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CrazedCelt
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Name: Lyedyn
Interests: I'm a Christian, a hyper piper, a Gaelic Storm fanatic, and a Lord of the Rings freak. You are duly warned.
Expertise: Balrog Winglessness, RPs, grammar, Gwyddbwyll, Risk, fantasy authors, William Wallace, King Arthur, Gaelic Storm, and the letter Q.
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  Telyn GanBryndir
Member Since:
4/30/2004
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| Soooo...what *can't* you do on Facebook?Charles Williams is brilliant. I just finished "The Greater Trumps" (the first of many readings, I hope), and amidst all the lovely chewy things he had to say, two in particular stood out to me this time around.
1. His treatment of Love. Sybil, one of the main characters, is a nice little old spinster aunt who has a much better grasp of the natural and supernatural than most of the others around her, solely because she has learned to shove her self, with its sin and confusion, out of the way. Instead she allows Love to fill her and flow out from her, not only toward the people you'd think she should love, but toward all the people that Love loves--that is, everyone. She couldn't have done that if she was in the way. It was a beautiful example not only of how Christians should think and act and speak, but of how they should be. Sybil had "risen to adore the mystery of Love," and in so doing made herself a clean, empty vessel for the Divine. It reminded me of what Lewis said somewhere (one of my pals told me it might have been in Till We Have Faces), that when we empty ourselves of ourselves we become most truly ourselves.
I like to think of mirrors. The cleaner and emptier we are, the more clearly Christ is reflected, from thousands upon thousands of angles. This doesn't get rid of our personality--it enhances it and makes it more perfectly itself.
2. One sentence: "Nothing is certain, but everything is safe."
Our lives are in good hands.
(3) Oh yeah, hands, that was the other thing...Williams mentioned them a lot. It was pretty cool.
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Facebook ate me.
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In upcoming posts, I will attempt to mention
a) Florida/Disneyworld
b) Kayaking
c) New Mexico
d) The effect of napkin hats on the unwary populace.
Me: *with the Pi sleeping in my lap* But I don't want to eat over Jeremiah's head!
Thomas: *sleepily from front seat* Well, there's nothing I can DO about that...
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| Week 6 LifeThis term I'm basically writing four papers, and they're all due this week and next week. This means that I have to make my mind wrap around
a) Beer commercials in the 50s (actually that paper is done, muahaha). My thesis is that the advent of beer commercials brought about the shift in alcohol consumption from a family setting to a social setting. It was more fun than I thought it would be.
b) 1 Corinthians 11. My theology paper is going to attempt connecting the "because of the angels" passage to the Nephilim as sons of God in Genesis 6, Christ's descent into Hades in 1 Peter 3 (I think), Greek mythology, pagan temple worship, angels, demons, and possibly Merlin.
c) The Beatles as a museum display. It's not technically a paper, but I do have to write museumish things on it, so it counts.
d) Aquinas' view on the sacraments as presented in that section of his Summa. There are twelve articles to work through there, so that'll take a while.
And while I'm at it, I have to finish my short story for Mr. Jones this week.
And read several hundred pages of history and theology, memorize twenty Greek verbs and be able to bounce around in the tenses with them, pass the calculus quiz on Friday, and participate in a dance recital on Saturday.
I'm not complaining. This is going to be fun.
Oh, the wonderful thing about Tiggers, is Tigger's a wonderful thing...
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| Post-EasterThere is a little yellow pipe-cleaner peep sitting on the library desk. His name, as proclaimed by his paper hat, is Aquinas.
Homeric.
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| I'm alive.And I'm not sure what I think of this new private page on xanga thing. It looks too much like facebook for comfort.
Surprises are wonderful. I like giving them. The anticipation beforehand, the exhilarating underhanded sneakiness, the moment of revelation and then the shrieks of a) joy, or b) horror.
Yes, I've been shoved in a closet before. Why do you ask?
I've been thinking about the points of the compass. There are things associated with each of them, throughout basically every story I've ever read (including Scripture), that makes me think there's something significant about them. I'm not sure what it would be yet, but I'm working on it.
For example: Scripture associates the West with homecoming. The tabernacle in the wilderness was patterned after the Garden of Eden, and as you proceeded layer by layer through the parts of the tabernacle you were traveling from east to west toward the holy of holies--back to a type of the garden. You were going homeward. Tolkien picked up on this a bit too, having the hobbits' home in the west and having them travel first in an exodus, toward the east (which, by the way, was an evil place), and then go home to the west. Gondor's men were descended from Numenor, a lost island in the West. In Narnia, the lamppost and the door back to our world stood in the west.
The East is more confusing, because Lewis contradicts things. It's been a little while now since I was finding all this stuff in the Bible, but from what I vaguely remember, the Scriptural east had evil connotations. I'm going to have to go back and look again before I can remember why. But I *think* it does. And Tolkien's east was Mordor, Ye Evil Place of Doom. But Lewis' utter East was Aslan's land, which is definitely not evil; so I'm not sure what to think about that.
The South I haven't looked at as closely, but from what I can tell so far, it's got mostly a pagan sort of connotation. The Calormenes, the Haradrim, the Egyptians. A sort of deserty desolate heathenish feel. I can't be more specific than that.
The North is fuzzy too (you can tell I've thought about the West way more than the others). I can't think of anything associated with it in Scripture, but I'm sure there's something. Lewis had Narnia in the north, and Northernness in general was a big deal for him. It was his bolt of lightning from the sky, so to speak. When it's the end and everyone in the story is in heaven, they keep going "further up and further in." Further north, is what I'm assuming is involved there. And I haven't brushed up on my Tolkien enough to know what on earth was going on in the north for him; I've just got random memories of Silmarils and fleeing Elves. Perhaps some more enlightened person can shed light on the subject. ;)
All of which is to say, I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I think there must be something to talk about. Are these stories imitating Scripture on purpose, or is this idea
something that's been ingrained into the mindset of Western culture?
And in either case, if all this really does have the significance I
think it does, what does it even mean to be labeled as "Western
Culture?" There are no coincidences.
*blink*
*back to Greek*
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| SgabeddyHoooooome, home on the raaaaaaaaaange...
I'm home! And it's warm! And my family is here! And I'm sleeping in my own room with my own books again!
And I've slept in till noon for the last three days.
*hugs everyone*
Jeremiah: *turning to me randomly in the car* Helen! Be a Plutonian sgabeddy-eater!
Thomas: *while we are playing basketball* Hey hey watch this...*attempts an impossibly fancy shot* *misses spectacularly*...hah! See? That was amazing!
Claire: Ethan called me a white girl today. A little piece of my soul died.
I love these people.
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