"The Way" (V)

Fight against the softness that makes you lazy and careless in your spiritual life. Remember that it might well be the beginning of tepidity… and, in the words of the Scripture, God will vomit out the lukewarm.

I already know that you avoid mortal sins. You want to be saved! But you are not worried about that constant and deliberate falling into venial sins, even though in each case you feel God’s call to conquer yourself.

What little love for God you have when you give in without a fight because it’s not a grave sin!

There is no excuse for those who could be scholars and are not.

Study. Obedience. Non multa, sed multum—not many things, but well.

May your virtue not be noisy.

Dissipation. You slake your senses and faculties at whatever puddle you meet on the way. And then you experience the results: unsettled purpose, scattered attention, deadened will, aroused concupiscence. Subject yourself again seriously to a plan that will make you lead a Christian life. Otherwise you’ll never do anything worthwhile.

The nom serviam—“I will not serve”—of Satan has been too fruitful. Don’t you feel the generous impulse to say every day, with desires for prayer and deeds, a serviam—“I will serve you, I will be faithful!”—surpassing in fruitfulness that cry of rebellion?

How pathetic: a “man of God” who has fallen away! But how much more pathetic: a “man of God” who is lukewarm and worldly!

Jesus is your friend—the friend—with a human heart, like yours, with most loving eyes that wept for Lazarus. And as much as he loved Lazarus, he loves you…

Live by love and you will conquer always—even when you are defeated—in the [battles] of your interior life.

Timor Domini sanctus—“The fear of the Lord is holy.” This fear is a son’s veneration for his Father—never a servile fear. For God, your Father, is not a tyrant.

“Environment is such an influence,” you’ve told me. And I have had to answer: No doubt. That’s why you have to be formed in such a way that you can carry your own environment about with you in a natural manner, and so give your own tone to the society in which you live. And  then, when you’ve acquired this spirit, I’m sure you’ll tell me with all the amazement of the early disciples as they contemplated the first fruits of the miracles performed by their hands in Christ’s name. “How great is our influence on our environment!”

on historical fiction

Over the past several months I've mentioned my interest in writing an historical narrative taking place in colonial America. The idea has been fomenting in my mind for quite some time, and I've been filling one of my journals with ideas, notes, scripts, trying to piece it together and figure out exactly what I'm wanting to accomplish. The itch to write fiction has been burning inside me, and the longer I go without penning a story, the more the itch... well, the more it itches. The idea I've been playing with takes place predominantly around Boston in 1775, focusing mostly on the battle(s) of Lexington & Concord, the first days of the Siege of Boston, and the Battle of Bunker Hill (the epilogue being none other than Washington coming to take command). If it goes well, I'd like to continue the story throughout the rest of the American War for Independence (it'd take about six 300-page books, at the least!). 

I'm focusing on major and minor characters in the book, all except one taken straight out of history. Thomas Gage and John Pitcairn on the British side; and Paul Revere, Joseph Warren, Israel Putnam, and John Parker on the colonial side. The fictional character is a fellow by the name of Elijah Clark, and if the story goes on after I finish the first book (if I finish the first book; I have a lot on my plate right now), I'd like him to be a consistent character, with different characters taking center stage depending on the theater. I've chosen not to make George Washington a main character, not only because he's not really involved in anything concurrent with Boston in 1775 until after the Battle of Bunker Hill, but also because he's somewhat overplayed. I'm thinking of patterning Elijah Clark after aspects of my own person; I think having him in love with a faraway woman (perhaps in Charles Town) would be fitting, and I could work with that a lot if I continue the books into the Southern Theater (and Charles Town would figure prominently in Book Two with Sullivan's Island). 

As far as narrative style goes, I don't want to write anything long-winded. That's a real struggle for me. I want a swift-moving story, lots of plot developments and action. I've been reading great historical novelists such as Shelby Foote and Jeff Shaara to see how their style works, and I've been looking at Cormac McCarthy's style in Blood Meridian and the way Allan Eckert so expertly weaves historical information with rapid-fire plot development. All of these are writers to be envied, and I'm not above taking lessons from them. 

