Archive | December 2004

Sabbath Rest

Dec31

I found these words in a post entitled A Time to Rest and Reflect by John Zimmer at Letters from Babylon:

While we often do not take the Sabbath as a special day of rest and worship, I suggest that this fact might be symptomatic of our general busyness. As I have lately considered my own weekly routine, I notice that three things monopolize nearly all of my waking hours. Each of the three is an important, valuable endeavor, and two of them are even acts of giving to others. Surely I do well to do these things, right? There is no need to give up one of them, is there? In fact, would I not be sinning by decreasing my involvement at my local church? Would it not be wrong of me to lay down my role in the children’s ministry, when the task is vital for the nurturing of the next generation and might not get done as well or at all without my efforts (just an example—my contribution is not so decisive as that in reality)? At first glance, it seems the answer is yes—it would be selfish and perhaps sinful not to serve in whatever capacity I can. After all, if I weren’t serving in the children’s ministry or the soup kitchen or the adult literacy program or some other important service to other people, what would I be doing? Napping? Reading a book in the park? Strolling along the river listening to the Fenway crowd cheer? Surely I should sacrifice those simple (but ultimately selfish) pleasures for the sake of service to others.

But the danger in our busyness, even in the (rare) case that all our activities are valuable and others-centered, is that we do not have time to fellowship with our Creator. We are so busy preaching the Gospel that we do not have the time to develop intimacy with the Author and Finisher of our faith. We do not have the time to ponder deep issues of the mind and heart. We do not have the time to sit still and listen to what the Spirit of God may want to say to us. I fear that in the end, then, even our service to others will suffer by doing too much of it.

I tend to take time to read and think because I don’t believe I can live and remain sane without it. Engineer Husband, on the other hand, craves time to read and reflect, but seldom takes it. He is driven, I think, by his mother’s oft-repeated instruction, “Do something useful!” I am going to try to encourage him to take Sunday afternoons (or maybe Saturday mornings), at least, to read and think and pray and rest. He needs it, but it will be a matter of discipline for him.

Rot

Dec31

I found this quote serendipitously while looking for something totally different:

Gentlemen, you are now about to embark on a course of studies which will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this, that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.
John Alexander Smith, Speech to Oxford University students, 1914

Yes. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, when I finish homeschooling eight children, each and every one of them were equipped with an excellent rot detector? I would be vindicated.

“With Great Power . . .

Dec30

comes great responsibility.”–Spiderman We’ve been watching (and pretending) a lot of Spiderman around here for the past few days. And I’ve been thinking about that mantra and how it applies to various ethical situations facing our country and our family. Spiderman feels responsible for everybody. He thinks he’s responsible for his uncle’s death because he had an opportunity to stop the thief who murdered his uncle and didn’t do it. He shirks his responsibility to fight evil in order to pursue the girl he loves and finds that he can’t protect her unless he does what he has been empowered to do–fight evil. So how does all this responsibility/power stuff relate to our nation and to the decisions we make as a family? I have lots of questions but not so many answers.
I supported our nation’s decision to invade Iraq, partly because I believed, along with practically everyone else, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or was busily developing them and that he was encouraging and training terrorists to export death and destruction around the world. Even after we discovered that Iraq’s weapon program was probably not as well developed as was originally thought, I believed that we had a moral responsibility to overthrow the government that was responsible for torture, persecution, and murder on a large scale. I could not live with the idea that we had the power to get rid of Saddam’s evil, and we stood by and let it happen. But where does that responsibility end? Do we have the responsibility and the resources to eradicate evil in every country on the globe? Of course not. How much responsibility do we have, because of our riches, to rebuild SriLanka or Indonesia? How many dictators must we overthrow and replace? Do we decide on the basis of self-interest? Saddam was a threat to us, so we took him out. Dictator Y is only killing his own people, so we leave him alone? Or do we decide on the basis of what is possible? We could remove Saddam, so we did. Removing Kim Chong-Il of North Korea would provoke China, so we just talk to him and tell him to be good.
Then there’s individual and family responsibility. I long ago rejected the idea, at least in practice, that it is wrong to shop or eat out on Sunday because we’re supporting those businesses who compel their employees to work on Sunday. Likewise, I rent movies from Blockbuster even though I believe that they are purveyors of many very subversive and evil movies. I recently asked a question on another blog about boycotting Walmart, and received this answer:

