A Diary of Autumnal New England

Saturday, October 2, 2010

After two full days of traveling, I find myself in the quaintest, prettiest little town in the heart of Massachusetts. We have been set up in a bed and breakfast, with the creaking wooden floors, latched doors, and peculiar building structure of historical houses. Vastly aesthetically pleasing. It has been decorated in a very eclectic, colorful style. The room where we girls sleep has wild strawberry wallpaper, a bright red quilt, and varied furniture. Interesting, to say the least.

This morning I happened to look outside the bathroom window and see a lovely, rambling meadow right next door. As we arrived in darkness last night, I had no idea we were in such a rustic area. My heart thrilled at the prospect of a ramble through autumnal New England.

I hurried through my exercise, ate breakfast (very scrumptious, with Trader Joe's white tea!) with my wonderful family, and then Berklee, Gretchen, Jeremiah, and I embarked on our country walk.

Across the street from the white, colonial-styled house lay fields, sloping down to a wood and a marsh. The sky was a perfect robins-egg blue, and the vibrantly green grass next to the zesty color of the fall foliage was beautifully striking. It is so lovely how the trees turn color when the grass is still green.

The brisk chill of the autumn air, the wind, the wild enveloping us as we walked down the hill and into the woods was so pleasant. The forest was graced with all the ancient trees, moss, writhing roots, brooks, old rocks, and leaf-carpets of a New England wood unspoiled by logging. We took pictures, feasted with our eyes, breathed deeply of the good air, and I let my soul revel in the beauty of it all. The path ended in a sparkling pond, reflecting crystal clear the trees surrounding it. On our return back, Jeremiah insisted on gathering huge pieces of aspen bark, and I treasure-hunted some for an acorn, a scarlet leaf, a golden leaf, and a wild apple from a wild apple tree (that I took a couple bites of––very sweet and so aesthetically pleasing!). Berklee laid it all out in a beautiful collage atop the aspen bark, and then took very creative, artistic pictures of it.

Lovely! And now I must depart for lunch and concert preparations…

Sunday, October 3, 2010

I had great dreams of waking up early this morning and exercising well and then going on another ramble, but unfortunately exhaustion got the better of me. I finally forced myself out of bed at 7:15, and just had time to get dressed and packed up before breakfast at 8. After breakfast, though, while the men started to load our luggage, I stepped outside and snatched a bit of a walk.

This time, instead of going across the street, I explored the lawn of the house and the neighboring plots. It was beautiful outside. Very cold, the grass still wet and vibrant with dew, the wind fresh and invigorating, and the scenery just wild and unkempt enough to be picturesque. The back yard was very shady, with a hammock slung up between two maple trees, and an old well, built of rough grey rocks covered in ivy. I explored past the rock wall, and found myself in a field, with tall, wet grass, and, at the end of it, a lovely little red barn and house. I walked through an overgrown flower garden at the back of the barn, which had pine trees and pebbles all through it, and then, my socks and shoes very wet with dew, went back down the road to join Jeremiah and Gretchen, who were embarking on a walk down the other direction.

We skipped along the sidewalk till we came to the colonial-styled historical circle, with the Common in the middle, and, surrounding that, a beautiful, white Catholic church with a steeple and bell, a lovely small rock house-turned-library, a one-room courthouse from the 1800s, an old-fashioned general store, and other quaint things.

Once back, all of us decided to go next door to the historical Church of Christ for church that morning, as it would be the one place we'd be sure to receive communion. The building was just lovely. Bright white, with two red doors in the old Puritan fashion of segregation between men and women, and large, Gothic windows. On the left was a whole wall of tall, strong, beautiful trees. Inside, the church was just as beautiful, with all the historical architecture in tact: honey-colored pews, floors, and a great pump-organ and pulpit. Therein we spent an hour in praise and prayer, and partook of the Holy Eucharist.

The service ended, and we loaded up in the cars and headed out to find somewhere for lunch. Rather difficult, as New England boasts mostly diners, but, after much search, we found the most intriguing little place, called Salem Cross Inn. All the decorations were colonial, with penmanship hearkening back to the Declaration of Independence, the room having a roaring fire and old wooden floors and rafters. They had scrumptious pumpkin maple soup and salmon and butternut squash. We celebrated Berklee's birthday, which was a great deal of fun, and then we went by a used bookstore called the Book Bear.

Inside, amidst the aisles and aisles of dusty shelves, I found all sorts of literary delights. Easton Press books, old hardbacks with faded pages, a 24-volume collection of John Ruskin's works, and, most importantly, a pocket-sized, hardback version of George Eliot's Mill on the Floss, which, being only $4.50, I purchased. I cannot wait to start reading it. George Eliot must be my very favorite author. She combines the loveliness of Austen's personality, romance, and domestic liveliness with Dickens' intelligent, intricate plots and strong socio-political and religious principles. Benjamin was bountifully blessed with a rare Sir Walter Scott novel, a rare H. Rider Haggard novel, a beautiful pocket edition of Buchan's Greenmantle, Richardson's Clarissa, and some fantasy classic that's almost impossible to find. I feel some delicious reading in my future!

Now we're winding through the meandering little roads of rural New England for Plymouth, where we will be staying for the week. Till next time…

Monday, October 4, 2010

What a lovely day! The flat where we are staying is so pretty…clean and contained, a little too small, but with honey-wood floors and nice furniture and the most wonderful kitchen. It is so amazing to have plenty of counter space! It is right in the center of historical downtown Plymouth, with cobblestone and quaint shops and bakeries and touristy delights.

This morning we all put on our hoodies and stretch pants and went running. It was beautiful outside. A little overcast, but very windy and actually rather warm. We ran down the street until we came to an actual walking path, which we accessed by running (or falling and slipping, as I did) down a cushiony green hill. There was a beautiful, chattering brook that we followed out to the ocean, which was so wild. Where we are does not have anything of the beachy quality, but is regular land all the way up to the drop off, where you see the delightful old-fashioned tempest, with tossing boats and docks and foaming waves and crying seagulls. We also passed Plymouth Rock, which was quite small, and a historical mill, which had stocks in front that we put ourselves into. Quite horrid! I can't imagine that people used to be punished that way. The discomfort to one's back and legs is bad enough, without the horrid discomfort of having to hold your head up in that position. Ugh. We also passed a log cabin that was built in the 1600s, and several memorials of Plymouth Colony and the soldiers who died in the 'War of 1861', as the memorial called it, and a Jewish synagogue. At the very end of the run, we ran up some old rustic stairs embedded in the green, grassy hill, and into an ancient graveyard that was just wild and ancient enough to be picturesque and thought-provoking.

We returned to a yummy brunch prepared by Mama, and then, after family prayers, I spent the rest of the day reading and resting. Anna Karenina is so very depressing. No wonder the Russians are in such horrid straits. Even back in the Victorian era, when England and America were enjoying a resurrection in good ethics, Russia was wholly degraded. Their attitude towards marriage, children, and home morals is repulsive. And now we see that their culture is one where orphanages are flooded and the average woman has seven abortions. How corrupt. I cannot wait till I finish this book and read Mill on the Floss, with its good, Victorian England morality.

This afternoon we braved the rain for a brisk walk through the downtown, where we found the most amazing health-food store called Common Sense, where we tasted fresh-roasted organic coffee with coconut nectar and carob cakes. Yummy.