[sunday meditations]

1 PETER 1.17

And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile…

Both Jews and Christians taught that God is impartial; that is, he gives to each person as that person deserves without showing any favoritism. The crucial nature of this doctrine is evident in that St. Paul uses it in Romans 2 in his argument about God’s faithfulness. Peter’s mentioning of it here serves as a rhetorical device: of course the Christians call on him as Father the God who judges people impartially. Because of their affirmation in the “yes,” they are then exhorted to conduct themselves with fear throughout the time of their exile. If they were to say, “No, we don’t call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds,” then they would, in a sense, be exempt from St. Peter’s command. Yet before we start building doctrine from this, we must remember that it’s a rhetorical device: St. Peter’s wording isn’t meant to erect a belief system in which calling on different gods exempts a person from the duty to fear the true and living God. St. Peter is merely using this rhetorical device to gain traction with his readers and to locate their thinking and living in the framework of their worship of the God who judges people impartially.

Because Christians are the ones who call upon him as Father the one who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, they—and we—are to conduct ourselves with fear. This language of “fear”, specifically fearing God, can be misleading. A brief look at any dictionary will tell you that fear denotes a negative emotion in conjunction with feeling threatened by danger. Fear has, in our society, become coupled with crippling anxiety. Thus when we speak of fearing God, we invoke images of cowering before him in terror, crippled before him with impenetrable dread. Christians who exalt a flawed perception of God as an Angry Tyrant who relishes punishing the wicked, perhaps quoting like scripture Jonathan Edwards’ infamous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” don’t do much to help reorient our understanding of the phrase. The God who demands our fear isn’t some pissed-off, brutal, sadistic tyrant but one whose greatest disposition towards his world, and especially towards his fallen image-bearing creatures, is not anger but love, manifested chiefly in Jesus: God emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave (as St. Paul says in Philippians 2), and he did what only God could do, standing in for the world and dying on a cross. Indeed, the nature of God’s disposition towards us is seen most vibrantly (and brutally) as we gaze upon Jesus’ face as he hangs upon the cross.

One fears that which he perceives to be a threat; perception is tied to feeling. In the same way, though what it means to fear an axe murderer and to fear God are holistically different, both flow from perception. Our perception of the axe murderer as someone who may hunt us down through an abandoned cow-slaughtering factory instills fear within us. And when we perceive God as he is, the response is certainly fear, but not a fear of the same caliber. When we perceive God in the face of Jesus, and when we meditate upon all that he has done (both pre-cross and post-cross), the response ought to be reverential awe and wonder.

This lies closer to the heart at what St. Peter is saying. Fearing God means being in reverence and awe before him. It’s an aspect of the mind which works itself out in life; thus conducting oneself in fear before God means living in reverence and awe before him. The same kind of language was used in the ancient Roman Empire to speak of fearing the Emperor: living in reverence and awe before him, a reverence and awe which resulted in a life of obedience and honoring him. In the same way, fearing God, an element of the mind, fleshes itself out in actual living as we live in obedience and for his honor and glory.

This life of reverence and awe, manifested in obedience, is to be the Christian’s mode-of-living in the midst of exile. The exile St. Peter speaks of is an eschatological exile, the period between Easter and Consummation, the period in which we move and breathe and have our being. Our behavior in the present, in the midst of exile, is to be marked by obedience before God, living in such a way that we honor him daily in all that we do, putting before us always the Christian hope, being prepared to launch into our inheritance and doing so with self-control in both mind and deed. 

from Blue Ash

This past week has gone by in a blur, a side effect of working so much that you lose count of the actual hours (by the time I leave Blue Ash tonight, I'll have worked eighteen hours today alone; so I guess I didn't lose count of that one). Part of me feels as if I've become bored with this blog, but I'm not sure if that's because (a) I'm actually bored with this blog or (b) I just don't have the time to sit and hammer out blog posts.

