Hunger Games and Catching Fire

I see no real answers. The characters are faced with the same questions that constantly plague the minds and thoughts of teens today. Similar feelings and emotions. That is where the connections lies. And yet it is a false connection, a shallow one because no real hope is offered. There is never any true rest. Just when you think a bad situation has been redeemed, that a young girl’s heart has been taught the themes of love and community all is dashed and life proves once again that grown ups are just manipulative and self-serving no matter which side their on.

I think my greatest sadness is that students no longer have models of how to act rightly as adults through their modern literature. That is one of the greatest endowments fairy tales have bestowed upon generations of children. They showed in beauty, truth, and chivalry the way to conduct yourself with maturity. Not in disregard of the playfulness of childhood, but embracing it as the foundation for the later years. The problem with every modern youth fiction book having a youth as its hero or heroine is that it doesn’t prepare kids for what comes after youth. Let me re-phrase that because I feel as though I’ve seen/heard the term “help prepare kids” in terms of preparing them for the grim and gory facts of the world, specifically as an argument for including certain facts, scenes, or scenarios into stories that probably could be left out. Back to youths as heroes, the primary problem I see is that it gives kids nothing to aspire to beyond childhood. As teachers, we often talk about setting the bar high so our kids will reach and be stretched. This is not an argument for all modern youth fiction to have adult heroes, instead, it’s a call to set the bar a little higher.

When we don’t know how to be adults, forty year-old office execs act like frat boys on the weekends, and Snooky leads our children through Never Never Land.

S4theD: Day 18

Not gunna lie, I needed a laugh today, and whenever I think about this album I chuckle. Then whenever I think about the fact that Greg Wilbur gave me this album, I laugh. Don't worry, he thinks it's funny too! So the album is entitled The Roar of Love (today's song is the title track) and was meant to be a tribute to C.S. Lewis' first book in the Narnia series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Let's just say it's, well, it's very 80's. I'd love to know what Lewis would think about this album!


The Roar of Love
by The Second Chapter of Acts

If he was alive again and we could touch his mane
His golden mane
Hold his face in our hands then we would know he's tame
Call his name

And we'll climb on the lion's back
And we'll fly away
Yes we'll climb on the lion's back
And we'll fly away, fly away, fly away

Lightning flashed into my eyes and I can see him now
See him now
Thunder broke inside my heart and I can feel him now
Feel him now

The roar of love is ringing out, ringing out thru the woods
Thru the woods
Aslan's raised from death to life and we will rise with him
Rise with him

And we'll climb on the lion's back
And we'll fly away
Yes we'll climb on the lion's back
And we'll fly away, fly away, fly away
Fly away, fly

Quotes from The Mind of the Maker

"...if the M.C.C. (Marylebone Cricket Club) were to agree, in a thoughtless moment, that the ball must be hit by the batsman so that it should never come down to earth again, cricket would become an impossibility. A vivid sense of reality usually restrains sports committees from promulgating laws of this kind; other legislators occasionally lack this salutary realism."

" To complain that man measures God by his own experience is a waste of time; man measures everything by his own experience; he has no other yardstick."

"The poet is not obliged, as it were, to destroy the material of Hamlet in order to create a Falstaff, as a carpenter must destroy a tree-form to create a table-form."

"Our minds are not infinite; and as the volume of the world's knowledge increases, we tend more and more to confine ourselves, each to his special sphere of interest and to the specialized metaphor belonging to it. The analytic bias of the last three centuries has immensely encouraged this tendency, and it is now very difficult for the artist to speak the language of the theologian, or the scientist the language of either. But the attempt must be made; and there are signs everywhere that the human mind is once more beginning to move towards a synthesis of experience."

Dorothy Sayers

Playing with Poetry

Living Among the Dead

The veins of life are ne’er complete
Running ‘long a single course
There lacks purpose, there lacks feat
There no depth of combining force.

The veins that spread and twine and splay
Covering ‘er the breadth of time
There springs purpose, there springs play
There must route stretch to reach its prime.

