Well this this top 20 books in the last 20 years list you shared, really earned its salt. Figuring a list that cited Haidt’s and McGilchrist’s books as well as Gilead which so many here loved was worth a try. It’s been a while since I’ve read a novel that really pulled me in so I put holds on two from this list, the one with Maytrees in the title and Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. Started reading latter one and it feels promising.
There were two author messages that precede it’s start which seemed note worthy. The first, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, was fun in a coincidental way. It ends with “Carole McCurdy copy edited the manuscript; I am grateful for her vigilance and her gift for marginal conversation.”
Then there is this:
NOTICE
Persons attempting to find “text” in this book will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find “subtext” in it will be banished; persons attempting to explain, interpret, explicate, analyze, deconstruct, or otherwise “understand” it will be exiled to a desert island in the company of only other explainers.
I did finally finish it the other evening and was glad I did. Smith’s remarks about our creatureliness and what makes us human and that our finitude is a gift were good, especially the latter and his development of it. I had certainly not thought of it that way before.
That our finitude makes us dependent is “scandalous in a society that prizes autonomy and independence… but that story is wearing out.”
And words to this effect (not necessarily an exact quote, but fairly close):
And then showing how God encompasses it all was right on too, with his references to the novel Zero K and the possibly impaired boy exulting in an unusual display of the sun and sunlight in “fjords of Manhattan”, resulting in “howls of awe and exhilaration more suitable than words. What would we lose if we edited that boy out of existence. In what way is he the palimpsest* of what we were made for, a testimony of our nature as creatures – made to worship, to delight in awe, to care and be cared for and to be loved by a God with scars.” The fatherhood of God and our being childlike before him was certainly not diminished by his words, nor Jesus as our friend and brother.
“It’s why I’m a Calvinist!”, if I heard correctly – I didn’t have a problem with it. It was just a throwaway line about universal sin, not that it is any thing to be casual about. But Calvinist or otherwise, most Christians would concur that universal sin is a thing.
*A new word to me (says a guy with senior memory ; - ).
My curiosity is piqued!
Oh, the reading in this group is going to kill me! A gang of book-recommendation-thugs. You are all maybe even worse than librarians! (I say this all with GREAT admiration for you, as I am panting just trying to read the most relevant background posts to catch up with conversations I’m trying to participate in.)
My sagging nightstand, my over-full Kobo, Kindle and Ipad! My lousy, distracting vision! My too slow reading!
I must prioritize.
It’s hard.
The palimpsest. I’m glad you reminded me of that part. Thank you for going back over it.
While most Christians would agree that universal sin is a real thing, they probably wouldn’t agree they deserve to go to hell.
I’ve had a suspicion people thinking they are not the bad is why there is so much disagreement about the atonement.
The atonement is a subject I’ve mostly taken for granted, and am hesitant to dig farther into. But it’s tempting with the discussion swirling around it here.
When talking about morality and sin, people rarely seem to consider what sin against God might entail – thinking and saying wrong things about God and rejecting his authority certainly qualify. We dare not presume what justice for lèse-majesté, “to do wrong to majesty”, might entail (one might expect some serious repercussions if they called a queen a whore to her face). That’s something that Job did not do amidst his many sufferings:
In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing. Job 1:22
(I’m not sure I’m not okay with conditional immortality though, aka annihilationism.)
This is from Loren Haarsma’s book When Did Sin Begin?, where he has a really refreshing discussion about entropy. This is one of those topics that comes up in YEC conversations I’ve overheard in the church foyer between services – you know the discussions that revolve around the need for the basic laws of nature to have been different before the Fall in order to accommodate the views of YEC.
Haarsma’s discussion is a breath of fresh air:
At first impression, the second law of thermodynamics sounds like a bad thing. It implies that closed natural systems (and the universe as a whole) are always changing from order to disorder. But the second law of thermodynamics is an inevitable statistical result of the fact that there are many particles moving and interacting with one another.
Haarsma, Loren. When Did Sin Begin? (p. 66). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The second law of thermodynamics plays a vital role in many natural processes that we would call good. When heat spontaneously flows from a hot object to a cold object, entropy increases. When a flower opens and its scent diffuses into the air so that the whole area is perfumed and bees can be guided to the blossom, entropy increases. When our sun converts nuclear energy into sunlight, entropy increases. When ice melts, entropy increases. When winds blow and rain falls, entropy increases. When oxygen passes from our lungs into our bloodstreams, entropy increases. When we see and hear things and store memories in our brains, entropy increases. The second law of thermodynamics appears to be part of God’s good creation and God’s original intention for the world.
