you know they only live for 4 years tops? Then they spawn and die like salmon. Considering how intelligent they are I think that's sad.

Then we went to a park (yet another park) we live close to, yet have never been to before. I'll post a picture of it tomorrow.

Sunlight, come my way
I'm stuck in winter
Spring seems an age away
and if there's something
yet to be dug
down in the heart of me
I'll need your rays to find it
to be seen and so to see

Rays like a song of birth and marriage,
of just war and victory
of shedding fear, embracing daring,
of great things yet to be
Something to call out the morning glories
Like one sitting on the seer's stone
lips parted like the morning's throne
telling panoramic stories.

A ray born in the center
in the doorway of all truth,
where the line that stretches through the earth
meets the line that leads to You.

From that crossroads where your back lay red
where the curse lay heavy on your head
before rising sunlike from an earthy bed
May what you bought fall on me.

Passive primate, pleasant man
enthroned on a swivel chair
a purse-lipped prophet
disassembling children
pressed into cans
with an academic air.

I've got to reset my vocabulary.
It seems like I've got into the bad habit of complaining again... And it's almost involuntary. I've been praying about it for the past couple of days, but I'm still making the same complaining statements at work. "get out while you can" (to guys whose shifts just got over) "not again" (when another call comes in) etc... And once you get used to saying something like that, it becomes automatic.

But God, I don't want it to be. I want to be thankful and have my speech be graceful, "Seasoned with salt". My prayer is for the Lord to instantly heal my vocab, but most likely He'll want me to cooperate by actually practice thinking about what I say before I say it as a first step. This will lead to awkward pauses in conversation, and will be uncomfortable. But if that's what it takes, then It's more than worth it.

I don't want to degenerate into a walking sarcastic complaint when I have the alternative by the Spirit of Jesus to speak "as speaking the oracles of God".

At some point I do plan on blogging again...once I get some breathing space between school and work.

I always thought my wedding ring looked like the Ring of Power.

'In the common tongue it reads "One Ring to Rule Them All. One Ring to Find Them. One Ring to Bring Them All and In The Darkness Bind Them." '

Missed or did a partial on 3 assignments in the past two weeks! I've got to crack down on myself.

I never heard a wage-based insult until I started working at a private (Christian[?]) college. A co-worker of mine was insulted between swear-words the other day with "you make $8/hour!" (we make considerably more). The inebriated speaker apparently thinks that making 8/hr is a reason to hang one's head in shame, probably because his daddy's patched his every boo-boo with a big fat check. The poor kid somehow equates wage with intelligence, character, or ability.

I pity the fool who thinks that this (wage=worth) is the case. I'm making close to twice what I've made at most of my previous jobs here, yet I don't think of myself as any more or less worthy to walk the earth because of it. It's a job that I enjoy and that I'm grateful for, and that's it.

How do these people live? Even more puzzling, how do they remain in the upper classes of society? By pure snob power?

Part of me longs to fulfill the proverb "Strike a scoffer, and the simple will learn prudence". Unfortunately, most institutions of learning have abandoned this effective teaching technique.

And so, I am left to apply the message of my last blog. Even though it wasn't even me being insulted.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::
On another note, the other day I had to go down the hall and confront the hispanic gangsta-guest-of-our-neighbors that's been ogling my wife when she does laundry. It's hard to warn people who don't speak English, but I think he got the idea.
::::::::::::::::::::::::
Well, I just got out of the night shift, and now need to write a paper on the difference between Romanesque and Gothic art for a class I have in two hours. Tuesdays are rough.

Unlike our pachydermous friends, we must forgive.
"bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive." - Col 3:13.

Now there are a host of things I constantly remember when I meet certain people, things ranging from minor perceived slights ("complaints") to large onslaughts of nastiness, which I must decide what to do with.
Most of the time I hear the demonic audience in the colosseum of my will chanting "kill!" (or something less dramatic but still ill-tempered) and giving the thumbs down as I face/remember people and choose how to think about them. And then the Holy Spirit chimes in with verses like this one.

After reading it, I decided that God's being really generous here. It says "Forgive, as the Lord has forgiven you". However, I don't think I can. Not that I don't think I can forgive someone, I don't believe that God asks us to do things He doesn't give us the power to do. However, when Jesus forgave me, I was 100% in the wrong, and He was faultless of all transgression, against me or anyone else. I will never face that situation. No matter what trivial thing anyone's done against me (and honestly, I can't think of anyone that has done me a terrible wrong. People have done terrible wrong to my friends and family yes, but people seem to pretty much leave me alone in the "terrible wrong" department) I will never be 100% innocent when faced with the decision (and command) to forgive.

"Who has ever given to God, that He should repay him?" - Good question. I am perpetually in His debt, but he asks me to follow in his example of forgiveness, even though he forgave from the moral high ground, and the only people I'll ever have to forgive are transgressors like me.

Blades and Benjamins.