The veins that pulse life-giving wealth
Thriving on some richer fare
There flows purpose, there flows health
There the inherent grace must share.


So too the poetry of sages lends their substance in our prime
There we reap the depth of ages coursing through a verse of rhyme.

A Short Sabatical

Yup, I know. This is not another installment of the 20 Days of Randomness. Let me apologize now. Due to a conference here, a conference there, and the minor tragedy of computer harddrive failure, posting has been anything but proficient these days. And as I am about to flee the country I must confess proficiency will not get any better within the next two weeks. But before I go I just wanted to say that I'm excited. And that while I'm away I have absolutely no plans save getting to my destination. I shall be bringing only the necessities, and I've whittled down the necessary books to equal 5. I was shooting for 3, but justified two more due to the fact that they are rather small and I could probably read them both twice a piece just on the flight over. But don't worry, where I am going there is a rather good and recourseful library so don't think that I'm starving myself due to the fact that each additional check in bag cost one arm plus $25.

Here's what I'm taking to English L'Abri, and heaven only knows what all I'll be bringing back:

Day 8: What is the most important room in a home and why?—R.P.M.

In all honesty, I think it depends. The most important room in my attic loft as a single person is different from that of a family's ranch-style or two-story home simply because of occupants and space. For me things are classified more as areas then as "rooms". I have my dining area, my reading area, my kitchen area, and my sleeping area. Realy the only part of my home that could be classified as a room would be the bathroom. It is the only area in my house that has a door seperating it from the rest of the house. So if I were to have to name the most important room in my home it would have to be the bathroom by default. But if I were to name the most important area of my home I should have to say the reading area. My Wilbur chair takes up the majority of the space in my reading area left over after a bookshelf went on either wall, but books and chair—strategically placed by the front door which can be swung open on beautiful days—are enough to define my home as the peaceful place of respite that it is.

But in general I would say that the most important room in a home should be whatever room reflects best what the family or individual holds dear. If it is family then probably the living room or dining room. If rest and retreat then probably a bedroom or library. If it is productivity then probably an office or bathroom. But as for me and my house, I will say the reading area!

Gone With the Wind

Old Miss Fontain could relate to the devastation, weariness, and heartache that Scarlett had experienced. She conveyed as much in her story of the Creek War, seeing each of her family members scalped by the Indians, trying to survive in the woods and on the back roads until she made it 30 miles on foot to Jonesboro. And in that moment of shared experiences, this is what Old Miss Fontain had to say:

Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she's faced the worst she can't ever really fear anything again. And it's very bad for a woman not to be afraid of something....

Since that time I've never been afraid of anything or anybody because I'd known the worst that could happen to me. And that lack of fear has gotten me into a lot of trouble, and cost me a lot of happiness. God intended women to be timid, frightened creatures, and there's something unnatural about a woman who isn't afraid. Scarlett, always save something to fear even as you save something to love.

Streams in the Desert

It's been a rather reflective, pensive time for me the last several weeks. Part of it has to do with the time of year—I'm predictively pensive mid-January through mid-February. Part of it, I just figured out, has to do with sorrow. Sorrow minus despair, mind you. I've tended the last couple of years to invest in relationships a bit more, and I have found that there is a kind of somber sorrow that comes with "bearing one another's burdens" that tends to sober me. There's not so much of a mulling mood as a strengthening of resolve, a focusing of concentration, a clarity of purpose. These are the (few) times when I actually practice what I preach to friends and "take care of myself so I can better take care of others". I tend to get more work done in a shorter amount of time, freeing me up with a little more time to lend an ear or a hand.