I almost added (c) I don't have anything new to write about. In a sense that's true. But just because something isn't "new" doesn't mean it's noteworthy. I could write about musings of colonial America, finally selling off my Celica and registering Jessie's old car under my name and with new license plates, and I could write about how I was able to hang out with Ams three times this week (and tomorrow, too!), how I got to hang out with Mandy H., and how I ran into Hot Sauce Waugh while taking one of my clients to Frisch's breakfast buffet (and incidentally taking myself there as well). I could write about my ever-increasing love for Amanda Lynn and how with each passing day I yearn more and more to be by her side in Wisconsin. I could write about the toothless old man roaming the parking lot outside The Anchor, how he barged into the diner clutching a mounted deer's head and screaming at customers to give him money, or I could write about the emaciated chicks shooting up heroin in the diner's bathrooms and how you should never walk barefoot anywhere on this side of the river. I could write about the numerous storms that have pounded down on the city every night, and how my windows don't shut and so the thunder's loud in my ears and how sometimes the Hobbit Hole shakes. I could write about my colonial nights with oil lanterns and wax candles and reading books on the American Revolution or the history of interpreting Revelation.

BAM. There's a fun one. Tangent time! I have been studying Revelation a lot lately (or, rather, the history of its interpretation and how the major interpretations deal with the text). A brief synopsis: We simply don't know precisely how early Christians interpreted St. John's apocalyptic work. Several ancient commentaries were written, but none of these have survived (I would love to get my hands on one of those). We do have evidence that at least some Christians saw Revelation as a prophecy regarding the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and the church's subsequent triumph over the pagan nation of Rome. The four major contemporary interpretations--called historicism, preterism, futurism, and spiritualistic--provide a fascinating tale of reactionary evolutionism. The historicist interpretation identifies the Antichrist as the Papacy and the Revelation a prophecy of church history up beyond the French Revolution to present day. The Reformers advocated this interpretation, and the social and political current of this interpretation's rise tend to make me somewhat skeptical. The Roman Catholic Church responded by heavily advocating a preterist approach, the idea that Revelation is primarily focused with events that have already happened, namely the destruction of Jerusalem and the church's victory over Rome; this meant that the Papacy was not the Antichrist, and advancing preterism made sense, since historically it's been an interpretation since the days of the early church. The Catholic Church also responded with the approach of futurism, an approach that makes the Antichrist a specific (future) individual (and thus not the Papacy). Interestingly enough, futurism is the predominant interpretation of Revelation held by protestants, and this interpretation undergirds much of evangelical protestantism's obsession with the End Times and the 7-Year-Tribulation and things of that nature. I still place myself in the preterist camp, and this "synopsis" isn't meant to advocate anything but to simply serve as "food for thought."

#facesonthefarm

#becauseIhavenothingtowriteabout, #thisishowIroll, #whydoesmandydateme

[books i've been reading]

I finished this 600-page narrative on the French and Indian War in less time than it took me to read a 250-page history on the same subject. Reviews of Eckert's The Dark and Bloody River spoke of how his other books were far better, and though I didn't believe it could be possible (since I loved that book so much), those reviews have been spot-on ("solid," one might say). Eckert weaves an amazing story of the French and Indian War, focusing mostly on the events leading up to it (I found his retelling of the Celeron Expedition down the Ohio River to be downright fascinating), and then covering the war's major battles through the lens of the native Americans involved. What I appreciate most about Eckert's writing is his "Amplification Notes." As with any historical events, eyewitness testimonies often differ in details; Eckert, writing a narrative history, takes one of the accounts and builds his story off it, giving credence to the other accounts through the amplification notes at the end of the book. This means he's able to choose readings of the events that fit to the story he's wanting to tell, without sacrificing historicity. 

Next up in my reading queue are two books on the American Revolution, and then it's back to Eckert with his follow-up to Wilderness Empire, his novel The Conquerors, which focuses on "Pontiac's Rebellion" in the eclipse of the French and Indian War (I'm interested to see how he interprets the events, since there are two major streams of interpretation when it comes to Pontiac's War, one being that he orchestrated the whole thing, and the other that Pontiac dealt chiefly with Fort Detroit and other Indians followed suit on their own incentives).

#fossilhunters

#trilobitesFTW, #ordovicianorbust, #tuesdayshenanigans