We also found a very delightful book store, where the boys found a rare G.K. Chesterton compilation called On Running After One's Hat, and a 5-volume set of Ruskin's On Modern Painters for very cheap. I do wish I could have met Chesterton and Ruskin and Lewis and MacDonald and Belloc and Williams and Morris. The 1800s era did produce such a stellar array of Christian thinkers.

We just had supper, and now are about to watch The Third Man, which is a promising spy-novel movie from the 1950s. Good old iTunes.

Good night!

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

What an utterly sleepy day! Woke up this morning to horrid, drizzling, cold rain, which completely destroyed all motivation. Finally did some exercising and dressed by lunch. Had devotions as a family and by myself. There is so much to pray about, I have to make a point to just pray throughout the day, in order to get everything in. All afternoon I persistently read Anna Karenina, as I am determined to finish it before our Boston sight-seeing day on Thursday. The others asked me to make tea and toast mid-afternoon, and I burnt the toast, which filled this entire tiny apartment with smoke. Very frustrating, to say the least, especially since Benjamin complained that I always burnt everything and that everything I cooked tasted funny. Which is completely not true. I have been doing much better about not cooking funny, and Gretchen is the one who always ends up burning things. So there. It was especially distressing, though, since it was the Belgian sweet toast, which we only had a little of. I redeemed myself by cooking a very good supper of sweet potatoes and scrambled eggs with gouda cheese and asparagus and buttered toast. Afterwards we sat around and talked. The cabin fever has been very persistent, as it has rained all day long. But I made some strong coffee and we all played Scattergories, which at least got our brains exercised. Now to more Anna Karenina…

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Well, desperate to get out of the house this morning, Javier, Gretchen, Jeremiah, and I braved the rain to embark on a brisk walk down to the health-food store, where we purchased tea, and then down to a bakery owned by the same people as the holistic store, where we bought two loaves of fresh honey oatmeal bread and spelt bread. By the time we got back, we were soaked and the paper bags carrying the purchases were falling apart, but our lungs had experienced some lovely expansion, our legs had been stretched, and our spirits were wonderfully lifted.

The rest of the day I worked on completing Anna Karenina. Finally did, and then took a nap to rest my poor mind. What horror. Kitty and Levin's story saves it, but even they are spiritual nincompoops.

We had burritos for supper, and I chopped up jalapeños for it, got a bunch of hot juice on my hands, accidentally touched my face, got it on my tongue, and have been suffering from burning patches on my hands and face ever since. Never again, jalapeños!

After supper, we all ventured down to the Blue Blinds Bakery again, where they were having an open music night, and a couple of us jammed with them. The bakery and health-food store are owned by a group of Christians who call themselves the Twelve Tribes, and who live after the same pattern of the early apostles in Acts 2 and 4. I talked with one of them for almost the entire evening, and she was very sweet and kindred-spirited.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Sun shone this morning! Had a very yummy breakfast of the gifts of pastries and cinnamon rolls that the Blue Blinds Bakery gave us, and then prayer time, and then reading. Got a bit of restless leg syndrome after lunch, and felt desperately in need of some exercise, but at that moment we all decided to go to Boston and do a bit of sight-seeing, so we loaded up in the car and headed out.

We had a great deal of fun. Daddy performed the most skillful parallel parking job in history with the fifteen-passenger van after much searching. Then we walked through historical Boston, with its cobblestone streets and old-fashioned brick sky-scrapers. We toured Paul Revere's house, which was very interesting. Built in the 1660's, extremely small and impoverished. I could not believe the kitchen. How on earth did anyone cook back then? Especially since he had 16 children between two wives over the course of his life. Of course, since back then male children were apprenticed by 13, and female children married by 15 or 16, there were only five to nine children living in the house at one time. Very interesting.

Afterwards we walked down to the Old North Church, from which the lanterns of warning were shown from the belfry. What a beautiful church. Apparently, back before Boston became urbanized, the belfry tower rose high and away above the rest of the town. Now-a-days, of course, you can't even see the belfry because it's drowned in skyscrapers. Tragical. But the church-house was beautiful. All white inside, with one middle aisle. It was interesting to see the old-fashioned box pews, with the high walls on each side of each pew. Apparently, they were built that way because the church-house was not heated in winter-time, and so the high walls framing the pews kept out drafts. People used to bring hot bricks and hot potatoes to keep themselves warm. Each family bought their own box-pew, and the warmer ones were sold for higher prices. The balcony, which didn't have box-pews, was, apparently, for the poor. Not quite friendly to the stranger…

After the Old North Church, we walked through the graveyard in which Cotton Mather was buried. It was beautiful, and used to be one of the highest points of Boston, from which you could see clearly on all sides. No more, though. The gravestones were faded and crumbling and extremely ancient, all from the 1700s, and engraved with Old English verbiage and spelling, like 'Herein lye Erasmus Worthylake y Elizabeth Worthylake, with issue Ebenezer y Myrtle y Maude y Hezekiah…'.

After the graveyard we were all tired and hungry, so we ate in an old-styled Italian restaurant called Riccardo's Ristorante on Hanover Street, and then came home…

Friday, October 8, 2010

Sunshine again today! How wonderful. This morning we had to do laundry, so, after dressing, Gretchen, Benjamin, and I gathered up all the dirty laundry in trash bags and lugged them down the block to the 'Pilgrim's Washing Well'. It was definitely not as intriguing and beautiful and clean as the name promised it would be. And expensive! Oh my goodness. $2.75 just for one small washer. And then they didn't sell laundry detergent, so Gretchen and I had to track down a convenience store up several blocks, where the detergent was $8 for just a half-gallon. Ridiculous. Finally we got the loads washing, and then we went down to the Blue Blinds Bakery, where we enjoyed some delicious granola and hot coffee and cinnamon rolls while we waited. The people there were so sweet and friendly. It is heartwarming just being in their store.

Once the laundry was done, we returned to the apartment, packed up our stuff, and left. And so ended our time in historic Plymouth. The rest of the day we have spent driving. We enjoyed getting to eat lunch in Dartmouth, where the very best fish-and-chips in the country resides (or so Scott says). Then for supper we stopped in Lyme, Connecticut, at a little place called Pizza Cucina, which has the very most delicious, ethnic Italian pizza. And now we are driving towards the ocean horizon, and I am going to take the advantage of moonlight and an empty van seat to go to sleep.

Good night.

Milly's Hay Adventure

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Milly Rose who liked playing inside more than she liked playing outside. Her imagination seemed to run better when playing with her plastic kitchen set inside, than when she tried to create an alternate reality for herself between the evergreen trees and the fencepost outside.

So the days would go by, with the little girl very rarely venturing out into the sunshine, except to play with her doll on a picnic blanket under the maple tree, or jump on the trampoline in the windy sunlight. Then, just as the summer had reached its very hottest, the little girl, with her many brothers and sisters and Mama and Daddy, loaded up in a long white van to drive down through Memphis, and Little Rock, and Mena, to get to Grandma Jane's and Grandpa Riley's house.

They lived in the country. They didn't even have wireless internet, or fast computers, or nintendo, or cable TV, or any movies except old Westerns and black-and-white romances. They did have the church-house where Grandpa Riley preached right down the dirt road. They had horses and saddles, guns and bows-and-arrows, a swimming hole down in Cow Creek and pasture-lands with the promise of mad bulls and ticks. They had woods that were haunted by Bigfoot and wild boar and armadillo, and a log cabin where Aunt Sherry would make them chocolate milk. All the cousins lived down there, too. They loved the outdoors. The little girl who liked to the relaxation of the indoors was amazed by their tanned skin, wiry muscles, and great athletic abilities. They could outrun her in a flash. They could saddle up a horse by themselves, and even gallop bare-back. They could ride the bucking mule named John. And they could all drive the standard transmission pickup truck, even though they were all not even in their teens yet.

