The Enemy Within has finally arrived in the elctronic age: you can, if you are so inclined, purchase a copy in Amazon’s Kindle format or on itunes.
I hasten to add (for all your thrifty shoppers) that the price is reasonable for once–2.99 US American dollars will get you an ethereal copy.
Less than the price of a latte!
But let me add a word of caution, in keeping with the theme of the book: don’t let that price tempt you to lose all self-control, so that you buy dozens of copies for all your friends. Try to temper your enthusiasm and purchase copies in moderation. One a day should suffice….
[wink]
I’m not writing about Downton Abbey because it is high art. It’s a costume melodrama, perhaps almost a British soap opera. But it’s roaring good fun and surprisingly rich with incidents that return dividends for reflection. I don’t think the show offers any particularly new insights into Life–but insights don’t have to be original to be worth thinking about. They need to be true and significant.
I’ll mention one example from the second season: Lord Grantham’s temptation. He struggles for much of the season with feelings of uselessness and insignificance through WWI–today we would call it a mid-life crisis. Right on cue a pretty young maid joins the staff at Downton, and she listens to Lord Grantham and seems to be the only one who understands and sympathizes with him. He is ripe for an ego-boosting affair.
But after a passionate kiss he gathers himself and does the right thing. He even ensures that the maid leaves Downton, a wise and rare move on his part. Shortly after his narrow escape he finds out about his oldest daughter Mary’s failure some years earlier–a failure of passion that threatens to become the scandal that will bring everlasting shame on the family. But her father, fresh from his own struggle, takes the revelation seriously, yet with an understanding of the weakness of the flesh. And this sympathetic high priest that she now finds in her father is just what Mary needs.
We plan to watch both seasons again.
From Leslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence:
What is obvious and important at this stage is that the acceptance of the biblical tradition as a starting point for thought constituted a radical break with the classical tradition, whether in its Platonic or Aristotelian form. To put it crudely, in the latter form we begin by asking questions, and we formulate these questions on the basis of our experience of the world. In this enterprise we are in control of operations. We decide which questions to ask, and these decisions necessarily condition the nature of the answers. This is the procedure with which we are familiar in the work of the natural sciences. The things we desire to understand are not active players in the game of learning; they are inert and must submit to our questioning. The resulting “knowledge” is our achievement and our possession.
But there is another kind of knowing which, in many languages, is designated by a different word. It is the kind of knowing that we seek in our relations with other people. In this kind of knowing we are not in full control. We may ask questions, but we must also answer the questions put by the other. We can only come to know others in the measure in which they are willing to share. The resulting knowledge is not simply our own achievement; it is also the gift of others. And even in the mutual relations of ordinary human beings, it is never complete. There are always further depths of knowledge that only long friendship and mutual trust can reach, if indeed they can be reached at all.
There is a radical break between these two kinds of knowing: the knowing often associated with the natural sciences and the knowing involved in personal relations. We experience this radical break, for example, when someone about whom we have been talking unexpectedly comes into the room. We can discuss an absent person in a manner that leaves us in full control of the discussion. But if the person comes into the room, we must either break off the discussion or change into a different mode of talking.
Beatrice speaks to Dante of preachers and preaching in Paradiso XXIX:
“Now preachers ply their trade with buffoonery and jokes,
their cowls inflating if they get a laugh,
and the people ask for nothing more.”
[tr. Hollander]
To me, the most telling line of those three is the last. 2 Timothy 4:3
When I was told that Paul Giamatti played John Adams in the HBO miniseries about our second president, I was puzzled. Not because I think Giamatti is a bad actor (I especially liked him in American Splendor and Win Win), but because he’s, well, a bit odd. But he turns out to be perfect in the role–and it’s a fine role indeed.
Paula and I relished watching this series for several reasons: the realistic and moving portrayal of the life of a man stretched by extreme circumstances that included the historic American revolution, the struggle between integrity (of thought and character) and political pressure, and the brokenness of his family; a real marriage between two great people who love each other in spite of everything; the elegance of expression in that era; and the drama of the events, which never grows stale.
I’ve picked up (that is, downloaded onto my Kindle) a copy of the personal letters between John and Abigail during the Regolutionary period, and am enjoying those as well. But this is one of those rare cases when I’ll tell you that if you have to choose between reading and watching, WATCH!
Not everyone who shares Richard Dawkins’s atheology appreciates his call to fellow antibelievers to ridicule and show contempt for religion.
For those of you who have read some Dawkins and wonder about the quality of some of his arguments, I recommend that you pick up a copy of David Robertson’s The Dawkins Letters. He does a nice job of confronting the misrepresentations that fill The God Delusion and which are inexplicably accepted by many uncritically.
Well, I said “inexplicably,” but of course there is an explanation. It’s been around a long time. See Romans 1:18 ff.
Video included with the story here.
The Tree of Life impressed me as an amazing and difficult film. It opens with a voice-over of (I think) a son talking to God, saying that his mother and brother led him to God. Then we see images of the mother in the film as a young girl, speaking of her lessons from her parochial school:
The nuns taught us that there are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow.
Grace doesn’t try to please itself. It accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked; it accepts insults and injuries.
Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it, too. Likes to lord it over them, to have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy, when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things.
They taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end. I will be true to you, whatever comes…
The next image is of the mother receiving the message that her son has died. And that begins the challenge to her teaching, the challenge to the most basic things she believes.
The film is beautiful (and painful) to see and hear. It presents its ideas through beautiful words and music and images. But it swells with countless images and symbols and hints and open questions that demand time to sort out and reflect on. But there is no time, for in a few seconds you are on to the next, then the next, then the next. I couldn’t keep up, though I wanted to. This film deserves several viewings – yet it is so long, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to do it justice.
Still, even the snippets I caught, still echo in my mind….