Things about Jon Steffens:


also, the first to solve the riddle I last posted, deserving kudos.
accomplice, Operation Foggy Window
new computer, crazy CFD
"something nice"
wore a dress at the Women's Appreciation Dinner
good at integration
reserves things, no complaints
brother

These days, seems like the bad thing to do, turn back.

Didn't work out so well for Orpheus, or Lot's wife.  Interesting that it's the women who 'die' in both stories.

Cortez burned his ships so his men couldn't turn back.  Victory or Death.

Patrick Henry.



But I think there is a difference between looking and turning.  Reflection seems important, necessary if we are not to learn, to not simply repeat the same mistakes in endless circles of misery.

So, the true calling of "Burn the ships!" -- for me the true lesson of Orpheus is not to forget the past entirely, but to commit to a course of action.  Commit wholeheartedly to a course of action which is right, even though it may be risky.  It may cost everything.

"...any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple."

Am I, with Jim Elliot, willing to risk what I cannot keep to gain what I cannot lose?

burn the ships
no turning back

we tend to glorify the past with our memory.  grandma's cherry pie is never quite as good as you remember it being when you were little.

history becomes legend, legend becomes myth, and myth is marred by truth.  Was Arthur so great? his knights so noble?

the grass may seem greener in the picture of the past, but past has no meaning if not for now.  and now, existing, the now is eternal more than past and future can ever be.

"In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time – for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays."  ~Screwtape

and in the end, please conclude that I must have no idea what I'm talking about.