They were also very good at outsmarting Milly and her little sister, Gretchen. The cousins, Sara, who had feisty brown eyes and a flashing white grin, David-Riley, whose wiry physique boasted the fastest runner of the lot, and Milly's older brother, Benjamin, who was a pale, slight boy with a giant, brainy imagination, could read and spell, whereas Milly was still learning. They would give secret messages to each other in front of Milly by strange codes, like 'Let's go play at the C-H-U-R-C-H', and then they would run off so quickly that they soon lost Milly. She would huff and puff after them, her plump little face growing beet-red, her little lungs becoming hyper-active. Soon she would be forced to sit down beside the dirt road and try to parse out what C-H-U-R-C-H could possibly mean, since she couldn't keep up with them. Once she had found from her older siblings Annie and Alex that C-H makes a certain sound, and that 'church' was the only word that had that sound on either end, Benjamin had the bright idea to start spelling foreign translations of the word, like K-I-R-K. And that completely lost her.

Milly was a smart little girl, however, and she told Mama about it. Mama, her hazel eyes sparkling and her pretty pink mouth twitching with suppressed laughter, scolded Benjamin and Sara and David-Riley. Milly felt a little guilty for being a tattle-tell when she saw how sorry they all looked, even though Mama had always said that tattle-telling was a good thing.

So the cousins and Benjamin began to take Milly and Gretchen along with them to play. The little baby, Jeremiah, who was just starting to leave Mama's arms to toddle around, was still too young to join in.

The children's favorite haunt was the old barn on the Chattam place. It was cluttered with old boxes full of antiques and fiddleback spiders, rusted tin barrels of oats for the horses, leathery-smelling bridles and saddles, and, most importantly, an utterly mountainous construction of hay bales reaching all the way up to the peaked roof. The cousins would easily hop onto an old trailer hitch and tumble up onto the hay bales, stacked seven feet deep, and then they would laugh as Milly and Gretchen tried many times to jump up only to slide right back down. Finally, though, they helped them up.

Then the festivities began. The hay bales, squishy and sweet-smelling under their feet, had all sorts of pathways, hiding places, and precarious holes from where the tractor had pulled hay down to feed the cows and horses and the bales had fallen. The children loved to play tag up there. Milly, who could not run fast, and had a tendency to get the giggles so hard she was incapacitated, found that hiding was much more effective than running away, and so she would creep around corners and duck under bales while the rest had dashing races around the hay palace, catapulting over the holes in the hay as they ran.

But such tactics could not last long, especially once David-Riley found out about them, and, next time David-Riley got tagged It, Milly found herself huffing and puffing, running for her life, and falling down in terror as David-Riley leaped gracefully up to tag her. The bell of doom had tolled. She was It, and she knew in her heart-of-hearts that she would never be able to tag David-Riley, Sara, Benjamin, or even Gretchen. Especially since she was mortally afraid of stepping on one of the cracks in the hay bales and slipping down into the mouldy grey tempests beneath.

Milly's mama was a very good and attentive mama, and had read her all the old fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Bears, and The Boy Who Cried Wolf, but Milly was unfortunately not so good and attentive. She, though she had heard about the boy who cried wolf, and knew what happened to him, did not heed the moral of the story. Knowing that in order to not be It until the end of the game, she would have to outsmart everyone else. She therefore decided that, once everyone had run off and hid, she would scream and wail that she had fallen down into the hay. The first time she started fake crying and yelling 'Help! Help!' Sara, David-Riley, Ben, and Gretchen all came flying out of their hiding places. Milly made mad dashes toward them, but even after the trickery she could not tag them.

They scoffed at Milly's fakery as they ran away, leaving her out of breath and at a loss behind them. She waited a little while, and then she again started wailing and crying, 'Help! Help! I've fallen down in the hay!' The other children ran to help her, and, as they came into sight, Milly again dashed off after the closest, trying to tag somebody. They easily outran her, but she kept on puffing and huffing after them, running around and around on the prickly hay bales.

Then she fell. Down, down into the hay bales she slipped. She saw the golden-grey hay close over her head. She felt one foot touch the hay bale beneath and the other foot slip down even deeper.

She screamed.

She wailed.

She cried.

But neither Sara nor David-Riley nor Benjamin nor Gretchen would believe her. Then she wept, and the other children, realizing that she was not joking this time, ran to her assistance.

Milly was terrified. Mama and Grandpa Riley had told her how snakes liked to live in the hay bales, and how one must be very careful in the barn because of the fiddleback spiders and black widows that made their home there. The sunlight seemed very far above her, and silhouetted against that light were the worried faces of the other children, staring down into Milly's misfortune.

Milly cried and cried, and reached up her hands to be pulled out, but none of the other children were strong enough to pull her out. She felt as if she could not breathe, and suddenly, added to her terror of creepy-crawly things was the fear that she might suffocate down there packed in the hay bales. Her legs gave way under her, and she sank down upon her knees, tears blinding her eyes, her long brown hair tangled up in the hay.

The children couldn't manage to get her out, and so Milly started yelling, 'Go get Alex! Go get Alex! Please, go get Alex!' Alex was Milly's older brother, who, at the very old age of thirteen, had started lifting weights and, in Milly's seven-year-old mind, could accomplish anything.

Sara thought that was the best idea, and, jumping nimbly off the hay bales, took a dashing Tom Sawyer run for the log cabin, where Alex and Annie and the grown-up cousins were playing board games. Meanwhile David-Riley, always finding the humor in the situation, started trying to persuade Gretchen that it was really fun down in the midst of the hay bales. It was like a different universe, he said. Milly, her blue eyes spouting fire and tears as she glared up at them, very vehemently told Gretchen to not listen to him.

And then Benjamin announced that Alex was coming, running behind Sara, and in five minutes he had leapt up onto the hay bales, taken Milly's soft, pale little hands, and had pulled her out of her golden-grey grave. Alex, trying not to laugh, told her that she was perfectly all right and that it really was not worth all those tears. Milly did not believe him, for he had not experienced it. But she dried her tears by and by, and then, with slow dignity, walked to the log cabin, her hair covered in hay and her little eyebrows red. She had experienced her first trauma, and had come through determined never to play trickery again.

Bread

Psalm 133

How good, how delightful it is to live as brothers in unity!

It is like a fine oil on the head, running down the beard,

running down Aaron's beard, onto the collar of his robes.

It is like the dew of Hermon falling on the heights of Zion;

for there Yahweh bestows his blessing, everlasting life.

The psalm is beautiful, profound. And yet there is a more distinctive meaning to this poetic exclamation than what is represented in our current English translations. 'To live as brothers in unity', in the original language, is achim yashab yachad, namely, to 'sit down at meal as brothers in unity.' When one puts this meaning to the first line, the following four lines take on whole new purport.

Is eating together so blissful and important as what this psalm communicates? Certainly in our culture the age-old tradition of sitting down together at a homemade meal as a family has been mostly forgotten.

