contramundumsdg's Xanga

Mountain Aires: Echo the Legacy -- Now Available!

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 23:38:21 GMT

It's fast. It's mournful. The style is old as the hills; the artists are brand new. It's the Mountain Aires' debut record, Echo the Legacy. And now you can hear cascading hammered dulcimer tones and lively fiddling combine with hard-driving banjo and guitar and sparkling mandolin to create our own unique echo of the traditional music of Appalachia and Brittania.

The Mountain Aires are a band of several young men from North Carolina with musical talents, common goals, and a focused purpose to glorify God with our music. It has been an amazing experience to work on this album, playing mandolin alongside some of the best friends I've ever had, all excellent, creative, and dedicated musicians. I'd love for you to share in this music. Our CD is now available for you to purchase. Comment on this post with contact information if you'd like a hard copy. Or, if you'd prefer to download the music, you can do so on Digstation at http://www.digstation.com/ArtistAlbums.aspx?artistname=MountainAires.

Enjoy! And may this CD, like all things, be Soli Deo Gloria, to the Glory of God Alone.

Election carnage in perspective

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 13:13:13 GMT

http://www.kingsmeadow.com/blogger.html

In the aftermath of yesterday's elections, Dr. Grant gives a valuable perspective on the relative historical insignificance of politics and the immense, world-changing importance of ordinary life in families, communities, and churches. While the change of power from one party to another deserves our care, attention, and worldview-based activism (it will certainly affect us, and perhaps our children), what matters most is the covenantal faithfulness of Christians in the midst of an insane, rebellious world. A covenantal Christian's multi-generational perspective reaches far beyond the machinations of party politics; our God is one who is faithful to a thousand generations of those who love him, long after the greatest power shifts of our time resolve into a faint mark on the canvas of His providence.

"If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land." 2 Chron. 7:14

Please read Dr. Grant's blog entry for today.

Mountain Aires

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 19:04:17 GMT

Hey y'all!

The North Carolina State Fair ended on Sunday. Last Tuesday, my accoustic traditional music band, the Mountain Aires, competed in the folk festival at the fair. Just yesterday, it was announced that we won first place among the under 26-crowd, and second in the adult cateogry. Praise the Lord!

Anticipation is mounting for the release of our first album within the next few months.

I hope to return to more regular blog posting soon. In the meantime, I thought y'all might like to celebrate this with us .

Some Pictures (more to come)

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 17:14:20 GMT

Hey everyone! Pictures have been long in coming; more will follow. I still have not blogged about Greek-in-a-Week, which I attended in Lancaster, PA, last week. Mr. Callihan, Heidi Abraham, and I stayed with the Odell family, meeting some other Scholars as well during the week. I will post a more thorough summary later. For now, look at these photos:

The Power went out at the Odells' during a big wind/rain/thunderstorm on Tuesday night.

The Orioles beat the Athletics Monday night, as we looked on from the first-base-line upper-deck of Camden Yards. This was a beautiful sunset scene -- ah, the art of the baseball diamond. (I'm wearing the orange shirt and green hat)

Jane's Cafe, where I ate lunch every day during Greek-in-a-Week

John Schwandt, Greek professor at NSA and my Greek-In-A-Week teacher

My fellow-students

PS (read below first)

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 16:06:31 GMT

New York Skyline

PS This morning (Sunday), we had the great privilege of attending church with our host & hostess and their children at a URC church plant in lower Manhattan. It was an amazing blessing to be in a city so far from our own, and really in a culture much different from our own in many ways, but to realize that the Body of Christ knows no cultural or geographical boundaries. We had awesome communal worship, and celebrated the Lord's Supper with the congregation. In contrast to the impersonal, gargantuan city, our time with a hospitable covenant family and a faithful church was a breath of fresh air and a reminder of the things that are really important in life -- God, our salvation, and the things to which he has called us in our families, churches, and covenant communities.
Now on to Lancaster and GIAW!

The City Saga

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 23:37:50 GMT

I have experienced that momma of all cities, that metropolitan megalopolis, that enormous enigma, that big apple popularly known as New York City. It is difficult to express the mix of emotions, the inundation of my senses, and the boggling of my mind that has altered my perspective on life today. We’ve walked the streets and parks, toured the sites and a museum, goggled at the towers and lights, eaten the pretzels, encountered the police, and survived the near-death experience that is public transportation. Incidentally, if you want all the details (which I think are interesting but you may think tedious) read on; I’ve attempted to make them as interesting and informative as possible. If you are the action-novel and war-movie-only type person, then skim the body of the post and skip to my Staten Island Ferry saga, near the end.