Haarsma, Loren. When Did Sin Begin? (pp. 66-67). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The second law of thermodynamics tells us that this whole universe is also finite in time, just like all of God’s creatures. But God promises that the end of life in this universe, or the end of this universe itself, is not the end for us. A new creation awaits.
Haarsma, Loren. When Did Sin Begin? (p. 67). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
So far, I’ve enjoyed the book. The reading level is appropriate for high-school students through maybe undergrads. Haarsma does a very good job of making the concepts accessible to American’s with a typical science education, who are easily duped by groups like AIG. If the pastoral staff would tolerate such material in a church library, this would be a very good candidate. I think it could be a good book to share with YEC friends, who feel cornered theologically, even if they present themselves as relying on the “scientific” evidence presented by you-know-who.
My first quote from a book in a while comes from the third chapter of Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow. I will try to transcribe it using my new Gayes folding keyboard synced by bluetooth to my iPhone. (Thank you @Kendel.)
And so I came along in time to know the end of the age of steamboating. I would learn later that there had been other ages of the river that I had arrived too late to know but that I could read about and learn to imagine. There was at first the age when no people were here, and I have sometimes felt at night that absence grow present in my mind, that long silence in which no human name was spoken or given, and the nameless river made no sound of any human tongue. And then there was the Indian age when names were called that have never been spoken in the present language of Port William. Then came the short ages of us white people, the ages of the dugout, the flatboat, the keelboat, the log raft, the steamboat. And I have lived on now into the age of the diesel towboat and recreational boating and water skiing. And yet it is hard to look at the river in its calm, just after daylight or just before dark, and believe that history has happened to it. The river, the river itself, leaves marks but bears none. It is only the water flowing in the path that other water has worn.
Or is that other water really “other”, or is it the same water always running, flowing always toward the gathering of all waters, and always rising and returning again, and again flowing? I knew this river first when I was a little boy, and I know it now when I am an old man once again living beside it … and almost seventy years! … and always when i have watched it I have been entranced and mystified. What is it? Is it the worn trough of itself that is a feature of the land and is marked on maps, or is it the water flowing? Or is it the land itself that over time is shaped by the flowing water, and it caught by no map?
The surface of the quieted river as I thought in those old days at Squire’s Landing, as I think now, is like a window looking into another world that is like this one except that it is quiet. Its quietness makes it seem perfect. The ripples are like the slats of a blind or a shutter through which we we see imperfectly what is perfect. Though that other world can be seen only momentarily, it looks everlasting. As the ripples become more agitated, the window darkens and the other world is hidden. As I did not know then but know now, the surface of the water is like a living soul, which is easy to disturb, is often disturbed, but, growing calm, shows what it was, is, and will be.
I find this nicely suggestive of things the author has cautioned none should try explaining. I will heed that caution but confess that water is my favorite metaphor for life and what is sacred. I would love to have included the two preceding paragraphs but was not sure how well I’d take to typing on a 3/4 sized key board. Beats the snot out of texting on my phone. Maybe I’ll come back and add the two preceding paragraphs later. Oh and the bolding of the last sentence is my idea since I like it so much.
To the degree that the second law seems to point to the eventual heat death of our universe it is interesting how aspects of the same law account for needful conditions of life. I have no idea why this idea brings this thought to mind but here it is so I may as well share it. While many might title the story of the creation of our selves, our world and everything else “God Executes His Perfect Plan”, I would prefer the title “God Miraculously Finds A Way”. The first title suggests it was a trivial thing from the divine perspective, that no challenges were met or needed to be overcome.
You’re welcome, Mark. Anything to facilitate the sharing of beautiful quotes like this new one of yours. As a Michigander, water is my blood. This speaks deeply to me.
(As well as the Dune conversation, that sort of petered out. I think people of water must all read Dune differently than people of planes and mountains and cities.)
Related to your keyboard, this is one of my favorite mental images of working at “my library.” Maybe 6 or so years ago, a student from nearby MSU made his way to the state library, looking for articles about the campaign before the 1916 presidential election. He looked really guilty for having asked such an absurdly impossible question. “Have you ever used a printed index?” Astonishment that any such thing existed. Shook his head. (State libraries keep such anachronisms, because we already own them, and they fit our budgets, unlike most comprehensive research databases.) “We’ve got the Reader’s Guide that covers a lot of popular magazines at the time, and we have a lot of those. If we don’t have them we can get them for you. Would you like me to show you how to use the Reader’s Guide?” “That would be great”
We grabbed a few massive volumes, and he worked on a few, while I worked on a few, marking pages with pertinent keywords.
When I took him the volumes I had marked for him, he was at a table in the cavernous, glass atrium, surrounded by antiquated indexes, typing notes like mad onto his phone, using an external keyboard. It was a beautiful sight.