Yet in the Bible, we find that the concept of the Meal is attended to in something of a sacred light. In the Old Testament records eating together was often symbolic of the spiritual. The very earliest chapters of the history of the world deals with food, and expostulates that before the Fall the fruit of the earth was a spiritual substance as well as a material substance. With the eating of forbidden fruit, Adam and Hevah knew good and evil, and were expelled to be prevented from eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life, and thus living forever.

This treatment of food as both spiritual and material continues. Abraham, when visited by Yahweh, feeds him a meal, and is given in return a blessing and a prophesy. When visited later by Melchizedek, the first High Priest, whose name means, literally, 'King of Righteousness', Abraham gives him the first documented tithe––ten percent of all he has; then Melchizedek, in return, feeds him bread and wine, thus showing forth the Eucharist which Jesus, the 'High Priest after the Order of Melchizedek' (Hebrews 5), will institute.

Afterwards, in the establishing of the Mosaic Law, Yahweh uses food as an integral part of His people's worship. He ordained His Temple to be a place that had fresh bread forever in His presence. The people's sins were to be paid for, their diseases to be healed, through the sacrificing of animals, through the burning of meat, and through grain offerings. The priests were to eat the acceptable parts of each offering. The congregation was to offer all the first fruits of their land as a sacred offering to Yahweh. Their years were to be filled with feasts and fasts which celebrated and recalled the sacred history of God. Their diet was to be one of purity and health, forbearing from unclean animals and vulgar substances rigidly, at risk of being expelled from God's favor if they disobeyed. God promised to reward their faithfulness with abounding harvests and to punish their spiritual adultery with devastating famines.

When the Christ came into the world, He also spoke of the spirit integrated in food. He proclaimed Himself the Bread of Life, and the One who gives Living Water. He established the Eucharist as the central sacrament in the Way, in which we partake of bread and wine that He pronounced His body and His blood. This eating of His flesh and blood is the action that He said would give us life in this world, and would make us 'live forever'. (John 6)

After Jesus' resurrection and flight into the sky, the apostles, as part of their constant worship of Him, practiced communion together at every gathering. They fasted twice a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays, in order to draw closer to Jesus. They kept the feasts, in remembrance of the miracles that Elohim had done for them. They instituted new feasts and fasts, to celebrate and recall the new wonders that Jesus had worked in and for them. They looked forward to the Heavenly Feast, the Supper of the Lamb, where we are to commune with the Creator of all, as is bespoken in John's revelation.

Such regard for the spiritual heart of the Meal has been lost to our society. Eating is a substance used for pleasure and sustenance, but not for spiritual benefit or the building of relationship. We call ourselves followers of the Way, and yet we have lost belief in the sacredness of the Eucharist, we have deserted the celebrating of the Holy-Days and the feasts and fasts of the Church in favor of secular holidays and traditions, and we have even deserted the delight that is found daily when 'brothers eat together in unity'.

Let us once again vow to recognize the weight of glory in even the most ordinary things of life. For there is life in communion.

The Feast of Shelters

Yahweh ordered His Chosen People to observe certain fasts and feasts. One of the latter was called the Feast of Shelters, and in it, the Jews would pack up and go live in tents for a week at the river-side, feasting and praising God for the harvest of olives and grapes. This Labor Day weekend, my siblings and friends and I were blessed to experience a camping trip that in many ways resembled the holy-day of antiquity.

After spending a day of packing, we all loaded up to drive three hours down winding mountain roads to the Ocoee River. The weather promised warmth as the mountainous beauty on our left and the sparkling blue of the river on our right delighted us. We stopped at the Thunder Rock camping site, where we built our temporary home in the midst of the beautiful hilly terrain. After we were settled in, we all embarked on a hike through the Smoky Mountains. The splendor of our surroundings amazed us, proclaiming the beauty of God inherent in His creative Fiat. The trees clapped their hands in praise of Him. The rocks cried out with joy at His goodness.

We wound our way through the sylvan scenery, climbing a steep trail of rustic dirt, wild stone steps, naturally-occurring bridges, and fallen tree trunks. Throughout we skirted the cliff to our left, while to our right the mountain wall guided us. As we trudged through the beautiful greens and browns, we morphed into Arwen and Eowyn and Legolas and Aragorn, traveling through the woods outside the Shire, finding large mushrooms and oak leaves and healing barks.

Once back at camp, I had the opportunity to reminisce on Laura Ingalls Wilder as I experienced the joys and sorrows of frying potatoes, grilling chicken, and steaming squash over an open fire. Then eating the food out-of-doors. Then walking a ways to the hand pump to wash the dishes and lay them out to dry on a rock. I must admit I enjoyed every minute of it.

The next morning we went rafting down the Ocoee River, in gear and a raft that was much safer and more convenient than the raft Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer got to use. It was lovely. Our guide was very pleasant, and the weather perfect. The blue sky, the silver water, the green foliage and mountains on either side, the grey rocks, the white foam, the warm golden sun. The energy and vitality inherent in the fast flow, the rowing, the spraying, the splashing, the swimming, the near-capsizing experiences. As we wound to the end our guide allowed us to jump in the water and float, with careful instructions to get out before we got to the rapids. I didn't understand quite rightly, and was floating quite carefree along when suddenly I realized I would lack the strength to swim against the current and into the dock. So I struggled to the bank, grabbed a tree branch, and dragged myself onto the rocks before the current washed me away. Needless to say, it was a great deal of fun.

We came back, and sat by the smoldering ashes all afternoon, talking, resting, sleeping. When the sun had crept below the trees, we stirred from our nests for another scrumptious feast, and then a beautiful time gathered around a roaring campfire. Two mandolins and a guitar accompanied our voices as we sang hymns, and then listened to the instruments make their own music. The twilight sank deeper around us. The fire burnt orange in the lavender dusk. When the sun had quite sunk and our supper was settled comfortably, a couple of us took the lantern across the way to our pantry (or the trunk of the car), where we retrieved our s'more ingredients. The boys carved sticks for everyone, and soon we were all seated in our chairs, concentrating on the precarious pastime of roasting marshmallows to a place of perfection without catching them on fire or letting them fall off the stick. And then, oh, the sweetness of that golden marshmallow combined with chocolate-almond spread, melted dark chocolate, and graham crackers! Delicious.

The next morning we all awoke chilled to the bone. We groggily moved around the camp-fire, bundled up in our hoodies and fuzzy socks, rekindling the fires and getting breakfast started. The sun came out from the horizon, melting the chilled dew from the grass, imbuing our pale, cold selves with golden warmth. The fire began to blaze, the potatoes and french toast sizzled in the cast-iron skillets. We became warm and vivacious as we gathered around the picnic table for the last feast of our delightful weekend. It was good.

Afterwards we took our seats around the campfire for a time of prayer, scriptural study, praise, and observance of the Eucharist. As we partook of the Body and Blood of Jesus, the Holy Spirit felt so closely present in the rustic beauty of that mountain forest. Afterwards we remembered afresh the power of the love and fellowship that only Christ can give as we all worked to pack up our sleeping bags, tents, kitchen, and other various and sundry items. The lovely homeliness of our temporary home slowly crept back into the boxes and bins in the back of the van and the pickup truck.

But before we could drive away, we all felt that we must have one more ramble in the loveliness of the wilderness. So, little brother led us down the dirt road to his favorite rock-climbing spot. He climbed up the mossy, rocky steep, and then we all climbed up beside him. The ascent was fairly easy and very fun, but the descent was quite a different picture. After hanging on for dear life to a tree trunk, a root, and then having exhausted every foothold, I had to consent to sit on older brother's shoulder and be carried in order to reach the ground quite safely.

