Because Pascal's Too Good to Keep to Myself...

"There is no better proof of human vanity than to consider the causes and effects of love, because the whole universe can be changed by it. Cleopatra's nose."

Pascal...

"It is not man's nature always to go in one direction; it has its ups and downs. Fever makes us both shiver and sweat. The chill is as good an indication of how high the fever will go as the heat itself."

"Nothing strengthens the case for scepticism more than the fact that there are people who are not sceptics. If they all were, they would be wrong."

"One must know oneself. Even if that does not help in finding the truth, it at least helps in running one's life, and nothing is more proper."

Unembarrassed

John Updike had issues, but he did not "mock God with metaphor," which is more than can be said for many squeaky-clean writers. The world needs more men who are not "embarrassed by the miracle."

"For now we see in a mirror darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known."

HT: World

Reading 2008

Book blogs are the enemy of reading. I discovered several fascinating blogs this year and spent hours enamored of reading, listing the books I wanted to read, and reading others' lists.Imagine my surprise when I realized that I had frittered away precious reading time staring at a computer screen. Apparently I was getting all the warm, fuzzy, readerly feelings without the commitment of turning pages. Sad. Goal for next year: Read less about reading and simply read.

Books read this year:

1. Your Home a Lighthouse, Bob and Betty Jacks
2. The Compleat Violinist, Yehudi Menuhin
3. Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell
4. Epic, John Eldredge
5. Recapture the Wonder, Ravi Zacharias
6. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
7. The Mysterious Mr. Quinn, Agatha Christie
8. Why Didn't They Ask Evans, Agatha Christie
9. Hind's Feet on High Places, Hannah Hurnard
10. The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
11. The Careful Use of Compliments, Alexander McCall Smith
12. Normal Kingdom Business, Andree Seu
13. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
14. The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
15. Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis
16. While Still We Live, Helen MacInnes
17. Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers
18. A Chance to Die, Elisabeth Elliot
19. Do Hard Things, Alex and Brett Harris
20. Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy, Rumer Godden
21. Peace Like a River, Leif Enger
22. Epic of Gilgamesh
23. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
24. Beowulf, trans. Sean Heaney
25. *Adam, Ted Dekker
26. Freedom of a Christian, Martin Luther
27. The Prince, Machiavelli
28. So Brave, Young, and Handsome, Leif Enger
29. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith
30. Without Fail, Lee Child
31. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
32. Walking on Water, Madeleine L'Engle

*Edit--I forgot to add The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett and the Socratic Dialogues by Plato.

And, of course, the Bible. Mostly ESV this year.

Next year, dv: More Malcolm Gladwell and Madeleine L'Engle. Wendell Berry, Willa Cather, and Walker Percy. Lots of children's lit. Milton. C. S. Lewis. Watchman Nee, John Piper, and Neil T. Anderson. Maybe some college text books, if I feel like it...

Thanks to my fellow readers who have inspired and intrigued me with their reading and who have listened to me rant about books and ideas by the hour. Happy New Year.

Breadth

*I wrote this awhile back and am posting this now while in the midst of finals to remind myself why I like my school and my major.

Some of you have probably heard me rave my Schaeffer inspired ravings about Christianity and culture. You've heard me rant that "Christian music" and "Christian fiction" are not confined to Janette Oke's novels or to WOW Worship music, although they have their place. You have probably accidentally started me going on this topic and have been unable to stop me....

This subject is one I am passionate about, and yet, I have had a little bit of a problem. I haven't attained a level of excellence myself in any of the fields I want to see changed. I can write, but not better than those I critique. I can play the violin, but not exceptionally well. I don't know how to draw, though I am trying to learn. I do want to excel in each of these areas, though, and that is the problem. I am hungry, so hungry, to learn more about each of these and other fields, that I hate the idea of specialization, because I want to learn EVERYTHING!!! (yes, I have a problem.)

This inconsistency--craving excellence and yet hating the focus and specialization required to attain it in any given area--- has bothered me. Or at least it did bother me until I read the following excerpt from G.K.Chesterton's book What's Wrong with the World.

