12.28.2003
Discipline
One of my favorite repeating phrases in Louis Sachar's Sideways Stories from Wayside School is "she wrote his name on the board under the word 'Discipline,'" for any of the children who had been bad. I think I need my name under the word "Discipline" for a while.
Why is it we tend to see disciplinary action as a bad thing? I need to lead a disciplined life, one of order rather than chaos, one of rigor rather than looseness. Dieting is discipline. Speech is discipline.
Blogging is discipline.
So here's to having my name on the board under the word "Discipline."
One of my favorite repeating phrases in Louis Sachar's Sideways Stories from Wayside School is "she wrote his name on the board under the word 'Discipline,'" for any of the children who had been bad. I think I need my name under the word "Discipline" for a while.
Why is it we tend to see disciplinary action as a bad thing? I need to lead a disciplined life, one of order rather than chaos, one of rigor rather than looseness. Dieting is discipline. Speech is discipline.
Blogging is discipline.
So here's to having my name on the board under the word "Discipline."
12.27.2003
Worse Blogger
I'm finding a deep sense of frustration when editing my posts in MS Word and then posting them to my blog. Word sends all sorts of goofy codes giving you those extra chracters that make reading my blog so tedious. The alternative is to write directly into blogger without the benefit of spell checking. Someday I hope to find a compromise.
At present I am reading The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. A co-worker recommended it because it provides a nice overview of quantum mechanic, general relativity, special relativity and introduction to string theory. The good thing about it is its style which is quite readable and easy to understand for those of us who lack the requisite calculus to understand what is going on. Thank you Brian Greene for making all this accessible.
Guess I now have to add this to my booklist, eh?
I'm finding a deep sense of frustration when editing my posts in MS Word and then posting them to my blog. Word sends all sorts of goofy codes giving you those extra chracters that make reading my blog so tedious. The alternative is to write directly into blogger without the benefit of spell checking. Someday I hope to find a compromise.
At present I am reading The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. A co-worker recommended it because it provides a nice overview of quantum mechanic, general relativity, special relativity and introduction to string theory. The good thing about it is its style which is quite readable and easy to understand for those of us who lack the requisite calculus to understand what is going on. Thank you Brian Greene for making all this accessible.
Guess I now have to add this to my booklist, eh?
12.26.2003
Bad Blogger
I have spent the last month in a whirlwind. It has been so long since I've posted to this blog I'm embarrassed. I hang my head in shame and confess that I’m a Bad Blogger. I lack the essential elements of what constitutes a Bodacious Blog:
I don't post urbane, witty comments on a daily basis.
I don't update my blogroll to link to the hottest, coolest sites on a weekly basis
I fail to keep pace with my reading list
I don’t provide sage advice to those who aren't listening.
In a word - I am a bad blogger. I would recommend that you not read this.
And if you are reading this, I apologize.
Come back tomorrow. I promise to be an even worse blogger then!
I have spent the last month in a whirlwind. It has been so long since I've posted to this blog I'm embarrassed. I hang my head in shame and confess that I’m a Bad Blogger. I lack the essential elements of what constitutes a Bodacious Blog:
I don't post urbane, witty comments on a daily basis.
I don't update my blogroll to link to the hottest, coolest sites on a weekly basis
I fail to keep pace with my reading list
I don’t provide sage advice to those who aren't listening.
In a word - I am a bad blogger. I would recommend that you not read this.
And if you are reading this, I apologize.
Come back tomorrow. I promise to be an even worse blogger then!
12.08.2003
On Worship
Here's something from Children of God I found particularly insightful with regard to the subject of worship.
"Go back down the mountain, my heart," Suukmel advised serenely. "Listen to Isaac's music again. Remember what you thought when you first heard it. Know that if we are children of one God, we can make ourselves one family in time."
"And if God is just a song (a fiction)?" Ha'anala asked, alone and frightened.
Suukmel did not answer for a while. Finally she said, "Our task is the same."
I loved this passage. Even for those for whom God does not exist, worship is still the same and we all need to learn to sing together. If I understand the ending of The Story correctly, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Here's something from Children of God I found particularly insightful with regard to the subject of worship.
"Go back down the mountain, my heart," Suukmel advised serenely. "Listen to Isaac's music again. Remember what you thought when you first heard it. Know that if we are children of one God, we can make ourselves one family in time."
"And if God is just a song (a fiction)?" Ha'anala asked, alone and frightened.
Suukmel did not answer for a while. Finally she said, "Our task is the same."