After this adventure, we ran, skipped, and then attempted to click our heels on our way back down the dirt road. To end our celebration, we spent a lovely half-hour on the river-shore, sitting on the very edge of the rocks, folding our pant-legs up, and plunging our feet into the rushing waves. What bliss and splendor we found in the warmth of the rocks, the cold fury of the water, the fresh breeze, and the invigorating sun. We felt how truly wonder-full is Elohim's creation. And yet this beauty we see only as through a looking-glass darkly. Let us look forward to the time when we shall see clearly, face-to-face, the Beautiful Imagination of the God who is Love.

And thus our Feast of Shelters came to a lovely conclusion.

The Child in Dickens

'No, I hold myself in quiet and silence, like a baby in its mother's arms, like a baby, so I keep myself.' - Psalms 131:2

St. Aurelius Augustine once said that when he himself, as a baby, beat his mother's breast while nursing, it was really the showing of the secret desire rankling in his heart to murder his mother. He believed that a child's sin was determined before he ever acted sinfully, and would go to everlasting damnation if he died before his infant baptism.

The idea, termed original or ancestral sin, was not taken seriously until the Enlightenment, when Martin Luther and John Calvin took the words of St. Augustine to be theological truths. "Original sin," Calvin said, "therefore appears to be a hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused through all the parts of the soul, rendering us obnoxious to the divine wrath and producing in us those works which the scripture calls works of sin.' God, therefore, was deemed a terrible deity who would damn innocent children for sins which they had not committed.

This belief developed. Sinfulness was said to be present even after baptism. We were deemed to be sinning all the time, even when we were not conscious of it, and therefore had an excuse to never combat our sin. As Martin Luther said, "Be a sinner and sin on bravely, but have stronger faith and rejoice in Christ, who is the victor of sin, death, and the world. Do not for a moment imagine that this life is the abiding place of justice: sin must be committed. To you it ought to be sufficient that you acknowledge the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world, the sin cannot tear you away from him, even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders.'

Never mind the words of Jesus: 'Go and sin no more.' 'Be ye perfect, even as thy heavenly father is perfect.' 'Whoever holds to my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home in him.' Of Paul: 'Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.' Of John: 'We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commandments.' Or the fact that, if sin-guilt was inherent in all Life and not just in action, that Jesus Himself could not have been sinless, as He chose to enter the world through a woman's womb.

To the detriment of all this, the beliefs of Calvin and Luther and Augustine were widely accepted in the Protestant and Catholic church, and continue to be today. This belief in the evil propensities of a child was accentuated by the Enlightenment's divorcing of the spiritual and material aspects of life, of Darwin's treatise on the animalism of man, and the amalgamation of both of these in the Industrial Era, which treated the child as sinful animals without character, emotion, or goodness.

In fact, in the world of the early 1800s, children were not even viewed as human beings until the age of seven. Sanitation was so primitive that it was extremely rare for a child to live to seven-years-old, and therefore they would not be intellectually counted as mind-full until they were proved to live through their infancy. They were deemed as being the essence of sinfulness, thus disregarding Jesus' declaration to 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.' In the original Greek, the last part of the sentence literally reads 'the kingdom of God is this [the little child].'

However, there were some people who struck out against the Enlightenment's painting of children. They were a part of the Christian Romantics, who adhered to the belief that the spiritual was inherent in matter, and that whoever welcomed a Child welcomed Jesus and therefore welcomed Elohim. Thus William Wordsworth declared, "Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height." And William Blake expostulated, "When the voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast And everything else is still.'

The aggression against the Calvin-Luther-Augustine theology was continued with great force by the Victorian author, Charles Dickens. It was he that paved the way for the Victorian's return to the love of the child, the sacredness of the mother, the unit of the father-mother-child, when 'the Child is Father of the Man', as Wordsworth termed it. In his books he wrote about little children who possessed thoughts, feelings, goodness, and the longing for love and acceptance. Pip, Biddy, David Copperfield, Amy Dorrit, Little Nell, Sissy Jupe, Esther Woodhouse…the list goes on. He shows how the innocence of these children may be tainted by the sinfulness of their parents (Hard Times), through the cruelty of schoolmasters (David Copperfield), by the brutality of women (Great Expectations, Bleak House), or the negligence of fathers (Little Dorrit, Old Curiosity Shop). But he did not just make an example through negatives. He showed the true joy that might come when the family is as it should be. When the family models the Holy Family: the father as protector and provider, the mother as comforter and caretaker, the child as the holy fruit of their love.

This is seen in no greater book than in A Christmas Carol, where Scrooge––the epitome of the anti-emotion movement started in the Enlightenment and followed through in Industrialization––comes to realize the sacredness of Love and therefore the fruit of Love, the Child, through the example of the beautiful, lovely family of Tiny Tim. As Dickens said, 'It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.'

And thus Dickens ushered in the true enlightenment of the Victorian era.

Fairest Lord Jesus

Fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature,

O thou of God and man the Son,

Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor

Thou, my soul's glory, joy, and crown.

Dusk spread its silky fingers over the horizon as we drove through Clover Meade. It had been a long day: sitting in a car, reading Jane Austen, and listening to Bach fugues over the speakers as we drove up the continent to our homeland. The day was glorious. A blue sky and a golden sun graced our eyes with their beauty as a cheerful, fresh wind breathed Spring into our lungs.

It seems fitting that the Savior, who is Life, should have been resurrected in a time that such Resurrection takes place. The new birth of all around us thrilled through our veins, though we were only passive observers of the growth. Perhaps the best way to come into fellowship with that same renewal is through the spiritual camaraderie of our own Soul's newness in Jeshua.

The beauty of the season and the soul pervading the season filled my heart, and, when the car finally came to a stop in front of my home, I lost little time in running up to my bedroom, replacing my travel-weary clothes for a fresh eyelet skirt and sky-blue shirt, and, my feet bare-shod, I tripped down the back staircase and out into the loveliness of the evening.

Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodlands,

Robed in the blooming garb of spring:

Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer

Who makes the woeful heart to sing.

The Chinook had been busy while I was absent. It had sprinkled away the plum blossoms on the Tree of Life and the pear blossoms on Lady Cordelia––as I had christened them in a blissfully Emily of New Moon phase––and onto the lush green clover, intertwining pure white petals with the lavender violets and yellow sunflowers that carpeted the damp, warm earth. Old William and Lady Dawn, the apple trees, seemed a bit belated in the growth of their canopy of green leaves, but close inspection boasted little buds just breaking forth from their wooden cocoon. Squirrels scurried through the tree branches, watching with eager eyes for the fruit that was soon to appear to make their supper. Red-breasted robins chirped their cheerful chorus from their newly built nests, while brilliant bluejays hopped along the grass, looking for the earthworms that were just burrowing up to the warm sunlight from their winter haven in the depths of the ground.

I walked down the hill, inhaling the sweetly-scented breeze as it blew all worldly cares from my eyes and mind, and sang Fairest Lord Jesus as I surveyed the beauty of His creation. I marveled at the knowledge that Jesus is, truly, fairer and purer than the wonder-full fairness of purity I saw all around me.

Fair is the sunshine, fairer still the moonlight,

And all the twinkling starry host:

Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer

Than all the angels heaven can boast.