Mattel and Disney and all the other toy manufacturers don’t pay decent wages because Wal Mart won’t pay a fair price for toys, and since they are the world’s largest retailer, they have the power to set the market price. So they set a wholesale price so low that the manufacturer can’t pay a decent wage.
Wal Mart has a multitude of sins, including selling products below their cost in order to kill competitors, knowingly hiring contractors that employ illegal immigrants to clean stores, because they work cheap; widescale discrimination against female employees, refusing to pay overtime and making salaried workers work 60 hours a week

Am I really responsible for the sins of Walmart’s owners and stockholders because I shop there? If so, what are my alternatives? Are there any sin-free zones where I can shop? Isn’t Target or Sears just as bad? Don’t they all get their products from the same places? Or is there a threshhold at which the sin becomes so egregious that I am truly encouraging and participating in evil when I shop at a certain business? If I knowingly bought products from businesses that were working within the Nazi system during WW2, wouldn’t I be morally culpable? If this is a general principle, shouldn’t I also refuse to rent movies at Blockbuster, watch movies produced by certain film companies, buy anything made in China, shop at stores that open on Sunday, etc. ad infinitum? How far does my responsibility extend? With great power comes great responsibility. Because as Americans we are rich, we have some power. How much responsibility do we have?
And then what about unintended consequences? Our presence in Iraq has had some unintended consequences. Some say we have drawn more terrorists to the region by our very presence. My not buying products made in China (or sold by Walmart) could have unintended consequences, too. If enough people joined me, those people who are now working for slave wages and under horrid conditions might becme unemployed and starve to death. Would this, too, become my responsibility?

As anyone can see, my training in ethics is somewhat limited. However, I think these are the kinds of questions that average Christians struggle with and want answered. Any ideas?

Luke 12:48b From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

Rudyard Kipling, b. 1835, d. 1936

Dec30

Here’s my post last year on this date, and I think it was almost prescient. And here’s another Kipling poem for this birthday:

When Earth’s last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it — lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew!

And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets’ hair;
They shall find real saints to draw from — Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are!

Work for the joy of working and plenty of time to do whatever you’re called to do. It sounds heavenly to me.

Dudley Pope, b. 1925, d. 1997

Dec29

I found this author, born on this date, and thought that those many Patrick O’Brian fans out there might enjoy Mr. Pope’s fiction also set at sea during the Napoleonic Wars. Of course, it would take a long time for those O’Brian fans to run out of Aubrey/Maturin books to read; there are twenty of them. I tried reading Master and Commander once, but I had a hard time getting into it–too much nautical terminology and not enough action. I thought the movie was OK, nothing to write home about. Maybe I’ll try again sometime.

More Books

Dec29

In thinking of books for boys, I came up with two more beloved books from my own childhood. I looked on the internet for the first, Friday’s Tunnel by John Verney. I remember this one as a very British, cartoon-like story about an eccentric family by the name of Callendar. The boy’s name is Friday, and his sister is named February. I found that this book and all the others by this author are out of print. That’s a shame because I remember them quite fondly.
The other book is The Silver Sword by Ian Serrailler. This story tells of four children, refugees in post-World War II Europe, and how they manage to survive and eventually become reunited with their father. This book is also sometimes entitled Escape from Warsaw.
Anybody read either of these? I plan to add both of them and several other books by both authors to my ever-growing LIST.

