Frank Wilson points out an article on Christopher Hitchens’ rant against Christianity, and this statement by Henry Newman is worth requoting. He said, “if anything seems to be proved by astronomer or geologist, or chronologist, or antiquarian, or ethnologist, in contradiction to the dogmas of faith, that point will eventually turn out, first, not to be proved, or secondly, not contradictory, or thirdly, not contradictory to any thing really revealed, but to something which has been confused with revelation.”
Naomi, Ruth, and the Meaning of Words
Speaking of nakedness and the like, here’s a letter from a few months ago which recounts an interesting Bible study on Ruth. About mid-letter, Mrs. Jackson writes, “Ruth, as you may recall, is both listening and following Naomi’s advice to have a kinsman Boaz help them in their impoverished state. Naomi tells Ruth to go to the threshing floor and sleep at Boaz’s feet. This is where the priestess popped out with ‘In seminary, I learned that when feet is mentioned in the bible it means . . .'” You can probably see it coming. (via Videlicet)
Davy Crockett and the corruption of children
The mawn is lone. I mean, the lawn is mown (Sorry. It just came out like that). The clothes are in the washer. I am on schedule to be packed up and out of here tomorrow morning. I’ll be going down to Iowa for family stuff over the weekend, and I won’t be back till Monday night, so I probably won’t post again till Tuesday evening.
Be strong. I know you can endure that long.
Got my Davy Crockett book in the mail today. It’s the same one as this one, except that close examination reveals it to be the Australian edition. I kind of wondered about that when I noticed the seller was from there (or New Zealand. I forget). But as far as I can tell it’s essentially the same. A quick perusal doesn’t even reveal any Britishisms like “colour.”
It was somewhat startling to page through it for the first time in decades. I thought I remembered the book clearly, but although every page is immediately familiar, I’d completely forgotten most of them, as far as being able to summon them up from memory on my own was concerned.
I puzzle over memory a lot. I’m convinced (and experience confirms it) that most of what we call “memory” is a construct, a movie we’ve produced for ourselves. The first time we remember an event, we remember the thing itself. The next time, we remember the event plus our experience of remembering it. That little addition compounds over the years, so that eventually there isn’t much of the original memory left.
That doesn’t mean memory is worthless. But it’s unfocused and palimpsested. It’s not entirely to be relied on.
Which is good and bad, I think.
Another thing that came to mind as I examined the book was the prominence of guns in the thing. No publisher would get away with so much shooting in a kids’ book nowadays, I’m pretty sure. Like all Baby Boomers, I grew up surrounded by the images of heroes (Crockett, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, etc.) who carried and used guns.
Yet—amazingly—we confounded the grownups who worried about the effects of all this “violence on TV.” We grew up to be the most pacifist, anti-gun generation this country had ever seen.
This gives me hope.
Because if it’s a principle that kids will grow up to reject the heroic images they were raised with, we can look forward to the next generation being the pickup-drivingest, huntingest, jingoistest, moral absolutistest generation that ever waged a war of aggression.
Breaking the Laws of Medieval Blogging
Richard Nokes is talking about the Beowulf animation too, saying he must break the second commandment of medieval blogging, which is “Thou shalt not suggest Neil Gaiman is a mere mortal.” He says that Gaiman has Beowulf fight Grendel in the nude. It’s in the poem, Gaiman says, but Nokes can’t quite find it. I need to read this thing again. He concludes:
Regardless, it is disconcerting how often the words “nude” and “naked” are being associated with this new Beowulf movie. If Hollywood is that desperate to have nudity in a canonical work of medieval literature, they might pick something out of the Decameron — it gives lots of options. (via Blogwatch)
(I’m sure this post will up our blog rating. We have been a PG blog for instances of death and murder.)
But getting back to the movie, I’ve always pictured Grendel as a big monster, not a humanoid thing, like this in fact. I can’t read that post, but I think I saw that image of Grendel when I was first exposed to Beowulf. That’s a troll as I’ve always known them.
Another stab at Beowulf
It’s raining this afternoon. This is a good thing, though they tell us we might get some severe weather later tonight. But that’s OK. I don’t mind a little storm damage. As long as it happens to somebody else.
Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard got a link from Hugh Hewitt at Towhall.com today.
I hate you, Gaius. Curse you, and your little animal uprising too!
Dale sent me this link to a trailer for the upcoming Robert Zemeckis Beowulf movie. Looks like they’re going the 300 route, which isn’t necessarily bad. It can’t be worse than the recent Icelandic effort with Gerard Butler, which I reviewed a while back. But it doesn’t look like much effort has been made to get the costumes authentic (which the Gerard Butler incarnation at least got right, pretty much the only thing it got right).
We Viking reenactors don’t ask for much. We’d like to see a Viking movie (Beowulf isn’t technically a Viking, but close enough to get on our radar) with historical authenticity and a good story.