I directed my steps to the peach tree sapling, which, just planted last year, and rather neglected by its stewards, is struggling to obey God's commandment to bear fruit. It looked beautiful in the setting sun, just sprouting its first emerald leaves and pink flowers, from her slender ivory branches. I prayed that God might make her bear good fruit, and, after a little thought over what name would encapsulate her beauty, called the tree Cherith, in the old tradition of Adam.

The sun dipped below the hills as the moon grew clearer in the periwinkle heavens. I lay on the grass for a few minutes, letting the warmth of Spring seep into my bones. After praying to the Lord of the dance of creation, I made my way back up the sloping lawn and into the house, praising the Rose of Sharon for the Beauty birthed of His Holiness (Psalm 29:2 KJV)

Beautiful Savior! Lord of all the nations!

Son of God and Son of Man!

Glory and honor, praise, adoration,

Now and forevermore be thine.

Hymn by Munster Gesangbuch

O Sacred Head Now Wounded

O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown;
How art thou pale with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn!
How doth Thy visage languish that once was bright as morn!

What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.*

In the days of the Middle Ages, the word 'pity' did not mean the milky, soft emotion that it does now. It came from the word 'piety', and meant a divine compassion shot through with strength and truth, inspired by the Father of all Piety. May we pray that on this day, a day of such gravity for the future of our nation, the Almighty may look on our prayers with his 'pity without end', and renew our nation.

*From 'O Sacred Head Now Wounded' by Bernard of Clairvaux

The Pursuit of Happiness

Last night, hundreds of thousands of people, in surfing their television, found themselves watching one of the most beautiful events that has aired in the last four years: the figure skating championship for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Of all the young ladies competing, though all displayed extraordinary beauty, elegance, and talent in the soaring twirls and spinning twists, two women stood out from among the rest. They were small, slender, beautiful girls, wearing sparkling leotards, with glitter framing their dark eyes and concentration molded upon their olive brows. They came from two different Asian countries, where the skill of their dancing has earned them the name of national celebrities. One, a small, Japanese girl named Mao Asada, dances to a simple, classical piece, and, though her dancing is flawless, the choreography has only a fraction of the fire and energy that sizzles over a foundation of breath-taking elegance when Kim Yu-Na from South Korea takes the ice, dancing to the theme song from James Bond. She wins the competition after the stunning, passionate piece, placing five points above her Japanese rival, and exceeding her own record by two points.

The disinterested onlooker enjoys watching these prodigies as they perform; they rejoice with Yu-Na in her success, and, though they pity Asada for her own great talent being superseded, the performance of Yu-Na has left them so breathless that they know the score is fairly won. No one realizes the enormity of the expectation and the extreme responsibility that has been placed on these young, small shoulders by the people of their country. The competition between them does not begin and end with the Olympics: it buries deep, plunging down the course of a hundred years, through the histories of their people. The two countries, and the two girls who stand as the sacred representations of their cultures, are enemies of old.

In the early twentieth century Japan experienced great economic upheaval when the new emperor, Meiji, rose to power. The Koreans insulted and rejected Emperor Meiji in their trading with Japan, and the emperor, seeing that the samurai army was jobless and posing a threat to his regime, sent them off to conquer and colonize Korea. The Koreans experienced great hardship through their slavery to the Japanese over the course of thirty-five years, until America, after the bombing of Hiroshima at the end of World War II, came into Korea to free the Koreans. The people, government, and economy of Korea were utterly devastated after Japan's autocracy in their country, and, though the Americans helped them back to their feet, Franklin D. Roosevelt didn't finish the course of regeneration. He, on the advice of the general in charge of the mission, deserted the northern precinct of Korea to a socialist Russia, a communist Mao Zedong, and the new Marxist upstart Kim Il Sung to take over the government in that section of the country. Thus ensued the divide of North and South Korea. This history, branded in the minds of the Koreans and the Japanese, lies in the worldview with which Yu-Na and Asada compete. The angst of their countries' expectations is overwhelming in the very force of this age-old feud.

I once observed a young Korean conversing with one of my brothers about how he saw common ground between America and Korea, in that they both had a mutual enemy in Japan because of Pearl Harbor. I was shocked by this idea. In my thoughts, the tragedy of Pearl Harbor was such an incident of the past that the guilt correlating to it has been forgotten, and that this feeling predominates in America. Japan has been wholly forgiven, just as the memory of the enmity of the Revolutionary War between the English and the Americans is rendered obsolete in our present function as allies. In the same way, the Pearl Harbor incident has been wiped away from our consciences, so that now Japan is one of America's greatest allies. But to the young Korean gentleman, Japan––disregarding the fact that the grave offense paid them is one dating to almost a century ago, and that the Japanese have seen great retribution for their tyranny and are a wholly different people––is still a very grim enemy.

Thus I see how the worldviews of the Western and Eastern worlds utterly clash. Christianity, though started in the East, has spread like wildfire, until, coming to the West, it has conquered and revolutionized the European world. Because of Christianity, we are endowed with certain unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that happiness is made by the practice of Christian virtues. The Ten Commandments are instilled in our minds, and this moral creed has given us the ability to rise above all other countries in the corporate wisdom that has led to freedom of religion, liberty of speech, and the high-minded principle of love that has led us to be renowned for our 'short memory': for our forgiveness and for our willingness to give succor to those countries who have not had the influence of the Zoë to give them Life and Light.

In the Eastern world, however, the cultures are steeped in the religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Atheism, all creeds wholly selfish, either in the self-centered pursuit of forgetting self, the megalomaniacal pursuit of a god that sanctions genocide and hate, or the egocentric mind that believes there is no god and therefore that man is the master of his own destiny. Their worlds are old: newness is not welcomed, freedom of thought and independence of belief is denied, and the sins of the fathers are punished in the children. They nurse their hate, for they have never learned the joy that comes from obeying the words:

"Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you."

Photo of Kim Yu-Na

The Man Moses: Part 1

Israel dwelt in Egypt. God blessed His people, making them fruitful in number. Their God was El Shaddai, the God whose Kingdom is the little child.

They were a prized nation, for Joseph, one of the greatest commanders in Egypt, was at their head. But a Pharaoh rose up who knew not Joseph, who knew not the covenant, who knew not that El Shaddai who blesses, and he grew afraid of the strong, numerous nation. He ordered genocide. All male Hebrew children up to two years of age, must be drowned in the Nile. This genocide would be repeated hundreds of years later, when Herod ordered merciless child-slaughter in order to kill the Christ.

But Israel's savior would survive genocide, just as the Savior of all humanity would. In the depths of Goshen, the Israelites' primary region of habitation, lived a man named Amram. His wife, Jochebed, had three children, Miriam, Aaron, and Jekuthiel, a new-born baby. She was a courageous woman. She was a mother. She hid her precious baby boy for three months, and, when she knew she could no longer succeed in hiding him, put him in a basket and trusted to that El Shaddai who gave her this precious child to save him from destruction.

Her little girl Miriam watched the chosen child as it wound its way through the busy, infested Nile, closer and closer to the royal palace. She heard Pharaoh's daughter and her handmaidens washing in the Nile, heard their gasps of surprise as the basket floats into view, saw the princess of Egypt take pity on the child. The Princess Thermuthis knew it was a Hebrew child, a child of not only slaves, but shepherds, an occupation scorned by her people––a nation so degraded in Egypt that the mass slaughter of the Hebrews' children could be executed without a qualm. Yet she loves the child as her own. According to the Midrash, when Moses returns to Egypt as the wielder of the miracles of YHWH, she will be exiled and scorned for being his surrogate mother, and will leave Egypt with him in the great Exodus. Her name will be changed to Bithiah, meaning 'Daughter of Yah', and she will take the Judahite Mered as her husband. Click here to read the Biblical mention of Bithiah.