The Books I Want to Read This Year

Dec29

This is a very incomplete list of all the books I want to read in 2005. I discovered most of these while browsing through Barnes and Noble or while blogging.
#1 Ladies Detective Agency—Smith
Michaelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling—King
Right Turns: Unconventional Lessons from a Controversial Life–Medved
The Household Book of Lady Grizel Baillie, 1692-1733
Nectarina Sieve—Markandaya
Please Stop Laughing At Me—Blanco
Another Place at the Table—Harrison
Rating the First Ladies—Johnson
The Disappearing Duke—Freeman-Keel
Dangerous Diplomacy—Mowbray
Prophetic Untimeliness—Guinness
The Power of the Powerless—De Vinck
After the Ball—Beard
The Mystic Rose—Lawhead
The Recreations of a Country Parson–Boyd
Tathea—Perry.
Chasing Hepburn—Lee
The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio–Ryan
The Great Fortune, The Spoilt City, Friends and Heroes—Olivia Manning
Empires of Light : Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World –Jonnes
Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age—Schultz
Cold Mountain—Frazier
Eragon—Paolini
The Canterbury Papers—Healey
Sailing the Wine Dark Sea—Why the Greeks Matter—Cahill
Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity—Gold
This Vast Land—Ambrose
Armey’s Axioms—Armey
The God I Love—Tada
Game of Kings—Dunnett
Wild Strawberries—Thirkell
Tenant of Wildfell Hall—Ann Bronte
John Halifax, Gentleman—Dinah Mulock Craik
Miss Marjoribanks–Margaret Oliphant
Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation that’s Changing Your World–Hewitt
Total Truth–Nancy Pearcy I got this one for Christmas.
Shepherds Abiding–Karon Another Christmas present.
Don Quixote–Cervantes Yes, we are going to read the whole thing this year.
In the Heart of the Sea–Philbrick
To the Last Mind–Shaara
Light Force–Janssen
Mad Mary Lamb–Susan Tyler Hitchcock
Dragon Rider-Funke
Airborn–Oppel
Beyond Statliest Marble: The Passionate Feminity of Anne Bradstreet–Wilson
Call of Duty: The Sterling Nobility of Robert E. Lee–Wilkins
Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography–Murray
Forgotten Founding Father: The Heroic Legacy of George Whitfield–Mansfield
Give Me Liberty: The Uncompromising Statesmanship of Patrick Henry–Vaughan

So, are there any books I should add to the list? Any I should remove (not worth the time)? Does anybody recommend I start with one particular book? I notice that there’s not too much fiction on this list, and I like fiction. Can anyone recommend anything that I might like? (I don’t enjoy too much twentieth century fiction, unfortunately, other than fantasy, some YA fiction, and mysteries.)

iTunes Songs for This Week

Dec27

I have a plan to purchase two songs per week from iTunes. The songs for this week are both by the same group, Caedmon’s Call, from here in Houston. The tunes are We Delight and The Danse. The latter song was composed by Kemper Crabb, also from the Houston area. I got to see and hear his Medieval Christmas concert at my own church a couple of weeks ago.

The Silmarillion

Dec26

I am re-reading The Silmarillion by Tolkien. The family received a Lord of the Rings trivia game for Christmas, and some of the children played it on Christmas Day. However, they were disappointed because all of the questions came from the movies, not from the books. So they decided to make up their own questions and create their own game. I was assigned the creation of questions from The Silmarillion because I had read it—-a long time ago. I was looking for trivia questions and became absorbed in the story, and so . . .
I should enjoy watching the movies even more (on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day) after having read the “pre-history” of Middle Earth. Tolkien was an amazingly creative man. In the introduction to The Silmarillion, Christopher Tolkien, JRR Tolkien’s son, says that his father worked on the stories that make up The Silmarillion for most of JRR Tolkien’s life, from the time he was about 25 years old up through the last years of his life. These legends and myths “became the vehicle and depository of his profoundest reflections.”
The stories themselves repeat in cycles: something beautiful and powerful is created, then marred or destroyed by evil, then re-created in a lesser form, then distorted or broken again. The world itself follows this cycle, as do the “Children of Illuvatar,” elves and men. The elves become less and less good and beautiful and powerful as time passes, and yet they retain something of their original perfection and strength. Men, at first, are wise and strong, but later become more and more corrupt and weakened. It seems that Tolkien believed that the world was not evolving into a better and better place and that humans were not becoming wiser and stronger, but rather that everything was winding down and becoming more and more evil and corrupt and would eventually fall into ruin and have to be re-made in God’s time. But Tolkien also believed (as I do) that all things were and are and ever shall be contained within the wisdom and power of God Himself. In his creation story, Tolkien has Illuvatar(God) say to Melkor (Satan):

“And thou, Melkor shall see that no theme can be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined. . . . And thou, Melkor, wilt discover all the secret thoughts of thy mind, and wilt perceive that they are but a part of the whole and tributary to its glory.”

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:9-11

Merry Christmas to All

Dec25

I wanted to think of something profound to say on this Christmas/Christmas Eve, but all I know is that I am profoundly thankful for Christ and for another occasion to celebrate His love and mercy in my life. I hope you all have a very merry Christmas, and I pray that you and I both will honor the Lord of Christmas in all that we say and do this Christmas.