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Reege_Lafai
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Country: United States
State: Minnesota
Metro: St. Paul
Birthday: 9/16/1984
Gender: Female
Interests: Jesus, Church, Missions, Family, Art, Writing, Music, Unicycling, Scherenschnitte, Origami, and Pottery.
Expertise: Art, Writing, Music, Unicycling, Scherenschnitte, Origami, and Pottery.
Occupation: Computer related (Internet)
Industry: Nonprofit
Message: message me
Yahoo:  smilerjg
Member Since:
5/9/2005
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| After taking an in-depth study of Tolkien through my class, I was given a set of "The Letters of C.S. Lewis" from Joni as well as "The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien". I'm so excited to read them. As I come across interesting facts, I thought I'd post them here. Sorry if they bore anyone who's not interested in these two authors. They'll be short and mostly just what I've discovered of interest while reading their works, what I learned from class, and while reading their letters.
I'm currently taking a linguistics course. It's a ton of fun! I've always been interested in Linguistics, particularly historical linguistics but I never knew it. I had a lot of questions in my mind about languages but I didn't know there were other people who sought to answer them and study them and that it was called linguistics. Anyways, if I could do things over again, I think I would've double majored in English and Linguistics.
With the tools I've been learning, I can look at Russian words and figure out the parts of speech and even make my own sentences without ever having learned the language before. It's amazing! :) At the end of this course I'm hoping to write a paper (not required) about my understanding of linguistics and the Tower of Babel. Not sure what thesis I'll discuss yet though.
Tolkien tidbit for the day: Tolkien wrote the Hobbit while in the trenches of World War I. As opposed to war making him more mature and sad, he said that experiencing war actually heightened his taste for fairy stories and fantasy.
C.S. Lewis tidbit: When he was a little boy, he had a dog named Jacksie who was run over. From that point on he insisted on being called Jacksie and wouldn't answer to his real name, Clive. Eventually he compromised and allowed people to call him Jack, and it stuck with him for the rest of his life. | | |
| This is what I got to do all day Friday:
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| Why I love and hate literature classesWhy I love them:
1. They force me to get out of bed in the morning.
2. Without them, I would have no knowledge of most of the great and marginal works of literature in the English language.
3. There's no where else I can find a group of people so willing to discuss what has been read, and to do so with enthusiasm, interest, and fear of the teacher knocking of participation points.
4. I get to collect other people's views and expand how I see a literary work.
5. The teachers are almost always passionate about what they teach when it is on literature.
Why I hate them:
1. Teachers and class discussions leave out a lot of what I think are the most important things to discuss about literature pieces, which is 'what did the author really intend to say and how does that apply to our lives? How does it make a difference to us?' I'm always being told to answer the 'so what' question in my papers. It would be nice if they did that in class.
"One of the minor rewards of conversion (to Christianity) is to be able to see at last the real point of all the old literature which we are brought up to read with the point left out!" - C.S. Lewis in a letter to Mary Neylan, 1941
2. It's so sad to see an author or a work which has a lot of value be cut to pieces by popular ideas or because they are seen in a different light than yesterday.
3. There's always two or three people in the class, the teacher is usually one of them, that talk so wonderfully and knowledgeably about the text that it doesn't make sense to anyone at all.
4. The discussion always comes around at some point in time to the conclusion that every work and author has a hidden gay agenda up his or her sleeve and that it's important to talk about it. At least once a semester, I hear that Shakespeare was gay.
5. Having to sit in one chair, one position the whole time usually means my mind gets stuck in one position. Recently I had a teacher who took us all to another room in the middle of class and had us do watercolor while we talked and read. It was amazing. No one was bored and the discussion was lively and colorful. Maybe I should ask the teacher if I can stand during class...or lie down...or ride my unicycle. | | |
| I finished up last semester and now it's off to summer classes and off to my Aunt's house. I moved in yesterday and it'll be a good summer living there. I'm especially looking forward to looking after my new little cousin, Maddy. She is so beautiful. This summer I scored with two really good classes: Tolkien: Medieval or Modern? and Introduction to Linguistics.
Even though I've missed being in class already these two weeks, all I want to do is just run with nothing on my back, no backpack, no purse, to a wide field of grass and let it hold me up as I lay down, facing the sun. To just soak up the fact that there's nothing to do, no where else to be, nothing to carry or take care of and just listen to nothingness...maybe the wind or birds chirping in the sun. And then maybe after an hour have friends join me for frisbee and a barbeque. | | |
| At the Hot Spot againRemember me writing about a drunk guy at the Hot Spot, Eddy? Well, there are actually 4 guys who are homeless who come in often to get warm or get a cup of coffee.
This past weekend one of them accepted the Lord as his Savior! He also got a lot of ministering to and was delivered of a lot of spiritual strongholds. It was awesome. Now when he comes in, he is more coherent drunk than he used to be sober. Apparently this guy used to get into random fights with the wall and talk to himself and get enraged when you talked about Vietnam near him. But now he's normal, coherent, and is opening up about his family and his experiences in Vietnam. Praise the Lord! He's such a sweet guy too. His name is Charlie.
Continue to pray for him. There are 3 other homeless guys that he hangs out with. What if he were to change so much that they saw it and he shared the gospel with them? It would be awesome. Also, this guy knows people all over Dinkytown that we don't. What if he shared the gospel when he went on his daily rounds to ask for money? What if people who knew him as a drunkard, annoyance and hopeless case saw that he was changed and the Lord was with him? The Lord just continues to work His will in Dinkytown. It's great. | | |
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