I’m currently traveling with my family to Greek in a Week class in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Since we live in the South, we figured it would be a good idea to swing by and visit some old friends who have moved up here to N.Y., see the city, and go to church with them before heading back down to PA. Our trip here is perhaps best described by what I wrote down on a piece of scratch paper last night when I couldn’t close my eyes for sleep after seeing the Manhattan skyline all lit up for the first time.

12:20 [A]M – W NY, NJ

[Our hosts’] 3-story town house.

Arrived just before midnight. Left Raleigh ~9am. DC->Baltimore->PA easy. Wrong turn to Philly. First Yankee interaction. Crazy NJ Turnpike interchanges/traffic. Everything is huge and lit up. When we finally arrived off 495 on the [Hoboken/Weehawken] exit, the skyline took my breath away. Unimaginably immense. Like Raleigh, 3 times as high, laid end to end 2 3 4 dozen times. Beautiful, frightening – Literally, Breathtaking.

{Marginal Notes: “Gas Station Line on NJ Turnpike” – quite an experience. “Vast, but remember what Solomon said Re-temple. Babel.” I was thinking of when he said “Heaven and earth cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built?”}

Other side of paper

Townhouse: Picturesque and just like books and movies @ old big cities. Very nice and well-furnished. NYC housing isn’t slums [at least this part, which is very nice…. Today I saw a couple of the areas the big-city slum stereotype comes from]. I’ll never forget looking out a side window on my way down to bed to see if there were any view. Seeing nothing, I wondered if there were blinds – it was the siding of another dwelling, 5-6 ft away.

Driving – crazy black car honked crazily as we slowed to wait for our street. [ok, so my style was pretty bad in a dark room that late at night ] Zoomed around ASAP. Left turn – cars zipping around fast.

Wow. Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Where to begin? We had one day to tour the entire city (we got a surprising amount in, too, believe it or not). Our experience today could be classified by mode of transportation. All told, we used at least 5: Ferry, Bus, Foot, Subway, and Taxi.

My family took the ferry from the New Jersey side of the Hudson River directly into Manhattan this morning. From the water we could see the Empire State building and the rest of the skyline, along with cruise ships from around the world. We got off the boat and took a free shuttle bus to the middle of mid-town. Having escaped from the bus adventure with all four limbs, we walked to our host’s law office building, past the Rockefeller center, and on up towards Central Park (stopping every once in a while to stare wide-eyed upwards at the colossal buildings above). Stores were everywhere. There was a store for every kind of necessity, luxury, entertainment, eccentricity, and, incidentally, every vice. As we approached the park, the landscape changed dramatically, but traffic ran almost as thick as ever. It still seemed like everyone who wasn’t touring like us had something to sell, or something to say, or something to do, from art peddlers to pretzel-hawkers to Democratic National Committee campaigners. But in the park the concrete and asphalt vanished, giving way to lush gardens, luxuriant grasses, old, gnarled, mighty trees, wet pools… and cool random playgrounds and zoos. Then, about halfway up Fifth Avenue along the east side of the park, we reached the highlight of our visit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

We spent three hours in the museum and felt we did it a grave injustice. It was an artistic feast of color, form, and ideas. The old Minoan and Mycenaean vases and coins and the Greco-Roman mythological sculpture were great. The Medieval tapestries, stonework, and stained glass and the arms and armor exhibit were fascinating. The Hudson River School collection was breathtaking. But the European late Renaissance and Impressionistic paintings were an unforgettable treasure chest. You read about artists and see copies and prints of their paintings in books and office buildings and colleges; but it’s not every day that you see the original works. It was truly astonishing to realize that these were the actual canvases on which Van Gogh and Rembrandt created their self-portraits; that Vermere’s actual brush created the magnificent serene lines of these very young ladies with their water pitcher and pearl earring; that this is the water lily scene and the French bridge, with all Monet’s gorgeous textures in clear relief. Renoir, Manet, Cassat, and … I won’t try to complete the list because I’ll leave several out.

Well, we walked back to Rockefeller Center and Times Square in record time, anxious to see Lower Manhattan before dark/dinner-time. We lunched on an authentic NYC pretzel (rather late), and passed through the Broadway theater district on our way to Times Square. Times Square was … Times Square. I’m glad to be able to say I’ve been there now, but it wasn’t all that interesting, and much of what claimed to be interesting claimed to be so for very wrong reasons. It was definitely a culture shock – I’ve never seen so many bright lights and such huMONgus advertisements.

From there we took the subway down to lower Manhattan. Or I should say we took two subways and a shuttle to lower Manhattan, because to our dismay the sub to Battery Park area was experiencing construction and so we got rerouted. But we made it. My dad commented that it was just like any other subway he’d been on, except that, unlike in Atlanta, men didn’t get up and offer their seats to ladies who had to stand. On the bus we crossed Wall Street, and made it to the Staten Island Ferry station. There I had a run-in with the NYPD.

