In this article on New York City bookstores, the closing of three Borders stores (two remain) may be another sign that independent or smaller bookstores are gaining appeal among readers. Some of these stores have turned to print-on-demand services as a side business.
Lifting Monday (Go Heave That Girl)
Today, I must warn you of a old tradition you will not encounter, not even if you were in the few British counties where it was practiced for many years. Today is Lifting Monday or Heaving Day.
In a letter by author Elizabeth Gaskell, she comments that Lifting Monday and Lifting Tuesday are in full swing where she is and that her husband has had to run hard to avoid the revelers. From what I can gather, men on Monday and women on Tuesday went into homes and lifted the lady or master of the house in a chair three times with loud cheers, and for this merry feat they were allowed to kiss her or him or be paid off a shilling. Some fun-going bands waylaid strangers in the streets. When the women tried this on Tuesday, it raised more of a ruckus because many would try to lift or heave men up without success. You can imagine how the mousey clerk from the Chershire Bank on Oakchest Rd would be a favorite target for roving bands of girls. If he wouldn’t let you kiss him, he’d have to give you a shilling. And on Monday, the barkeep at The Olde Red Lion could lift any woman he pleased even in a chair.
Mrs. Gaskell says there’s a story that on Easter Monday, 1290, seven maids of honor rushed into the room where King Edward I was sitting and lifted him in his chair until he paid them 14 pounds to put him down. That’s some history, but they stopped this tradition over 100 years ago, and of course, we wouldn’t do it today. We’re too busy superpoking friends on Facebook to do silly stuff like this.
Where Did We Get the Word Robot?
Naturally, the right answer to give the inquisitive child who asks this is to say, “They gave it to us.” When asked who they are, you are free to elaborate however you wish to build your psychological domination of the nasty child. But if you are interested in the truth about this word origin, Howard Markel gives it to us. Robot was the creation of Czech playwright Karel Čapek in his 1920s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). Of course, it’s a play about mechanized men who break their labor union contracts and try to take over the world. File that under The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same (via Books, Inq.)
Staggering Separation
Marcia Segelstein writes about the true nature of God and what made the cross so difficult for Jesus. Quoting Tim Keller, she notes, “Jesus began to experience the spiritual, cosmic, infinite disintegration that would happen when he became separated from his Father on the cross. Jesus began to experience merely a foretaste of that, and he staggered.”
Beholding the Lord's Face
I write emails for a prayer list about once a week, and since it’s the Easter season, I wanted to share one with you.
“As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;
when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.” (Psalm 17:15 ESV)
You know, asking what is life about may miss the mark. The better question is who is life about, and though it doesn’t flatter our pride at all, the answer to that question is Yahweh, the Lover of our Souls. Every good thing comes from him, but is not independent of him. That’s the reason Scripture calls us to give him our worries and find in him joy and peace. It doesn’t tell us to be satisfied in what the Lord can give us. Though the flooding river may destroy our current livelihood or careless men shatter the health of those we love, the Lord will take care of us. Today and in the life to come, we will behold his holy face in the righteousness he gives us and find satisfaction.
This week, we celebrate Christ Jesus wrestling death to the ground and breaking its back, so that we would live forever. He stood between us and the hatred of the world, so that when we face persecution we will know it cannot overwhelm us because someone on our side who has dealt with it before. He is the hero who accomplished what we could not do for ourselves; he absorbed God’s holy wrath so that we could be righteous.
“Keep me as the apple of your eye;
hide me in the shadow of your wings,
from the wicked who do me violence,
my deadly enemies who surround me.” (Psalm 17:8-9)
Oh, Lord, do not let us wander out from under your shelter. Wean us from those things that distract us or worry us, so that we will be completely satisfied with you alone. (Photo by Alex Scarcella, on Flickr)
A Little Bach Is Always Appropriate
Pop-culture Nonsense
Was the resurrection simply the recasting of ancient mythology, akin to the fanciful tales of Osiris or Mithras? If you want to see a historian laugh out loud, bring up that kind of pop-culture nonsense.
One by one, my objections evaporated. I read books by skeptics, but their counter-arguments crumbled under the weight of the historical data. No wonder atheists so often come up short in scholarly debates over the resurrection.
That’s from Lee Strobel’s article in the Wall Street Journal on how Easter killed his faith in atheism.
Earlier this week, The Office funnyman and atheist Ricky Gervais opines on “Why I’m A Good Christian.” Gervais spends most of the article saying he has kept all Ten commandments, but his main point is here:
Jesus was a man. (And if you forget all that rubbish about being half God, and believe the non-supernatural acts accredited to him, he was a man whose wise words many other men would still follow.) His message was usually one of forgiveness and kindness. These are wonderful virtues, but I have seen them discarded by many so-called God-fearers when it suits them.
TTFN
If you check the comments under my review of Whittaker Chambers’ Witness, a few inches below, you’ll see that we got a comment and a link from a David Chambers, whom I take to be Chambers’ son. This sort of thing happens more often than I ever expected, and it’s always gratifying.
I won’t be posting as usual tomorrow or Friday, as I’m going down to my Viking event in Missouri. The location is Ravensborg, near Knox City, Missouri. The web page is here.
Flashman On the March, by George MacDonald Fraser
This must perforce be the last Flashman book by George MacDonald Fraser, as the author died in 2009. (I wonder if there’s been any talk of another writer taking up the mantle. I wonder if another writer could do it properly. We’ve all been waiting a long time for Flashman’s Civil War adventures, which in terms of pure chronology would almost immediately precede this story.)
When we join Sir Harry Paget Flashman at the beginning of Flashman On the March, he’s desperately attempting to get out of Trieste, where he recently arrived as a refugee following a stint as an officer of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico (poor Maximilian!). He runs into an old acquaintance, a British diplomat who is trying to find someone to protect a shipment of silver to Suez, for delivery to Gen. Robert Napier. Napier is buying support from various African tribes against King Theodore of Abyssinia (today known as Ethiopia). Theodore, who Flashman will come to describe as the maddest monarch he ever met—which is saying a great deal–has kidnapped a number of Europeans, and Napier is leading a relief force. Continue reading Flashman On the March, by George MacDonald Fraser
The Mother of all delusions
This splendid article by Peter Wood in The Chronicle of Higher Education states some hard truths and asks some hard questions about assumptions concerning religion that reign in academia today. How come Christian Fundamentalists are openly discriminated against in educational hiring, while scholars promoting the more ridiculous claims of feminists about a supposed prehistoric matriarchal “golden age” are routinely welcomed and promoted?
There is no real evidence that humanity every passed through a stage in which society was matriarchal, and abundant evidence to the contrary. Goddesses, of course, appear frequently in the world’s religions and myths, but the notion of a great prehistoric cult of the Goddess in Europe connected to matriarchal rule has no foundation.
Why bring this up now? Because higher education’s relaxed attitude about appointing faculty members who not only believe but who actually teach this moonshine demonstrates the hypocrisy of those who say that faculty members are acting out of the need to protect the university from anti-scientific nonsense when they discriminate against conservative Christian candidates for academic appointment. The possibility that a candidate for a position in biology, anthropology, or, say, English literature might secretly harbor the idea that God created the universe or that the Bible is true, is a danger not to be brooked. But apparently, the possibility that a candidate believes that human society was “matriarchal” until about 5,000 years ago is perfectly within the range of respectable opinion appropriate for campus life.
Splendid stuff. A long article, but definitely worth reading. Tip: Cronaca.