Early August Reading

Lewis/Cosmology:I finished the Discarded Image and leapt into an Experiment in Criticism. The first left a literal burning in the bosom which amuses me - Can I tell you how the cosmos sing and every small related thing? AEiC was a cold (but hillarious) bucket of water on that. The Discarded Image gives you the heavens and your world and a long history. The Experiment is Lewis telling you what he really thinks about things. I just reached a part where he said,in short, some men use our term artist as porn, but that it takes more work to violate it than bad art. And that you are going to violate it too by your academic perception of it. My final review is just going to sum up chapters in their prevailing insult.  Donne and Herbert are in the wings for fall

Education: Towards a Philosophy- I fonished two chapters and narrated them for book club. Two more this week and I’m loving it. Is the purpose of eduction discovering the things we give the  breath of our body for?

The Living Word by Bestaver - I am ready to wrap it up and focus on Mason. I have changed up how I am using my current notebook to incorporate all her forms until I’m practiced enough to divide. Current events intimidates me because I mostly don’t care, but I will do it.

Consider This: Kindle Limbo. I’m just not reading on my phone. This is probably seasonal.

School Skim: Nature Drawing by Clare Leslie (fantastic)

King Arthur: My kids are listening to Pyle in the car, so I get to too and check it off my list. I love forcing things I love on them. We have reached the search for Excalibur.

Faerie Queen is on my desk and I can not wait to read the Lang stories to my children this year - It is Arthur. It is Cosmology. It is a Classic I should have finished by now.

Christianity:

Mere Christianity (Also Lewis) - Only a couple chapters left.

Intro To Joy: I should keep going it has been a glorious page per day. I think the Fruit of the Spirit should be a consistent subcat for a while. I like to focus on virtues, not Fruit, but that would probably be more encouraging, speaking of…

Holiness: I should pick it up again. A Puritan a day keeps idiocy at bay.

Fiction/School Free Reading/ BookClub:

Little White Horse and The Saturdays were two marvelous Sundays. I will pick up Marguerite Henry this week because now I trust the list. Read them all. And it is purely for fun, but I get to check off a todo list. It is the best of both worlds.

The Little White Horse is in the genre of the Princess and Curdie, but the one thing it does better is end well.

The Saturdays is in the same tradition of Penderwicks and E Nesbit. Four children scrambling around and getting into real life, not quite magical scrapes. Splendid.

For book club I have This House of Sky by Ivan Doig which I haven’t started yet, but I am so excited to. I have heard the first paragraph and (contrary to my normal approach) am prepared to like it very much.

First I thought Ivan Doig wrote it and then realized he loved it enough to narrate it, so I picked up A River Runs Through It too.

Fall Reading I love seasonal reading, so we are hitting the time of year for Commentaries on alot of what I read this year, Space Trilogy binge, Austen inundation, Malory, and my final Dark Horse novel. Rather than be concerned I won’t finish it all, I have accepted this is who I am and I will read my lists and go on every side quest I can cram in and build more lists and make the sidequests part of the list too. We’re readers, no?

-Onward and Upward

Creature Problems

Every so often the Creation debate comes up in our circles and there is a funny eddy that will make me burst into laughter if I ever come across it in its natural element.

The conversation goes something like

Pat: Well I think the world took time. It can’t all happen at once. We know there are probable lines of development.

Mike: That isn’t what it says in Genesis.

Pat: Oh thats just poetry.

I’m not here to discuss Day Age Theory or Young Earth. More importantly there are people who believe because Genesis is high poetry, it can not be true. It is only art.

We have so separated art from reality and farther, from the work we do, that an event recorded factually cannot be written in verse.

And if something is written in verse, it is glossing over salient facts.

In high school logic there was a  method of debate called taking the bull by the horns. From rampant  overuse, I learned that most problems and opposing positions (if I was right) were a feature, not a bug, of the resolution. You had to embrace the sticky point.

So stick with me here.

God wrote the world in poetry.

We picture getting up and going to work in the daily way, involving a hard hat and a shovel or a laptop and a good connection.

We lock in to what is there and work from it.

That is not the way God made the world.

He spoke it, in complete piecemeal portions, in six successive parts, rounded out with the seventh, all to be repeated for all time. Day after day he pours forth speech. Christ sustains all.

God wrote the world in poetry, so Genesis was begun in poetry. We live inside a poem of God.

Each piece and portion was intended to reveal more about Him and bring more glory to Him. He is not lying or obfuscating his methods. He composed — which shows us more about who He is, the point.

Our world was written in Rhyme Royal.

Someone needs to tell Pat and Mike to look on the sunnyside and not be negative.

Further Up and Further In

Vignettes: 1

“They have a cure.” He said.

“Oh, oh!“ The woman clasped hands, “How soon can they work it? Or is it done already.” She started up. “Let me see her.”

“ There is some question.” The man paused.

“Is there a terrible risk?” said the woman. “Could she die from the treatment?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. She would be perfectly well.” He said. “It would change her. “

“Change her? They will take her arm next week and her leg the week after! She will be changed.” said the woman.

“It would change all of her. And in her view she has a rather nice nose.”

“I… I don’t understand.” She said.

“The cure would cure her. The person she looked at in the mirror might not be someone she knows.“

“She would have lost the self she’s trying to save.” The woman sighed, falling back to her seat. “She is really a very brave girl.”

“It is so hard to make these decisions.” he said.