There’s this ferry, see. And it’s fixing to leave. And there are these big glass sliding doors, and they’re closed. I go up to the doors, and think, “Zach, maybe they’re closed for a reason.” So I see these two security guards nearby; I go up to them and ask, “Is there any way to get on that ferry?” One replies something like, “Sure, you can jump on. If you can jump on, go ahead.” Now, understand that in the South, or at least in North Carolina, if someone tells you to “jump in/on” or “hop in/on” a form of transportation (be it car, truck, or four-wheeler), it means, “Yeah, go right ahead. Get on and go.” I think, “oh, good, we’re in time.” I go over to said big glass sliding doors, and begin to slide one open, as sliding doors are wont to do. Then every officer in Long Island rushed me. Okay, I exaggerate. What really happened was that a security officer from the other side of said big glass sliding door ran up, stuck his head out the opening I had made, and hollered (or yelled, rather), “Whadeeya thaeenk yoo ah? Wooayse gwuaay?” (translated, What do you think you are? A wise guy?). The officer who had just told me to jump on looked at me sarcastically. (Have you ever had a New Yorker look at you sarcastically?) Only then did I realize that he had been facetious in telling me to literally, not figuratively, “jump” onto the ferry – it was just about to leave the dock.

Well, we ended up staying on Long Island, but we did clearly see the majestic Statue of Liberty and the old Ellis Island immigration center from across the water. We strolled through Battery Park, and observed Ground Zero from the Winter Garden World Financial Center complex building (just adjacent to the former World Trade Center site). After a confusing battle with traffic, crosswalks, and phantom ferry-shuttle-busses, we finally gave up trying to get a free ride back to our ferry and hailed a taxi. (I’d never hailed a cab before, much less in NYC.) That ride was the dénouement. Quite an adventure. I gotta give it to the New York drivers, though, especially the taxicabs. They look like they’re crazy, zipping across the lanes, slamming on brakes, tooting the horns, swerving around traffic, but really they know what they’re doing. He was a good, if slightly adventurous, driver. I’m just glad they don’t drive like that where I come from.

Incidentally, I was unfair to the sarcastic-looking security officer. Despite all the stereotypes of the New Yorker that we get here in the South, I don’t think they are any truer than the myth that all Southerners are ignorant “rednecks.” The stereotypes definitely are grounded in common tendencies of certain people (we did indeed meet our share of irritable and blunt folks, just as there really are real people with dangerously high suspension on their beat-up trucks in North Carolina), but in reality the people were one of the highlights of the trip. At least three or four times a friendly New Yorker would see us gazing blankly at our complex map and looking bleary-eyed at the unfamiliar landscape, and would say something like, “You guys need some help?” They were smiling, patient, and cordial. And then there were the languages. You couldn’t walk far without hearing someone speaking a different foreign language. We must have heard a dozen or so distinct accents just among the English speakers. One man read a Chinese newspaper at Starbucks.

Some closing thoughts: The population was sharply divided between those who laughed and wore happy faces and those who dejectedly lay on benches, slumped through the subway tunnels, and sat on the sidewalks. I think the latter were the more honest of the two types of people. I was reminded of when Danny Kay as Phil tells Bing Crosby as Bob in White Christmas, “You’re a lonely, miserable, unhappy man…. [or else] You’re happy for the wrong reasons, which is the same as being lonely, miserable, and unhappy, only it’s worse.” More appropriately, I’m reminded of Solomon’s words about the vanity of this life, the Savior’s promise that the poor in spirit are blessed, and His command to seek His kingdom first, because this world is not our home. In so many ways, New York City is a wonderful testimony to man’s creativity and love of beauty and life and joy, as the image of his Creator; but in many ways, it is just another Babel, just another Sodom. In the hustle, bustle, and materialism of the City, it seems everyone is gleefully ignorant of anything beyond the tops of the skyscrapers; perhaps it’s easier to think higher thoughts when tall buildings don’t put a roof on them. I still love the land, the country, the South, the wide open spaces of agrarian culture. But I have learned so much from this cross-cultural experience; my life has been changed, and I pray that that change will point me more accurately toward the truth about God and my place in this great big world He has put me in.

"Whoever is not affected by these promises is either a stone or a brute." -Thomas Watson

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 23:41:45 GMT

Some excellent quotes from the puritan Thomas Watson's The Godly Man's Picture, ch. 6-9

First, one for us bloggers: "Do not think that it is enough to be intelligent and discursive. A man may discourse of religion to the admiration of others, yet not feel the sweetness of those things in his own soul."

"It is the highest act of reason for a man to become another man. If while, he remains in nature's soil, he is poisoned with sin -- no more actually fit for communion with God than a toad is fit to be made an angel -- then it is very consonant with reason that he should strive for a change."