Note: I was going to put a whole lot of disclaimers here, in case I make someone mad with my anti-feminism, but I'm not going to bother with any, except for this one stating that I thought of it. Oh, and this isn't a cop-out either. I still believe in working hard.


In other words, there must be in every center
of humanity one human being upon a larger plan; one who does not "give
her best," but gives her all.Our old analogy of the fire remains the most workable one.
The fire need not blaze like electricity nor boil like boiling water;
its point is that it blazes more than water and warms more than light.
The wife is like the fire, or to put things in their proper proportion,
the fire is like the wife. Like the fire, the woman is expected
to cook: not to excel in cooking, but to cook; to cook better
than her husband who is earning the coke by lecturing on botany
or breaking stones. Like the fire, the woman is expected to tell
tales to the children, not original and artistic tales, but tales--
better tales than would probably be told by a first-class cook.
Like the fire, the woman is expected to illuminate and ventilate,
not by the most startling revelations or the wildest winds of thought,
but better than a man can do it after breaking stones or lecturing.
But she cannot be expected to endure anything like this universal
duty if she is also to endure the direct cruelty of competitive or
bureaucratic toil. Woman must be a cook, but not a competitive cook;
a school mistress, but not a competitive schoolmistress;
a house-decorator but not a competitive house-decorator; a dressmaker,
but not a competitive dressmaker. She should have not one trade but
twenty hobbies; she, unlike the man, may develop all her second bests.
This is what has been really aimed at from the first in what
is called the seclusion, or even the oppression, of women.
Women were not kept at home in order to keep them narrow;
on the contrary, they were kept at home in order to keep them broad.
The world outside the home was one mass of narrowness,
a maze of cramped paths, a madhouse of monomaniacs.
It was only by partly limiting and protecting the woman that she
was enabled to play at five or six professions and so come almost
as near to God as the child when he plays at a hundred trades.
But the woman's professions, unlike the child's, were all truly
and almost terribly fruitful; so tragically real that nothing but
her universality and balance prevented them being merely morbid.

This is why I am majoring in "classical liberal arts," PHC's education major designed to train students to write curricula, teach at classical schools, or homeschool. This is why I am going to college--to learn to be a better mother. I believe my craving for a breadth of knowledge is God-given and a gift from God to help me be what He has designed me to be. Oh, and if I never have a chance to teach my own children? I can still be a librarian, a vocation that would suit me to a t...

I Will Lift My Eyes

Nevada Rockies

About three weeks ago, I was feeling highly stressed from trying to balance school, work, and people. A life consisting of school, work, sleep, and a little guilt for never quite doing enough seemed to stretch out interminably. Browsing through pictures of the western states (yet another form of procrastination when I should have been working on a paper), I wished out loud that I could spend some time traveling across our country but knew there was no way I could make anything like that happen.

Within two days of this wish, my aunt called me and invited me to help her and my uncle move out to California. I would split the driving, and all of my travel costs were to be paid by them. Work was slow, and school was portable, so no obstacles presented themselves. Essentially, God knew my heart's desire and dropped this trip into my lap. Or, as a friend pointed out, perhaps He placed the desire in my heart because He wanted to speak to me on the trip in some way.

Travel is good for the soul. I hate to over-spiritualize things, but the long days of driving really did minister to my very unquiet spirit, and God really did seem to be speaking to me through the trip. As I traveled, I regained proper prospective on life--I am small, my problems are small, and the God who created the Kansas plains, the Colorado mountains, and the Wyoming wind is awfully big.


People warned me that Kansas would bore me. I was a little bit apprehensive of the open plains, because growing up in wooded New England has given me a small case of reverse claustrophobia (Is there a term for that?). However, I thoroughly enjoyed the monotony of grass, sky (so much sky! How do people stay on the ground and not float away?), and strange-looking-irrigation-robot-things. The sameness soothed my nerves and reminded me of the Unchanging One: "I am Jehovah, I change not."