So far, the best Viking movie ever made is still The Vikings with Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis. And that movie isn’t really very good (though it’s a lot of fun). The Thirteenth Warrior had its points, but it went so far off the reservation with armor and weapons that it kind of hurts to watch. (Unless you’ve just watched the Gerard Butler Beowulf, in which case it’s like a drink of cold water on a hot day.)
So I’ll see this one. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. I don’t think anyone has ever imagined Grendel’s mother (the part Angelina Jolie plays) as a siren before. I suppose it could work.
Just as long as I’m not supposed to like her. I like Robin Wright-Penn all right, even though she has lousy taste in husbands.
Hollywood! Don’t you realize the world is screaming for a film version of The Year of the Warrior?
Skipping
Bird of The Thinklings asks a couple reading questions. “When you read a book, do you EVER skip any pages or whole sections? If you do skip pages/sections, and you get to the end of the book, do you count the book as “read”?”
Commenter Sara raises a good point in her response.
What if you plow through every word of a book (as I did with Moby Dick at age 16) but miss half the point of what’s going on. Have you read it? After I finished Moby, I told my delighted uncle about it–it’s his favorite book ever. (Seriously, his copy is held together with duct tape and has a hand drawn whale on the cover / top page.) Anyway, he gave me copies of some of his favorite literary theorists on the thing, who made a very convincing argument that Melville was doing something very specifically literary with those whale sex organ chapters, and others of that sort. I not only hadn’t caught it when I read the book–I didn’t even have the concept that such a thing could be going on. Reminds me of one of my favorite authors talking about picking up her father’s copy of Animal Farm when she was ten because she liked animal stories and there was a horse on the cover . . .
Wrapping Up a Great Series
Kevin Holtsberry discusses the close of Olen Steinhauer’s Eastern European Series with his book, Victory Square. He writes, “I have to admit that the expectations are high for this one as his last book, Liberation Movements, was one of, if not THE, book of the year for me last year. But so far, Olen has never let me down.”
The melting house
Tonight, a Christian Fundamentalist joke to start with:
Q: What do you call a Pre-Trib eschatologist with a drug problem?
A: Hal Lindsey Lohan
(Ba-rump-bump)
It was a good day. I not only got a start on a project I’ve been struggling with, but I caught our former IT guy, recently departed from the staff, on a visit to the school. I begged him to help with a bar code project I’d asked him about just before he left. He’d told me clearly where to find the Microsoft Access file I needed, but I’d been able to locate nothing there. So he came up and looked on my computer, and on the network, and behold, I was right (someone write that down. It doesn’t happen that often). The file had disappeared, like an 80s TV star. So he spent more time than he’d planned on, creating a couple new reports for me. Now I’m back in business. Thanks, Brian, in case you happen to read this.
Earlier I spoke to Dennis Ingolfsland of The Recliner Commentaries. He’s the librarian at a Christian college in our general area, and I’d been asked to call around and find out how those schools figure overdue fines, since we’re considering revising our policies. Nice to speak to Dennis, whose blog I enjoy very much.
Here’s something that occurred to me today:
I was thinking about how, through the centuries, so many of God’s best servants have had very short life-spans. Thinking about Oswald Chambers brought it to mind, but there are many examples. In the great days of the Missions Movement, young people from all over Europe and America trooped onto ships that sailed to Africa or India or Southeast Asia, and the casualty toll was horrendous. Some were lost in storms at sea, hundreds succumbed to disease, and a few were killed by natives. Living in a time when passion for the gospel has narrowed to a trickle in our civilization, that seems like an awful waste.
But you know, God doesn’t build as man does. His Church is the solidest of edifices, as C. S. Lewis says in The Screwtape Letters: “spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners.” In terms of this temporal world, though, God builds like a contractor putting up a house made of ice in Saudi Arabia (or in Minnesota, today). His construction material is forever dwindling away under His hand, and one piece after another has to be replaced.
But this is not a bad thing. He chose that form of architecture, and it may be that the constant replacement prevents problems of petrifaction or rot that He particularly wants to avoid.
Or so it seems to me.
Hemingway, Party of 123
In other news, Key West, Florida just held their annual Ernest Hemingway Look-Alike Contest at Sloppy Joe’s Bar.
Points on Taking Criticism
Mary E. DeMuth notes a few thoughts on a Christian response to criticism.
- Examine yourself.
- Consider this may be an opportunity for you to experience and show Jesus to a weaker brother.
- Even if things spin out of control and all sorts of people say half-truths about you and your words, rest in Jesus and cherish the deeper fellowship you’ll have with Him.
- Remember that even if you say-act-do everything correctly (in a way that would make God smile), it may not change someone’s heart.
- Believe in God’s sovereignty.
- Don’t let the accusations wet-blanket your passion for serving Jesus.