“I tell my own graduate students the same thing - to invest in books. They are our tools. A mechanic has his set of wrenches; a doctor has his stethoscope; a chef has his cookware. Those of us in ministry, or scholarship (and ideally they are joined at the hip), have our books. When I “require” books for my students, my intent is simple: these are worth not only reading, but owning. Buy them. Build your library. It is your armory. But let’s return to the book as a physical manifestation. Because it’s not just its content - it’s the importance of the book itself. I love the feel of a book, holding it in my hands, smelling the paper and, if old, the dust and age. I love marking it up, highlighting key passages and annotating it along the sides. Which is why I never lend a book - if lost, it would be far more of a loss than the mere price of its replacement. I would lose my engagement with the work, the conversation I had with the author that had been recorded in my written interaction on its pages. Unless engaged again in the same manner, I would never be able to pull it off of the shelf and, in the span of a half-hour or so, reacquaint myself with the entire dialogue and gain from it all that it had bestowed upon its initial reading.”
—James Emery White
January 2010
36 posts
“Books may well be the only true magic.”
—Alice Hoffman
Also Mike Holmes is the perfect man
Since Christmas I have become addicted to two types of television shows that have me yelling at the TV. No, not Jersey Shore.
I’ve become obsessed with Real Estate shows.
I critique the houses, the price, and the people in the Real Estate shows, but I also just love seeing all the options out there. I can’t wait for us to start shopping for our own place, so I’m pacifying myself by seriously considering the merits of black granite counter tops. (Kind-a sexy but shows fingerprints really bad)
The second type of shows I love to watch are Poker tournaments. This also involves a lot of yelling at the television. I watched enough that I’ve started to get quite obsessed with playing it myself (against the computer, no money lost-yet). I’ve become so Poker happy that I convinced JuJubes to take me to the casino (I’ve never been). I just went to the Poker room and watched, in awe. They play so fast. I’m going to have to work on my skills before I play real people with real money. JuJubes says I just like to see the women beat the men.
So now I really want to go to buy a house I can’t afford and go to Vegas. Or I could just light my money on fire and watch it float away.
The reason I’ve been getting these crazy obsessions is because I’m bored and alone a lot. School just doesn’t seem to keep me busy enough.
But hopefully all these weird obsessions can calm down a bit because I got a job this week at a lingerie store.
So of you notice me checking out your rack, it’s my job. So now I can become obsessed with BOOBS!!
I know JuJubes has had a stressful week when our storage room has been re-organized for the 100th time since we moved in.
Play
God and the Earthquakes
Today in my theology class we were talking about Genesis and whether the earth is fallen. Are humans fallen? Lots of people said humans have free will and we choose to love God and that’s what makes the love better. Evil has to exist for good to exist. Bad things happen so that we trust God more.
Then someone started to take about how tragedies bring glory to God.
If you believe in heaven, death looses its sting a little, but what about suffering? What about being trapped under the rubble, still, and people know you are there but there is no way to lift the concrete slabs away to save you.
Someone in class said that God make the Earth and he made the Earth perfect. Hurricanes are needed to oxygenate the oceans. Earthquakes form the beautiful mountains and reveal God’s power and handywork.
But God is not an interventionist. He can’t intervene when his creation, his perfect planet works the way he designed it. He planned for the tectonic plates to move and he planned for the hurricanes.
And I didn’t want to speak up in class, but what a stupid view point.
What’s the point of praying then? What’s the point in asking God to not flood the basement and valley I live in?
If the Earth must run the way God designed it, and now it has a course that can’t be changed… why even have a God? Why believe in an all powerful being who created everything and then said, “Good luck with that, I’ll see you later.”
Where is God in Haiti? Where is God when the earth quakes?
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There are other potential advantages inherent in chiefdoms and states… The official religions and patriotic fervor of many states make their troops willing to fight suicidally.
The latter willingness is one so strongly programmed into us citizens of modern states, by our schools and churches and governments, that we forget what a radical break it marks with previous human history. Every state has its slogan urging its citizens to be prepared to die if necessary for the state: Britain’s “For King and Country,” Spain’s “Por Dios y Espana,” and so on Similar sentiments motivated 16th-century Aztec warriors: “There is nothing like death in war, nothing like the flowery death so precious to Him [the Aztec national god Huitzilopochtli] who gives life: far off I see it, my heart yearns for it!”
Naturally, what makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy. Fanaticism in war, of the type that drove recorded Christian and Islamic conquests, was probably unknown on Earth until chiefdoms and especially states emerged within the last 6,000 years.
” —-Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
Diamond makes a brief mention of how religious fanaticism can affect human societies but it seems to me that this religion has a much bigger influence of societies and their fates then Diamond gives them credit for.
“Still, would it be totally annoying to point out that the whole White Messiah fable, especially as Cameron applies it, is kind of offensive? It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration. It’s just escapism, obviously, but benevolent romanticism can be just as condescending as the malevolent kind — even when you surround it with pop-up ferns and floating mountains.”
—David Brooks (via azspot)