"Were there no excellence in holiness, the hypocrite would never try to paint it."

"Time misspent is not time lived but time lost. Time is a precious commodity."

"Self-love is self-hatred. The man who cannot get beyond himself will never get to heaven."

"Oh, what a shame it is that the wicked should be fixed in evil and we unfixed in good, that they should be more constant in the devil's service than we are in Christ's!"

"Whoever is not affected by these promises is either a stone or a brute."

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Sat, 08 Jul 2006 22:02:00 GMT

Summer Travel
Last weekend we had a refreshing visit with my father's family in southeastern North Carolina. My dad grew up farming in Whiteville (or more appropriately in Old Dock, which is on the outskirts of Whiteville, which is somewhere in the vicinity of Wilmington). My childhood has been full of his often-repeated tales of "growing up" in the rural fields and backroads of a agricultural community where neighbors were nearly all kin and most people's livelihood was hogs and crops. Our life now is very different; my dad went to a big university, met my mom (a city girl ), and we've lived mostly in large towns or cities all my life. But I still love to visit the place where an important part of my heritage lies. It's not just that my Scottish blood (Millican and McRay clans) comes from there. It's not just the lure of the best collards, field peas and snaps, fried spots, ham, pear cake, lemon pie, sweet tea, grits, fresh fruits and vegetables, and boiled peanuts you will ever put in your mouth. It's the simplicity of life; the close-knit ties of family love (for all seven thousand fifth cousins and great great aunts and uncles); the dawn-to-dusk hard-times work ethic; the close attachment to land and place; the fervent prayers and service of my faithful grandparents; the sights and sounds of wide fields and yelping deer hounds. I'm not saying it's utopia; I could list many disadvantages to different aspects of this way of life. Despite its many weaknesses, there is much for me to learn from this counter-culture that is in my blood, if not in my immediate surroundings.

One quick story: last weekend I learned a legend about my French heritage. My grandmother's maiden name was Formyduval, and I was always just slightly ashamed of having a French name in the family. But no longer! The legend I heard was that Jean Formyduval, our ancestor, was supposedly a doctor at the time of the French Revolution. His wife was known by the title of "princess" (I don't know if she was part of the king's family, though). Knowing that two men had been falsely accused of treason, Jean Formyduval pronounced them dead to save their lives after it had been arranged to fake their executions. Unfortunately, one of the men was recaptured later, and Jean had to flee the country with his family, emigrating briefly to the Caribbean, then landing at Southport, NC, and migrating inland to the Wacamaw River. Pretty cool story.

Happy Belated Independence Day
Two Chesterton quotes (moment of silence for the great Gilbert K.....)
"The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. America is alone in having begun her national career with a definite explanation of what she intended to be."
"The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man."

I recently received a packet from College Board containing a copy of the SAT test I took in April. I was rereading some of the reading comp. essays, and one reclaimed my aghast attention as the author explicitly discounted the recognition of Divine mandate and call for justice in the Declaration of Independence as unrealistic idealism. Nothing could be farther from the truth. But don't let me get started (in this post at least) on the foibles (i.e. brainwashing tactics) of modern education establishments.

Salvete, Y'all

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 19:37:23 GMT

Originally a blogspotter, I am now joining the ranks of the Schola ring! You can see my blogspot at www.contramundumsdg.blogspot.com. I joined here to receive feeback on my entries from other scholars and to take part in the long-distance e-friendships y'all are building here. More entries will be forthcoming.

The site is rather simple at the moment ... consider it under construction . To introduce myself, here is my first entry from my previous blog:

Welcome to Contra Mundum, the official web log of Neo-Athanasius. This digital diary is a portal into my daily cogitations and musings, readings and experiences, on topics as divergent as Bach, Bede, and the Braves.

Athanasius was the great Alexandrian church father of the fourth century AD who, in the face of the spread of Arian heresy across Christendom, argued heroically for the Deity of Jesus Christ, pioneered theological and cultural reform, and led the church through one of it's times of greatest peril. At times he stood alone in a mob of falsehood, but he claimed that if the world was against him, he would stand on the Lord's side "Contra Mundum," Against the World. In 325 he was vindicated beyond doubt by the council of Nicea.

Johann Sebastian Bach was the great Baroque composer whose choral, orchestral, and keyboard music has influenced every composer and style period since. On each piece of music that he wrote, he inscribed "SDG," Soli Deo Gloria, To the Glory of God Alone.

Now that you know the origin of this blog's URL, I hope that you have some idea of the nature of the blogger. Through this blog I will share many thoughts that will not conform to the pattern of this world, but by God's grace will reflect a transformed, renewed mind's quest for truth. And that is the most exciting quest of all.