Miriam seized the opportunity, when this princess was observing the baby with tender interest, to suggest a Hebrew nurse for the child. The princess probably guessed what has taken place, and acquiesced willingly. She took pity on the Hebrew mother. Thus Moses is nursed by his own mother, and, through the strong bonding that takes place, becomes sealed in the Hebrew culture.

Once he was weaned, however, the princess adopted him as her own son, calling him Moshe, which is similar to the Hebrew word 'mashah', meaning 'to draw out' and the Egyptian word for 'child'. Moses, attached through his most formative years of childhood to his Hebraism, will now be raised as a royal Egyptian, with all the privileges and education of a prince of Egypt.

According to Josephus, Moses grew to become the foremost commander of the armies of Egypt. He had great military acumen, though he was slow of speech. One of the most famous stories about his life as a general is in the histories of Josephus, when he led the Egyptians against the Ethiopians who were invading the country. According to the histories, while he was besieging Tharbis, one of the cities of Ethiopia, an Ethiopian princess fell in love with him and wanted to marry him. He agreed to do so if she would deliver the city into his power. She did so, and Moses married her. Click here to read the Bible's account of Moses' Ethiopian wife.

His warrior career came to an end when, one day on visiting his mother-people, he saw a Hebrew slave being maltreated and was so incensed that he murdered the Egyptian overseer and buried the corpse in the sand. The affair was talked about among the Hebrew slaves, and Moses, on hearing from a higher source that it was known in the royal household, and that Pharaoh would most likely execute him for it, escaped across the Sinai Peninsula, a gigantic stretch of barren, desert country that only the strongest could survive in.

Coming to Midian, he stopped to drink at the Midianite well, and, while he was there, saw a group of seven shepherdess sisters being driven away from the water by some rowdy shepherds. Moses, seeing the violence taking place, had enough fighting strategy inherent in his bones to save the shepherdesses from the whole group of shepherds and their flocks, and then enough strength remaining to draw the water needed for the sheep of the seven sisters. The girls' father, a priest of Midian, was so grateful for the service and so awed at what Moses had done that he adopted him as his son, made him superintendent of his flocks, and gave him his daughter Zipporah in marriage.

It was forty years later, while shepherding his father's flocks, that Moses saw the first glimpse of the fire of the God whom he would see face to face in the coming years.

The Medieval and The Post-Modern

'Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.'

~C.S. Lewis

'Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.'

~C.S. Lewis

Medieval World-View

The medieval man believed that the world was set up in a way that inverted our natural experience. He believed that the universe was a chain or set of graded planes, the top of which was the highest Heaven, in which God dwelt in timeless, undeviating unity.

The second link of the chain was the high angels, gradually grading down in an intricate theology of numbers to the lower angels, who dwelt in the realm of Aether. The Aether was described as the means through which God communicated with the Earth. It consisted of all living intelligence beyond the moon. Rather than being Space, as we term it today, the Aether was a dazzling world of light, filled to overflowing with miraculous planets, stars, and spiritual beings. The medieval man believed the darkness with which we see it was only a shadow cast by the earth in the light of the moon, and that, in reality, outside the shadow, it was a sphere of glorious light. Aether and the high Heaven were at the top of the chain, and the medieval man praised them for their very unchangeable quality, their fixedness.

Below the moon there came Air, through which the Aether communicated with the Earth. The Air, in the medieval mind, was directly influenced by the warfare that went on in the Aether and the highest Heaven. Thus, birth, death, sickness, health, were all contributed to events taking place in the spiritual realm. Therefore doctors would blame sicknesses on what they named 'Influence', which, in the Italian, is 'Influenza.' Thus the beginning of the term.

Below the Air there came the Earth, on which Man, with his supposedly disgusting inconstancy and fickle purpose, dwelt. Man and Earth were distorted mirrors of the Heavenly realm. Thus the medieval man's fetish with creating as much beauty on Earth as possible, in order that he might come closest to the vast glory above the moon; thus the medieval man's staunch belief in the spiritual properties of the stuff of Earth, and his loyalty to magic-lore. For where the Astrology of the planets and the Aether forced upon man a changeless Fate, Magic was developed as a means to cast off the icy clutches of serendipity.

Beneath Man came the Animal world, which the medieval man viewed as a grotesque shadow of himself, through which he could learn spiritual lessons. For example, the ant was a lesson for the sluggard, the rule of the queen bee a lesson for the monarch.

Lower than the Animal was the Plant, filled with life and yet inanimate.

And below the Plant, at the very outskirts of the medieval world-view, lay Hell and the daemonic world, as far away from God as was possible in the intricate planing of the spheres.

Post-Modern Worldview

Interestingly, the post-modern man has a fully different view of the world. In fact, it is inverted. Where the medieval man believed in a world of utter order, absolute truth, the post-modern man believes there is no truth, and that each person's absolute is made up only of his mysterious experiences. Rather than God being at the center of the universe, with the sinful Earth being at the very outskirts of the Heavenly Realm, the post-modern man believes that the sinful world is the center of the universe.

As time goes by, the post-modern worldview becomes more and more obsessed with what to the medieval man was the low rung on the ladder: the Plant. Thus, the Green movement. The post-modern man has intellectually negated the possibility of either a Hell or a Heaven, and, instead, has endowed the realms of Plant, Animal, and Air with a strange, god-like authority which must control the actions of Man.

On the next link of the post-modern chain is Man, which, with the Animal as his god, is seeking to become more and more like an Animal himself. Just as the medieval man sought to become like his Creator, so the post-modern man seeks to become like his supposed predecessor, the Animal. Thus, the post-modern man has negated meaning in the universe. There is no spiritual realm, there is no truth, there is no creativity, there is no intelligence except to prove intelligence non-existent, for the Animal is not in the image of the Divine, the Animal has no reason or emotion, the Animal has no creativity, the Animal has no intelligence. With all divine impartation, with all sub-creational responsibility, with all wisdom gutted, the only thing left for the post-modern man is his gut appetite. His chosen life is one of wandering purposefulness, constant changeableness, the very thing the medieval man detested as a part of the Fallen realm.

Below Man is what the post-modern man terms Space. It is a domain of nothingness. Even the stars, the planets, and the miraculous lights that inhabit the world take a background view to the blackness that was only a shadow hiding glory in the medieval man's mind. The post-modern man believes in no beauty, no glory, no virtue. He believes only in a sadist mentality… the savage instinct for survival.

Summary

So, we see that the medieval man, embracing his God-given desire for the Kingdom of the Spirit, did everything he could to minimize his Fallenness by enveloping himself in the realm of Glory. The post-modern man of today, by completing the negation of the Dark Ages begun in the Renaissance, has minimized the spiritual to the utmost degree, in order to more wholly embrace the Animal in the Flesh.

Titanic Article

Being at a dinner a couple weeks ago, a framed edition of the Times edition of Tuesday, April 16th, 1912, caught my eye.  As I read through it, I was so shocked by the contents of that tragic day, that I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and quickly dashed down as much as I could before we had to leave.  What follows are my notes:

Direct copy from the beginning of the article:

Tuesday, 16th April 1912

WORLD'S GREATEST LINER STRIKES ICEBERG:

RMS Titanic, the world's greatest liner and the pride of the White Star fleet, hit an iceberg and sank yesterday morning in the greatest disaster at sea.  Over 1600 passengers and crew perished with the ship.

Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable but she disappeared into the black depths of the Atlantic Ocean within hours of being struck.  Lifeboats were launched but only around 800 men, women, and children are believed to have survived.

Those who were able to obtain seats in the lifeboats watched helplessly as the great ship broke in half and plunged to the bottom of the ocean with all its lights blazing and with the band still playing on deck.

Notes from rest of article:

So great was the faith in Titanic's 'unsinkable' qualities that some passengers even had a snowball fight with pieces of ice which the strike had thrown on deck.

The 'Women and Children Only' rule was soon ignored and skirmishes began as some male passengers tried to fight their way onto the boats.  One lady had her ribs dislocated when three men jumped into her lifeboat as it was being lowered.  One man swam in the icy water after a lifeboat only to have an officer threaten to shoot him if he boarded.

Babies and children were wrapped in towels and sheets and thrown to safety to the women already in the boats.  One older boy who tried to get onto one of the boats concealed in his mother's skirts was sent back with the order to 'Be a man'.  He is believed to have died.  

The lifeboats were not filled efficiently in the chaos.  Third class passengers were locked below in order that the first class women could board first, but they rioted and broke through and chaos broke out.

1500 people died.  As she went down with a tremendous roar, the decks were thronged with praying and sobbing passengers and the band was still playing the Episcopal hymn Autumn, or Nearer my God to Thee, as Titanic sank below the waves.  All ships' senior officers died.

Abraham's Lineage

On reading a recent book by Ravi Zacharias about Isaac and Rebekah, I was brought across some new thoughts concerning the family's generational line that struck me considerably.  

 

This family's amazing spiritual legacy all started when Terah sacked up his family 'to go to the land of Canaan.'  Abram was already married to Sarai at this point, and, when Terah lost faith in the initial initiative and 'settled in Haran', Abram was visited by God, blessed by Him, and left all his family except for his cousin Lot to go to an unknown country full of bloodthirsty barbarians.  Abrahm's faith was considerable.  

 

Abram finally came to Canaan, and, at the Oak of Moreh, which was regularly used by the Canaanites as a holy place to sacrifice their infants, he is visited by God and boldly builds an altar to Yahweh, thus declaring outright war with the native gods and customs.  Yahweh appears to him and promises that this land, presently populated with terrorists, will be given over to his offspring.  Yet Abram has no offspring.

 

But there is a severe famine in the land, and Abraham, seeing the starvation of his cattle and people and the demise of his wealth, takes fright and escapes to Egypt, where he lets selfishness and fear overcome him, and falls into a whirlpool of lies and deceit, almost resulting in his wife being raped and the promise of a son being thwarted.  Yet God, through speaking to Abimelech, saved the promise and Abram returned to the famine in Canaan and was given a second chance.

Isaac grows up in a stranger land, full of a people that is completely opposed to the precepts that his father Abraham has instilled in his heart.  Abraham realizes the importance of Isaac marrying a woman from his own flesh and blood and worldview, and, on his deathbed, he sends his eldest and most trustworthy servant to go on a wild-goose chase to find his relatives, relatives he hasn't had much interaction with for over fifty years.  He acts out of pure faith, and the servant, having faith in his master's faith, sets out on his journey.

When he arrives at the well, he asks God to let the first woman who comes out and offers to water him and his camels would be the woman he wants Isaac to marry.  Rebekah comes out and offers to do the work, a labor of watering ten camels who have just come from weeks-long journey across the desert.  The servant is ecstatic, decorates Rebekah with gifts, and, when she realizes that he is apart of the family, she and her whole house welcomes him with the hospitality so indigenous to that culture.  

The servant tells the family what has happened, and, in a culture where dreams and portents and family honor were taken extremely seriously, his words are received as those from God.  Yet Rebekah is given the final word in this––a very strange circumstance in a Middle-Eastern family where women were very little esteemed, and hardly, if ever, given the choice of opinion.  Rebekah was steadfast in her belief that this was God's will, and she, probably a fourteen or fifteen year old girl, left her entire family, culture, and previous life for a man whom she did not know, had never seen, and a nation that was full of pagan ideals.

It must have meant a lot to this religious woman that the first time she sees Isaac he is walking through the fields, praying to God.  Isaac was most likely just as stressed as Rebekah was, for he knew how important his wife would be in the unfolding of God's promise.  But God was in control, and the Bible says that Isaac loved her.

The same fears and selfishness that were in Abraham were bred in Isaac, and he, too, fell under the fear of being killed for the beauty of his wife Rebekah by Abimelech's savage people, and, by calling Rebekah his sister, puts in danger the promise that God has given to his father and himself.  Abimelech sees him fondling Rebekah, and, ascertaining from that the real relationship between the two, he turns Isaac out of the kingdom in anger at his deceit.

Rebekah was barren––a trait that seems to follow this family a lot––and it was not till she was in her thirties that God granted hers and Isaac's prayers for a child, and she conceived.  She felt the twins struggling in her womb, and was given a prophesy that the elder would serve the younger.  

Esau and Jacob grow up, Esau a crude hunter with no respect for the promise of Abraham's line, and Jacob an intelligent, well-read man.  Esau first flagrantly insults his birthright by selling it for a bowl of stew (though the Hebrew word for Esau's hunger literally means starvation), and then insults the promise further by marrying pagan women from the community, which are a great pain to his parents and which marred the promise.

When Isaac is in danger of dying from old age, he calls Esau and tells him to go hunt for an animal, cook it, and bring it to him so they can eat it.  Thus there is labor, sacrifice, and communion prequelling the blessing.  Rebekah hears that Isaac is preparing to bless Esau, and panic fills her.  Not only is she very displeased with he elder son and his beliefs, but she remembers the promise of God back when her children were in the womb that Jacob would be the ruler of the two.  She loses faith in God's ability to fulfill his prophesy, and enters into deceit in order that Jacob will be blessed with the elder's blessing.  The process of labor, sacrifice, and communion is annulled, as Jacob merely stands by as Rebekah kills a lamb from the flock, prepares it, and, after dressing Jacob in Esau's clothes and covering him in goat hair so that he feels like Esau, she has Jacob bring the food to Isaac.  Yet Jacob does not eat with Isaac, thus receiving no communion with him.   He is blessed with the blessing of Esau, and, living under this blessing that was wrongly won, he escapes from Esau's murderous intentions and goes to Laban, where he marries of his mother's stock and becomes very rich,  His life is one of deceit however, not only in his receiving of the blessings that should have been Esau's, but in his wives, his attaining of wealth, and his behavior to his uncle.  

He finally escapes from Laban in the same way that he escaped from Esau, in fear and trembling because of the fruit of his deceitful life.  It is while he is fleeing, when there is hatred behind him in Laban's household and hatred before him in his home country and the inescapable meeting with his brother, when the deceit sown is finally being reaped, that God visits Jacob and wrestles with him.  In such a stressful, painful, and dangerous encounter, God asks Jacob a very important question.  "What is your name?"  And Jacob, who has lived for fifteen years under the auspices of his brother's name and birthright, is forced to confess his real name.  It is only then, when God has gotten him cornered, that God renames him Israel, and gives him his own blessing, one that belongs to Israel alone.  And thus Abraham's lineage and promise is carried on.

And that's all of the fruit of my study…for now.