What is it with guys and knives?
(Or at least, with me and knives?)
Anyway, I finally bought the Becker "Campanion" that I've been looking at for the past week, after finding it on Amazon for half the normal price + free shipping. I was able to give away my last good camp knife to my cousin Aaron as a "going away to Basic" present. (It was the Ontario Spec Plus Quartermaster, a great knife all round, and I only used it once.) However, that left a knife vacuum in my heart, and as you know, coveting abhors a vacuum.
So after extensive research and comparison, I chose the Campanion. It's 1095 Hi-Carbon Chromium Vanadium steel. Tough stuff, and it's got high tensile strength and it keeps an edge (unlike stainless). A quarter of an inch thick, it can double as a hatchet or a prybar, but the blade is wide enough to allow for an edge geometry of a kitchen knife. This means that along with any bear slaying I may find necessary, it can also slice an apple. Life is sweet.
Some of the earliest human artifacts are knives. This is a Neandertal stone knife made some number of thousands of years ago (evolutionary timeline says it was much farther back) Here's a knife from the later clovis culture. What could be more useful? A Knife isn't just a tool, it's an archetype.

DOG POOP, OR CHICKEN BONES?

I don't agree with the Dog poop brownies theory. It states that watching/hearing/seeing something that contains sin is the same as eating brownies laced with dog poop. A good rendering of the story can be read here. If this was true, then we wouldn't eat pretty much anything due to the trace amounts of whatnot in it (Have you checked out what's allowed in our food recently?), and we wouldn't go outside for fear of seeing sin, and we wouldn't go to work for fear that our employer might be involved in something sinful, and if we got really picky we probably wouldn't read our bibles for fear that some transcription or translation error would shipwreck our faith.

I think the main thing the Dog Poop model of mental ingestion disregards is the faculty of discernment. So I would like to propose an alternate model, the "Chicken Bone" model of mental ingestion. most people, especially mature people, are capable of eating meat with bones out of it, and realizing that the bones wouldn't be too healthy to swallow, they learn to separate the meat from the bones and spit those naughty bones out. Some foods are so bony and bereft of meat that they aren't worth eating. Some people, for example children, are unable to safely remove the bones, and so we don't try to feed little kids, say, a bony fish. Anytime we eat something with bones, it requires a degree of care and alertness to make sure we don't choke on a bone. But as we do it it eventually becomes second nature. So, I would say, with the faculty of discernment as regards entertainment and art. Some of it's to full of "bones" to be worth the trouble, some of it wouldn't be safe for immature ingestion, and all of it requires something more than thoughtless absorption.

I don't know anybody as good as you
faithfulness and truth
your beauty is a solid thing, and sure
bringing grace to plain things
practical, pure.
all the things I despised
you show, and I now see they mean more.
I always loved the equations,
but you live by the sums.
The ideals I worshipped haven't lasted
some have chipped and some have shattered
no one can reach those crazy dreams
so it's good to wake up
when visions fail
and find you.

Watched Avatar a couple weeks ago.
I came out of it feeling like I haven't felt for a decade or so, that old feeling I used to get after reading a really good sci-fi or fantasy book. It's a mix of excitement and low-grade melancholy produced by the fact that the world we live in is much more boring than the one I'd just been immersed in. The melancholy wasn't near as bad as it used to be though, since I was thinking about the New Earth, and how likely there would be comparable landscapes in my future.

Heard some christians complaining about the "occult" or "new agey" themes in the film. I used to do the same thing (quickly criticize movie philosophies that I didn't think were "christian"). But I've found it slightly annoying this time around, partly because I think it's silly to expect pagans to make a "christian" movie, but mostly because I didn't see what was un-scriptural about most of the movie's themes. I think concern for creation should be a christian trait, and it's irritating when I see and hear christians ridiculing compassion for animals or conservationist actions that really are just good stewardship. I don't think it's christian at all to kill animals for fun, or to slash and burn, mine, or otherwise ruin swathes of earth for convenience's sake. I think a big theme in "Avatar" was a critique of destructive greed - covetousness. Scripture says covetousness is Idolatry.
If it wasn't for covetousness, there would be almost no abortions, since abortion rates are driven by a covetous desire for "reproductive freedom" and a unfettered lifestyle full of things and opportunities that a child would get in the way of, as well as the covetous desire of the abortion industry for the cash kickbacks of their dirty business. Covetousness is the root of most other sins, the Lord Jesus even said "be on your guard against all kinds of greed, a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions". I think this is one of the biggest things christians need to hear today in wealthy countries like America. I know I need to keep hearing it. I have about 20 shirts, and more books than a third-world library. I have a computer that costs more than many people make in a year. It's too easy to buy stuff online that I don't need, it's too easy to feel like my life consists in the abundance of my new purchases.

I also think it's good for people to have their imaginations expanded, to see beautiful things. It's too easy to let the grind convince you that it's all there is, and to get too wrapped up in the trivialities of the here and now. So a sub-theme of biological pantheism doesn't really scare me. Especially when the pantheism functions more like theism, and the "god's" name is an phonetic anagram for Yahweh. It scared me to hear christians laughing about torturing animals, or talking about deforestation and strip mining like it's a scriptural mandate.

All that to say, I really liked the movie. It's the best story I've watched onscreen in a really long time, it ended just like I wanted it to, and it made me happy to live in the great state of Washington where we have a rainforest just a couple hours away!