Streams In the Desert is quickly becoming a favorite quiet time companion since it was given to me by a dear friend this past December. This evening I read the January 20th entry which shed some light on this year's annual time of predictable pensiveness, so I thought I'd share a bit of it here. The things in bold are the things that jumped out to me, the things that made me voice a deep sighing, "ahhh":

January 20th
Sorrow is better than laughter; for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. —Ecclesiastes 7:3

When sorrow comes under the power of Divine grace, it works out a manifold ministry in our lives. Sorrow reveals unknown depths in the soul, and unknown capabilities of experience and service. Gay, trifling people are always shallow, and never suspect the little meannesses in their nature. Sorrow is God’s plowshare that turns up and subsoils the depths of the soul, that it may yield richer harvests. If we had never fallen, or were we in a glorified state, then the strong torrents of Divine joy would be the normal force to open up all our souls’ capacities; but in a fallen world, sorrow, with despair taken out of it, is the chosen power to reveal ourselves to ourselves. Hence it is sorrow that makes us think deeply, long, and soberly.

Sorrow makes us go slower and more considerately, and introspect our motives and dispositions. It is sorrow that opens up within us the capacities of the heavenly life, and it is sorrow that makes us willing to launch our capacities on a boundless sea of service for God and our fellows.

We may suppose a class of indolent people living at the base of a great mountain range, who had never ventured to explore the valleys and canyons back in the mountains; and someday when a great thunderstorm goes careening through the mountains, it turns the hidden glens into echoing trumpets, and reveals the inner recesses of the valley, like the convolutions of a monster shell, and then the dwellers at the foot of the hills are astonished at the labyrinths and unexplored recesses of a region so near by, and yet so little known. So it is with many souls who indolently live on the outer edge of their own natures until great thunderstorms of sorrow reveal hidden depths within that were never hitherto suspected.

God never uses anybody to a large degree, until after he breaks that one all to pieces. Joseph had more sorrow than all the other sons of Jacob, and it led him out into a ministry of bread for all nations. For this reason, the Holy Spirit said of him, “Joseph is a fruitful bough…by a well, whose branches run over the wall” (Gen. 49:22). It takes sorrow to widen the soul. —The Heavenly Life

Logic

So knavery puts on the face of justice; hypocrisy and superstition wear the vizard of piety; deceit and evil are often clothed in the shapes and appearances of truth and goodness. Now logic helps us to strip off the outward disguise of things, and to behold them and judge of them in their own nature. -- Isaac Watts in his book Logic

The Promise

"Is His promise only a dream?
Is it in our dreaming that we glimpse the fullness of His promise?"
--Frederick Buechner, The Son of Laughter

Two Quotes by Rutherford

O, what need have I to have the ashes blown away from my dying-out fire! I may be a book-man, and be an idiot and stark fool in Christ's way; learning will not beguile Christ: the Bible beguiled the Pharisees, and so may I be misted. Therefore, as night-watchers hold one another waking by speaking to one another, so have we need to hold one another on foot.

Our pride must have winter weather to rot it.

Books As Art

Since I've lived on my own, I've always seemed to have more books than any other possessions. My chief decorative concern has never been "where do I hang my pictures because I have so many of them," but "where do I hang my pictures because the books have taken all my wall space"! But even though I've tried to hang things tastefully around my bookshelves, I have also sought to order my bookshelves—and the books on them—in a tasteful manner. While I'm not anal enough to have my books in alphabetical order according to author, I do strive to keep them arranged according to subject. And always, always take special care with how the top shelf looks! Using books themselves as bookends has always been a favorite decorating tool for me. I'm sure it began with a lack of money to buy real bookends, but it has certainly developed into intentional decor. And let's not forget the strategically placed volumes stacked neatly in front of the over-crowded shelves. One must have some double-stacked shelves as a sign of being a dedicated bibliophile.

All that to say, I love strategically placed books. I like to look at them. I like the way they look. So one would ask, "can books be art"? And my reply would be, "absolutely, why not"! For those who share my "why not" enthusiasm, boy howdy, do I have something fun for you....
Floating Bookshelf
A friend told me about them a couple of days ago and I have since bought 5. I love them! Books as art! No wood inhibiting! Suspended magically upon a wall—a wonderful incarnation of the very mysteries they hold within their pages! Finally, an enabling device that makes art out of books by merging the practical with the aesthetically intriguing!