Our friend Jimmy Davis reviews Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by Being Different by Tullian Tchividjian.
Good Ingredients Make a Good Meal
You may still be thinking about food this holiday weekend (holiday, btw, comes from an older word, holy day, which in Old English read this way: háligdæg), so let me give you a food story.
Vinegar is good for dissolving hard water deposits. The manufacturer of my coffee maker instructs me to run a full pot of vinegar through the machine to clear it of calcium build-up which wear it down over time. I don’t think our water in North Georgia is very hard, but it’s hard enough to leave a residue behind which you can see after a while. Leaving water sitting in the kettle causes plates of calcium to form on the bottom.
So one time a while back, I filled the kettle half full of vinegar to clean off those plates. Heating the vinegar seems to work well, but I don’t know if it’s necessary for cleaning. After I let the vinegar work on the kettle (I think it was the next day), I made myself a cup of tea. I think I used a bag of herbal tea we had had for too long, and it must have gone bad because it had a strong acrid taste. It was the worst tea I’d ever made.
But you are likely way ahead of where I was at the time, and you already see that I had steep my tea leaves in boiled vinegar, which is why I entitled this post as I did. If you make your tea with vinegar, friends, you will cap off your beverage’s sweetness at the root. There’s probably an old Chinese proverb about that, maybe “Better to be deprived of food for three days than to drink tea steeped in vinegar.”
Or “As tea in vinegar sours the stomach, so does living with a contentious woman.”
“Verses upon the Burning of our House” by Anne Bradstreet
In silent night when rest I took,
For sorrow near I did not look,
I waken’d was with thund’ring noise
And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice.
That fearful sound of “fire” and “fire,”
Let no man know is my Desire.
I starting up, the light did spy,
And to my God my heart did cry
To straighten me in my Distress
And not to leave me succourless.
Then coming out, behold a space
The flame consume my dwelling place.
And when I could no longer look,
I blest his grace that gave and took,
That laid my goods now in the dust.
Yea, so it was, and so ’twas just. Continue reading “Verses upon the Burning of our House” by Anne Bradstreet
Thanksgiving Eve, 2009
I generally hate it when I’m asked to list things I’m thankful for. I don’t disapprove in principle, let me hasten to add. It’s just something that makes me uncomfortable. I’m keenly aware that I enjoy a life of health, prosperity and comfort that would have suggested heaven to my ancestors (see my translations of my great-great-grandfather’s letters), and that in spite of those benefits I’m a crabbed and bitter-minded man. My mind’s focus is generally on the things that are lacking in my life. To be fair to myself, some of those are pretty big things. But if I put aside the sins of envy and malcontent, I still have plenty of things to give thanks for. Such as:
A home to live in. That blessing is compounded this year by the fact that I was recently approved for refinancing, which ought to make my financial circumstances a little more comfortable in 2010 (which I say we should all agree, ahead of time, to pronounce “Twenty-Ten”).
Jerry Nordskog and the folks at Nordskog Publishing, who took a risk on getting me back in print again (you do know I have a book out, don’t you? You can buy it here. Or here. The perfect Christmas gift for everyone on your list!).
The people at the schools of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, who continue to permit me to play Eccentric Librarian in their beautiful facility.
A good church to attend, not too far from where I live.
My family, for having the patience to put up with me as we gather a couple times a year—this Saturday being one of them.
Phil, for giving me the keys to the blog, and not complaining too much about the dents and scrapes I put on the fenders.
“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” (G. K. Chesterton)
Risk and Triumph
“Who never lost, are unprepared
A Coronet to find!
Who never thirsted
Flagons, and Cooling Tamarind!”
Read the rest – “Who Never Lost” by Emily Dickenson
Douglas Wilson on Deep Reading
The men I am most indebted to philosophically are: C.S. Lewis, Cornelius Van Til, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Calvin, Richard Weaver, the early Rushdoony, Augustine, John Knox, Gary North, J.I. Packer, Francis Schaeffer, G.K. Chesterton, Paul Johnson, John Stott, Christopher Dawson, H.L. Mencken, William Buckley, David Wells, R.L. Dabney, E. Michael Jones, P.G. Wodehouse, Greg Bahnsen, and Peter Leithart. And after a diet of such books for twenty-six years, I have to say that reading an emergent book by Brian McLaren is like watching a six-year-old do card tricks.
Meditation on art, by a philistine
Our friend S. D. Smith, over at his blog, meditates profoundly (I think) on the question of limits in art. I agree with him entirely.
In fact, if I had to define art, I think my definition would be something like this— “Art is an endeavor in which an artisan uses some physical medium with sufficient skill that the medium seems to disappear, and something greater than the medium is communicated.” Art is a synergy between artist, material and audience.
That’s what so many modern artists don’t seem to understand. They’ve accepted a subjective definition of art, one that says that art is all about the artist’s subjective feelings and his expression of them—in any form whatever. There are no absolute values. Hang a urinal on a wall? What right do you (philistine that you are) to say it’s not art? Compose a concerto that consists of a period of total silence? It expresses my feelings in ways that you peasants will never comprehend, so it’s art. Lapdancing? If you don’t understand it, don’t judge it.
The true artist struggles with his medium, entering into it intimately, so that he can make it do things nobody ever thought it could. A painting that looks like a photograph—or like a dream. A sculpture that looks like a living being—only the way living beings ought to be, not the way they are in our experience A song that reaches into the listener’s soul and brings up his deepest aspirations and sorrows, so that he weeps just as if he’d just lost—or gained–the love of his life.
Lewis and Tolkien called it “subcreation.” They could call it that because they believed in a Creator. Today’s artists, by and large, don’t believe in a Creator; they believe in accidents. So all they can do is try to re-create accidents.
They do believe in one absolute, universally applicable, value, though—that the public is obligated to pay for their art.
Where Are the Conservatives?
Science writer Erick Vance asks why conservatives aren’t in favor of or proposing solutions to deal with climate change. Isn’t it an issue right up their alley? Conversation ensued.
Save Us from the Critics
A.N. Wilson says he can tell Sherlock Holmes was a homosexual drug-addict, even if Conan Doyle didn’t know it. Can we agree that fictional characters are not as constant as live people? So an author might reimagine his character in a way different than originally written, making arguments that “this guy was really . . . ” irrelevant. (via Book Trib)
The Guns of Two-Space, by Dave Grossman and Bob Hudson
The Guns of Two-Space (available here, either as an e-book or a print-on-demand) is the sequel to The Two-Space War, by Dave Grossman and Leo Frankowski, which I recently reviewed). Alas, Lt. Col. Grossman lost his friend in science fiction publishing when Jim Baen of Baen Books died, and this volume (written with a different co-author and privately published), although excellent in many ways, does suffer for want of a professional editor.
The Two-Space War told how Lt. Thomas Melville assumed command of his ship’s crew on the death of his captain, and captured an enemy ship which he named the Fang. Through inspired leadership and flexibility in adopting new weapons and strategies, he managed to thwart (or at least delay) an attempt by the evil Guldur Empire to conquer planets friendly to earth and humans. Acclaimed as a hero and a savior by alien governments, Melville was less appreciated by the appeasement-minded Westerness (human) government, and at the end of the book was dispatched to patrol and deliver mail between the most distant colony planets. Continue reading The Guns of Two-Space, by Dave Grossman and Bob Hudson