As much as I enjoyed the novelty of the prairie, the open spaces did lose a bit of their charm by the time we were well into Colorado. Just as their continuity began to wear on me, the Rockies appeared. I cried. I had no idea how majestic they would be contrasted with the prairie and high desert. "I will lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved."


Wyoming was my favorite state. The combination of mountains, sky, and wind was so beautiful it hurt. I encountered power like I never have before--we drove through fifty mph winds that knocked tractor-trailers over along the highway (The helpless trucks reminded me a bit of the helplessness of tipped cows, for some reason.) and caused the shadows of passing clouds to fly past us on the highway. When we stopped at a rest area to get a break from the wind, I could just barely move against the wind and could not breathe if I faced into it. Poor Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Lori were a bit stressed, but I have rarely enjoyed anything so much in my life. I've always enjoyed wind, and the sheer exhilaration of the speed and strength of an unseen force made me giddy with joy. The truckers huddled at the rest stop amusedly watched me, the "reserved one", run and stagger and shout and laugh out loud for pure happiness as the wind pushed me around.

After we left our shelter and headed down out of the mountains, Aunt Lori reminded us of another unseen force: "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Should I be expecting the same degree of spontaneity, joy, freedom,and satisfaction while being directed by the Wind? Food for thought...


Remember that Shakespeare bit about sleep knitting the 'raveled sleeve of care? I could feel travel healing up my internal unravelings. Despite pressing deadlines (two term papers and an exam due the week of the trip), as we drove for hours upon end and as I flew back, I had an almost physical sensation of something in my core moving back into place. Frazzled nerve endings shrank back into their proper places, and I felt as if God were telling me, "I knew you needed a break, I heard your desire, and I knew that the trip would help you. I created this vast country. I created you, as well, and I am taking care of you. I, Jehovah, change not, am your helper, and am working even when you can't see Me. "

Now I am home again. Still facing the challenges of juggling full-time school, full-time work, and living with a full-time family that I love dearly. The stress will pile up again, but God knew exactly what I needed this last time around. He's probably able to figure out what I need next time life gets too big.

The people in the cities

A man said, Why, why does travelling
in cars and in trains make him feel sad,
A beautiful sadness.
I've felt this way before.
It's the people in the cities you'll never know.
It is everything you pass by,
wondering, will you ever return?

~Innocence Mission


My mind contains quite a large gallery of faces. Strangers' faces. I recorded the earliest that I can now recall when I was about six years old. I add new ones all the time. Most of the pictures are quite vivid still, but some are so faded that I can't quite pull them into focus and just remember what it felt like to see them.

These faces are the faces of people whom I have never really met but have only seen or talked to in passing. I haven't the faintest idea who most of them are, but each one is etched in my mind as someone I wish I could know. And, yes, I do feel sad that I do not know them. Sometimes I can tell that someone is going to be added to my collection, but, more often than not, I don't "recognize" them until they're gone.

Faces added over the past years include a little girl in K-mart (this is the faint one from age six). Tall, bearded, French-speaking Jewish brothers, who perhaps were twins, seen at a violin recital in Jerusalem. A smiling girl with messy blonde hair who was auditioning for the part of Anne at the Palace Theater eight years ago.

The lady who looked just like Yoda. The sandy-haired kid who looked like he should be in school but sat instead in the Pizza Hut in a tiny prairie town with sturdy looking farmers who wore flannel shirts, greasy baseball caps, and lots of stubble. The frightened-looking Hispanic woman and child being yelled at by their father and husband in the hats and gloves section of Caldors twelve years ago.

The girl who toured the bell towers of Notre Dame with me. She spoke no English, and I could not figure out what her language was after ruling out German, Italian, and Spanish. Both solo travelers, we took turns taking touristy pictures of each other with the other's camera and communicated with smiles and sign language. We never took a picture together.


I'm from New England. I don't approach strangers. I feel uncomfortable down south or out west or anywhere where I have to emerge from my shell and talk to my "neighbor." And I like being the way I am, thank you.

Sometimes, though, I wonder what I'm missing.