I love the fact that

part of my job today involved dealing with a haiku-related emergency.

Big Ol' Caveat

So I've been thinking about the previous post and I think it needs clarification. Because actually, obviously, I do believe that we are equal in our souls before God-- he shows no partiality. And we are told that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. And the idea of a caste system where your "place in the world" has anything to do with your virtue or favor in God's sight is deeply alien to Christianity, I think-- unless you want to talk about what's been called God's "preferential option" for the poor and powerless. Our God is a God who champions the underdog-- not because He doesn't love the overdog, so to speak, but because the underdog needs it, among other reasons.

So what's left of CS Lewis' quote and my previous post? Well, read the third link, the one to Mere Comments, in that post. That explains it better than I seem to be able to, partially because I have as yet had no coffee, and it's already almost 11:15 in the morning. It has to do with what mutual submission actually looks like. No, I don't think I'm going to be getting any more coherent than that at the moment. Maybe later.

Just to stir things up...

So this conversation has been going on over at James' blog (with this followup), both of which kind of touch on a previous post-a-thon at another blog in response to this from way back in November.

Are you with me?

Now. The following is from That Hideous Strength, the third in CS Lewis' Space Trilogy. And it's getting at the same question, from a slightly different angle. Well, a related question: we were talking at James' blog about church authority. But it's tied together somehow.

"You were saying, my dear?" resumed the Director.

"I thought love meant equality," she said, "and free companionship."

"Ah, equality!" said the Director. "We must talk of that some other time. Yes, we must all be guarded by equal rights from one another's greed, because we are fallen...Equality is not the deepest thing, you know."

"I always thought that's just what it was. I thought that it was in their souls that people were equal."

"You were mistaken," said he gravely. "That is the last place where they are equal. Equality before the law; equality of incomes; that is all very well. Equality guards life; it does not make it. It is medicine, not food. You might as well try to warm yourself with a
blue-book."

"But surely in marriage...?"

"Worse and worse, " said the Director. "Courtship knows nothing of it; nor does fruition. What has free companionship to do with that?"

--and it goes on. Page 148 in the MacMillan edition with the '60s graphic on the cover.

He's not talking about class inequality. Jane, the woman speaking, is later taken aback at the lack of servility that Ivy-- who cleans Jane's house-- shows, when they're both under the Director's roof. And of course he's not saying that some people are more valued by God than others, or anything like that. Almost the opposite: if he's right, and if you cross-apply this idea to the James-blog-debate, it means that while the world-system only values the strong, the leaders, those in authority, God genuinely values those who genuinely don't have authority, or who have less authority.

I, for example, "am a person also under authority." My editor is called Steve. And part of his job, what he may do every day to the glory of God, is to is tell me what to do. And my job is to obey him, as long as he doesn't tell me to do something immoral or illegal. He genuinely has authority over me, and depending on how we each fulfill our separate roles-- in love, to God's glory-- God is pleased, I think. Steve would be delinquent in not telling me what to do next as much as I would be delinquent (and have been, truth be told) in goofing off rather than doing it. It's like symbiosis. It's like the Little Drummer Boy.

You may froth at the mouth below.

Oh, lovely, lovely interlibrary loan! Huzzah!

Very Good Things, in no particular order.

Pour yourself a glass of this.
If you haven't yet seen this, you've got to.
Put your feet up and read this.
Get yourself some tickets for this.
Go in here and order a half of porter...
...or here on (as I vaguely recall) Wednesday and Sunday nights. (That's for the live music. I totally forget when quiz night is.)

Just some suggestions.

Oh...

...excellent. By the way, has anyone seen my first volume of Kirsten Lavransdatter? It's bound in brown cloth. I finally want to read it, and now I can't find it.

this + this = a good time

useful Latin phrase for the day

Hoc est armarium valde magnus.

I know there's a way to decline adjectives to make them comparative, but I don't know what it is. Please include translations and corrections as comments. The answer will be supplied presently.

Best quote from Tom Keehn's 90th birthday bash this past weekend:

Tom (at the podium, into the microphone, with deep satisfaction): "All the really well-dressed ones are my grandchildren."

We did look sharp. Mom said he'd given up on getting his kids to dress formally sometime in the late '60's, and suggested that he'd appreciate fanciness. Photos here.

