Last Thursday, I mentioned the blog on visiting various churches, made a crack about visiting a Lutheran church, and what do you know but he visted a Missouri Synod Lutheran church yesterday. He avoided the snakes too–a double blessing.
Norwegian Margit Sandemo in English
The best-selling author of The Legend of the Ice People series is having the works translated into English now. From a Guardian interview linked from The Literary Saloon:
Her name automatically raises a lot of literary snobbery in Scandinavia – my Swedish friend, Helena, says that some libraries refused to stock Sandemo’s books (according to Sandemo, this was because they were worried people would steal them). The critics are not kind, but Sandemo says she doesn’t care. “Those people who think they know what taste people should have, they are difficult. ‘This is not a good book,’ they say. I don’t care if there are people who say it is not good literature, because I just think of my many readers who are more important.”
The interview describes some horrible events from Sandemo’s life, including her claim to having killed a man who atttempted to rape her at age 11 or 12. Perhaps her early trauma led her into the occult spirituality she appears to have now. Not that people have to have trauma like this to take up with demons, but it seems to be fertile ground for doing so.
Pardon me a moment for getting personal, but this interview reminds me of a story I read this morning. A woman said she had been sexually abused by her father and his team of Satanists in southern California several years ago. The details she gave are horrifying, but perhaps more horrifying than the details is the idea that such abusive men could be forgiven–that their sins could be passed over by the perfect judge and creator of the universe. And that’s what she said occured. Her father repented and asked her forgiveness as he lay dying in a hospital. How could the Lord forgive such men? Because everyone one of us is just a guilty as they are.
John Piper has a great message on Psalm 51, which deals with this idea near the beginning. The gospel, the love of God, is both shocking and fantastic.
Twists and Metaphysical Turns
Sherry reviews The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesteron, but if you have not read the book, I don’t recommend read this post. She doesn’t reveal any of the story, except the final revelation which could take some of the wind out of its sails. Maybe it doesn’t. Perhaps those of you who have read the book can tell us what you think.
Also, Frank Wilson posts his review of All Hallow’s Eve by Charles Williams, which is more of a nightmare than Thursday, but one I’d like to explore in the future. More on Williams at Touchstone magazine.
Winston Churchill on Historical Fiction
In an article from April 12, 1902, reprinted in Popular Culture by David Manning White (found on Google Books), American novelist Winston Churchill comments on representing historical figures. The reporter asked him if he would present Daniel Webster, should he choose to, as he truly was, warts and all. Churchill replied, “I should consider it wrong to expose the weaknesses of a man like Webster because he is a historical ideal that should not be shattered. The same is true in regard to Hamilton; whereas, with a man like Aaron Burr, I should not hesitate to portray him exactly as he was as that would mean no loss to the historical ideal.” The editor who reprinted these comments was appalled and went on criticize public education.
What do you think of this view? Is there a historical ideal to maintain?
I am getting sleepy… sleepy…
Hypnotists always tell their subjects to let their minds go completely blank. I think I’d hypnotize pretty easily today. I had a couple ideas for blog posts through the course of the day, but lacked the wit to write them down. They’re gone now.
I’ve read a couple criticisms of Jonah Goldberg’s recent book, Liberal Fascism, from conservatives who’ve said it’s simply uncivil and divisive to use a term like “liberal fascism” (even though it wasn’t Goldberg, but Socialist H. G. Wells, who coined it).
But in recent weeks two Democratic politicians have called for the nationalization of the oil industry.
For those of you who went to public schools in the last 25 years, and thus don’t know any history, nationalizing industry is what fascists do.
This is a troubling story:
A public school teacher taught creationism in his science class and used a device to burn the image of a cross on students’ arms, according to a report by independent investigators.
If it’s accurate it’s appalling. However, as you know if you’ve ever been involved in anything reported in the news, news stories are never accurate, especially in the first reports.
Am I trying to cut the guy some extra slack, just because he’s a believer?
Sure I am.
What Are You Reading This Summer?
With summer reading lists about and everyone–I mean, everyone–talking about vampire romances, tell us what you’re reading or planning to read this summer. I’ve got No Man’s Land coming up, which should be colorful non-fiction. I haven’t finished Code of the Woosters, because I’ve been wasting my time reading blogs. Or something.
What are you reading?
Ignorant Do-Gooders
Tony Woodlief is quoting Dorothy Sayers:
Apart from a possible one per cent of intelligent and instructed Christians, there are three kinds of people we have to deal with. There are the frank and open heathen, whose notions of Christianity are a dreadful jumble of rags and tags of Bible anecdote and clotted mythological nonsense. There are the ignorant Christians, who combine a mild gentle-Jesus sentimentality with vaguely humanistic ethics–most of these are Arian heretics. Finally, there are the more or less instructed church-goers, who know all the arguments about divorce and auricular confession and communion in two kinds, but are about as well equipped to do battle on fundamentals against a Marxian atheist or a Wellsian agnostic as a boy with a pea-shooter facing a fan-fire of machine-guns.
Note commenter John M point about devotional life vs. service. This is all too convicting.
Another half-baked theory from me
James Lileks (whom I hate, because he’s cleverer than I am) posted an item today at buzz.mn about “Dead Trolley Day.” Today is the anniversary of the date in 1954 when streetcars went out of service in Minneapolis. Since then a folklore has risen in our community (supported by at least one local TV special), a tale of how the wicked bus promoters acquired the trolley lines and proceeded to drive them into the ground, so that they could replace them with smoke-belching buses, although they were better in every way, and everybody loved them. The truth is a lot more complicated, of course. As Lileks notes, the trolleys were hot in the summer and cold in the winter, they blocked traffic, and they required the streets to be overhung with webs of ugly electric cable.
It occurred to me to wonder—why are liberals so nostalgic about artifacts? If you try to tell them that the people who built, operated and rode those trolleys were wiser than we in some areas having to do with personal morality, they’ll be outraged. But they generally cling to the objects themselves—trolleys, old buildings, etc., with fierce devotion. Continue reading Another half-baked theory from me
Rembrandt Laughing
A sharp-eyed British art collector saw a painting the auction house believed to be a “Rembrandt knockoff” valued at $3,100. He paid $4,500,000. Now that those in the know have looked it over closely, they say it could have sold for $40 million, because it is not a knockoff. It’s a unique self-protrait of the great Rembrandt. I love it.
Winston Churchill, Party of Two
I was reading a book from 1900 that referred to a bestseller of the day, Richard Carvel by Winston Churchill. I said, as perhaps you are saying now, “Is that the Winston Churchill?” No, it isn’t. There was an American novelist named Winston Churchill (born in St. Louis in 1871) and when the British leader (born 1874 at Blenheim Palace) began writing books of his own, he was concerned about confusion with the American. The two men wrote each other to clear things up, like this:
Mr. Winston Churchill is extremely grateful to Mr. Winston Churchill for bringing forward a subject which has given Mr. Winston Churchill much anxiety.
Read one of the letters here. Here’s a bit more on Churchill, the novelist.