I loved this passage. Even for those for whom God does not exist, worship is still the same and we all need to learn to sing together. If I understand the ending of The Story correctly, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
12.06.2003
More from Children of God
I found this passage on pg. 362-3 in The Children of God which is a sequel to The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell . This is a science fiction story of a Jesuit mission to the first discovered inhabitable planet where inter-species war was happening. Sean is talking to a survivor from the losing side of the war, Lady Suukmel. Tell me what you think of the following (highlights are mine):
The Jana'ata are alone, Sean thought then, like godlings whose believers had become atheists. In his own soul, he knew with sudden certainty that it was not rebellion or doubt or even sin that broke God’s heart; it was indifference.
"Don't expect gratitude," he warned Suukmel. "Don’t even expect acknowledgment! They're never going to need you again, not like they did before. A hundred years from now, you may be nothing but a memory. The very thought of you will fill most of them with shame and loathing."
"Then we shall truly be gone," Suukmel whispered.
"Perhaps," this hard man said. "Perhaps."
"If you have no hope for us, why have you stayed?" she demanded. "To watch us die?"
Perhaps, he almost said. But then Sean remembered his father, eyes shining with the unadulterated glee that Maura Fein had loved and shared, shaking his head at some ignominious example of the human capacity for boneheaded, self-inflicted calamity. "Ah, Sean, lad," David Fein would say to his son, "it takes an Irish Jew to appreciate a cock-up this grand!"
Sean Fein gazed for a time at the pale northern sky, and thought of the place where his own ancestors had lived. He was a Jesuit and celibate, an only child: the last of his line. Looking at Suukmel's drawn, gray face, he felt at long last compassion for the fools who expected fairness and sense – in this world, not the next.
"My father was the son of ancient priests, my mother the daughter of petty kings long gone," he told Suukmel. "A thousand times, their people might have died out. A thousand times, they nearly killed themselves off with political bickering and moral certainty and a lethal distaste for compromise. A thousand times they might have become nothing but a memory in the mind of God."
"And yet they live?" she asked.
"Last time I looked," he said. "I can’t swear to more than that."
"And so might we," Suukmel replied, with frail conviction.
"Shit, yes, y'might at that," Sean muttered in English, remembering Disraeli's wee couplet: How odd of God / to choose the Jews. "My very much esteemed lady Suukmel," he said then in his strangely accented K'San, "one thing I can say for certain. There's just no telling whom God will take a liking to."
I found this passage on pg. 362-3 in The Children of God which is a sequel to The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell . This is a science fiction story of a Jesuit mission to the first discovered inhabitable planet where inter-species war was happening. Sean is talking to a survivor from the losing side of the war, Lady Suukmel. Tell me what you think of the following (highlights are mine):
The Jana'ata are alone, Sean thought then, like godlings whose believers had become atheists. In his own soul, he knew with sudden certainty that it was not rebellion or doubt or even sin that broke God’s heart; it was indifference.
"Don't expect gratitude," he warned Suukmel. "Don’t even expect acknowledgment! They're never going to need you again, not like they did before. A hundred years from now, you may be nothing but a memory. The very thought of you will fill most of them with shame and loathing."
"Then we shall truly be gone," Suukmel whispered.
"Perhaps," this hard man said. "Perhaps."
"If you have no hope for us, why have you stayed?" she demanded. "To watch us die?"
Perhaps, he almost said. But then Sean remembered his father, eyes shining with the unadulterated glee that Maura Fein had loved and shared, shaking his head at some ignominious example of the human capacity for boneheaded, self-inflicted calamity. "Ah, Sean, lad," David Fein would say to his son, "it takes an Irish Jew to appreciate a cock-up this grand!"
Sean Fein gazed for a time at the pale northern sky, and thought of the place where his own ancestors had lived. He was a Jesuit and celibate, an only child: the last of his line. Looking at Suukmel's drawn, gray face, he felt at long last compassion for the fools who expected fairness and sense – in this world, not the next.
"My father was the son of ancient priests, my mother the daughter of petty kings long gone," he told Suukmel. "A thousand times, their people might have died out. A thousand times, they nearly killed themselves off with political bickering and moral certainty and a lethal distaste for compromise. A thousand times they might have become nothing but a memory in the mind of God."
"And yet they live?" she asked.
"Last time I looked," he said. "I can’t swear to more than that."
"And so might we," Suukmel replied, with frail conviction.
"Shit, yes, y'might at that," Sean muttered in English, remembering Disraeli's wee couplet: How odd of God / to choose the Jews. "My very much esteemed lady Suukmel," he said then in his strangely accented K'San, "one thing I can say for certain. There's just no telling whom God will take a liking to."