Blizzard Haiku

Driving to work. Kids
towing sleds along Route Nine,
waving at the plow.

Job joy

I recently had a conversation in the kitchen at my office about how, in a nuclear reactor, the cadmium rods are like a time-out chair for the electrons. "Go sit in the buffer!" said one of my co-workers sternly. "No cascade reaction for you!"

I love these people. It's great to be around geekiness in general even if it's not identical to one's own geekiness.

To do:

1. Make your house fair as you are able.
2. Trim the hearth and set the table.

Sometimes even when organizations are doing good work, their slogans are still funny.

In the parking lot of the strip mall near my office there's a clothing collection bin, like those ones you see around from the St. Vincent de Paul society or the Salvation Army. This one is sponsored by something called "Kiducation." Their slogan, as it appears on the side of the bin, is "Turning Old Clothes into New Kids through Education."

Now, I've heard of social engineering-- is this social tailoring?

Another possibility: "Turning Old Boots into Good Taxpayers through Operant Conditioning"

On a similar note.

Starbucks now sells "Ethos" spring water-- actually a really good idea; part of the price of every bottle goes to some clean-water program somewhere-- but it got me wondering whether there's a complimentary water brand somewhere-- less popular; more of a niche market-- called Pathos.

Excellent combination of books.

I'm reading Ronald Knox' The Hidden Stream-- a collection of lectures on Catholic doctrine-- and at more or less the same time Penelope Fitzgerald's collective biography of her family. Now, it turns out that Ronald Knox was Penelope Fitzgerald's uncle. (Ronald Knox! Was Penelope Fitzgerald's uncle!) And so, after reading Monsignor Knox' thoughts on "Our Knowledge of God Through Analogy"-- complete with Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur-- I read about Ronnie, aged six, picking flowers to give to his new stepmother. He seems to have been a bit Ferdinand-the-Bull-ish, and prone to wander off during games of cricket.

"I think all day, and at night I think about the past."
--Ronald Arbuthnott Knox, aged 4, when asked what he liked to do

A conversation with my associate Miss Cole

H: "I have twenty-one records now!"
S: "Ooh! Did you get them at that place on Eightieth and Broadway that used to be Griffin?"
H: "I got three of them there, but the rest of them I got at a Mennonite thrift shop in Pennsylvania. My taste in records is more similar to the Mennonites' than the Upper West Siders'"

Evangelical Tsuris

Maybe the problem is the mixed messages. On the one hand you have Dr. Agatston writing in calm, matter-of-fact sentences that build into paragraphs that leave you with a cooperative and alert sort of feeling, ready to renounce white bread and sugar for most of forever, and FRUIT and ALL GRAINS for the next two weeks, because his logic is just so CLEAR. C.S. Lewis has a similar effect on me: the clarity, the logic, the excellent grammar, the direct address.

And on the other hand you have the American Heart Association, and their poster that's posted up in every school cafeteria in America. I mean, the Food Pyramid is public education, practically. It can't be wrong. Six to eleven servings of grains per day, period. "Don't be silly," says the AHA, brisk with authority. The AHA is lined up in my mind--perhaps unfortunately-- next to Joshua Harris and John Eldridge: Eat plenty of fruits and whole grains. Don't date, court. Let the man initiate: concentrate instead on cultivating low cholesterol and a lack of covetousness.

And Dr. Agatston and Henry Cloud, I assume, meet after work at a Starbucks to have great conversations with people of both sexes, and drink coffee with Splenda. "Dating is not about marriage!" says Dr. Cloud, snacking on a turkey and part-skim cheese roll-up. "It's a chance to discover more about yourself!"

Clearly we need a tiebreaker. I offer this: somewhere in Volume II of the Complete Letters of C.S. Lewis, which my dad got for me last Christmas, he mentions that, having gotten a little fat, he's been told to stay away from too much bread, and from sugar in his coffee.

The dating thing might be a little more complicated.

Weird

So, Jesus was decended from Leah, not Rachel.

Recent WebFinds

Brandywine Books

and

The Thinklings

Help: If what I'd like ideally is to be able to erase C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength from my mind so that I could read it again for the first time, what should I read instead?

Spam backwards is maps

Charles says: I'd rather eat a map than eat Spam.