That is a beautiful space. Such harsh working conditions! In the foreground I can’t tell if that is a water feature of some kind or windows facing outside from a lower level but I like the effect.
Water may be in your blood in Michigan but in California it is more of a fetish item the lust for which is driven by its scarcity or a guilty pleasure when indulged. I keep thinking I should pump water out of the year-round creek that flows along our northern boundary. When it flows under the street we’re on it stays underground encased in concrete for about a mile until it reaches the bay. Part of me thinks if I pumped that water up and used it to support a more riparian plantings I’d be like Robin Hood taking from the human overlords and giving to our local bird life. But it would have to be secretive and nothing I could leave in place during the day when kids are up and down that creek. Maybe I need to get in touch more with my dark side.
Looking east from atop an urbanite ‘rock’ in the middle of the creek where the park and my backyard meet.
Looking west the creek continues 120’ alongside our northern border on the left before disappearing below ground for good. The railing above is to the small corner deck in the NE corner of our garden. The area below the deck is also us to the creek, about 15 feet further north than that deck.
It’s like House Atriedes’ private, vapor locked garden in the palace on Arakas. I can’t imagine what water wealth that creek represents to you.
At the Library, I think you are referring to a painting that is on the landing near the bottom of the grand staircase. It’s a hiker’s eye view into a stand of mixed diceduous trees including birches. I’ll tey to find you a better photo soon.
I almost lost my mind in the 15 months we state employees were stuck working from home. I felt like a caged animal, chained to my desk in my own home. Hubby and I were back to our offices as soon as we could be, whatever the requirements. It’s such a blessing and privilege to be able to spend my work day in such a beautiful space.
The creek reminded me, have you read “How to do nothing:resisting the attention economy” by Jenny Odell? Your comments constantly remind me of it. I recommend it.
During the time when “sleep would have been preferable to learning,” sometimes I find things like this, which speak to the day before and reason for learning rather than sleep;
PROLOGUE
Church or sermon, prayer or poem:
the failure of religious feeling is a form.
•
The failure of religious feeling is a form
of love that, though it could not survive
the cataclysmic joy of its inception,
nevertheless preserves its own sane something,
a space in which the grievers gather,
inviolate ice that the believers weather:
church or sermon, prayer or poem.
•
Finer and finer the meaningless distinctions:
theodicies, idiolects, books, books, books.
I need a space for unbelief to breathe.
I need a form for failure, since it is what I have.
The implicit made explicit burns bridges, erases connections. Why not and-and-or rather than either/or? Does the excluded middle really extend everywhere or do we just like it that way so we use it to thin the world to a degree that leaves us feeling in control? Perhaps the seeming so is gratifying enough that the being so can simply be ignored. As with pronouncing Latin, who can call us on it while we exude limitless confidence?
Not sure if this fits or not but something about the emphasis on form, terminology and making things clear feels something like this to my ear.
At 4 a.m. when the exhausted brain has been bathed in adrenaline for hours from endless over-processing, things look particularly dark. It’s probably not appropriate for me to engage with, much less share poetry that resonated at the time. I’ll avoid it in the future.
In my self-centeredness, the last stanza spoke to me particularly, while I was feeling particularly sleeplessly raw. Am I merely obsessing over finer and finer distinctions that are ultimately meaningless? Theodicies, idiolects, books, books, books. I don’t believe so, but certainly I am aware of disagreement on this score.
I do need space to breathe, although not for unbelief, but actually for belief. It’s been a long time since – rather, I feel I’ve removed a corset and can at least fill my lungs without condemnation.
I need a form for failure, since it is what I have.
I am not interested in burning bridges, although I can see smoke in spots here closer to home. And ironically, you and I both see ourselves in the Middle somewhere. The Middle exists at fault lines, where the heat and friction can sometimes feel unbearable.
Nothing in this poem was directed outward. It is simply reflective of things that plague me, when “sleep would have been preferred to learning.” The learning here is mine.
I liked the poem and just took a shot at riffing something in the same vein. Please don’t stop sharing poetry because of my clumsy response.
On that score I’ve been remembering snippets of favorite Cummings’ poems I think you might like. Now I just need to find them online to share.
Ah here is a bit now which expresses my discontent with a purely materialist outlook which I sometimes find in dry legalistic theology as well as in sophomoric atheist banter.
down with the human soul
and anything else uncanned
for everyone carries canopeners
in Ever-Ever Land
(for Ever-Ever Land is a place
that’s as simple as simple can be
and was built that way on purpose
by simple people like we)
down with hell and heaven
and all the religious fuss
infinity pleased our parents
one inch looks good to us
It comes from his “Of Ever Ever Land I Speak” and copied from here
In the foreground I can’t tell if that is a water feature of some kind or windows facing outside from a lower level but I like the effect.
