Week 2, semester 2, 2008

I'm sitting in my living room listening to a yellowcard cd I got from the library. Tonight I'm tired, but I had a faily productive day, after Latin class I read this week's assigned reading from the Summa Theologicae (Aquinas), and also the chapter on friendship from the four loves, which we'll discuss tomorrow at book club. After class I did my Latin homework, read this week's section of Paradise Lost and the short story for lit. class on Thursday: "Life in the Iron Mills" by Rebecca Harding Davis. It was quite sad, but I guess that's to be expected from a story set during the industrial revoution. There's a lot going on in it, lots of statements about gender and class situations and God, and it really puts you into the shoes of the poor worker.

Latin class has been full of pronouns and perfect, pluperfect, future perfect tenses, but also of stories about Cicero, Etruscans, and how Professor Blaedow suggested the name Thunder Bay University for the new uni. when that city's name was still Port Arthur, because he unearthed an interesting old native legend about 'thunder bay'. They scoffed at him and called it Lakehead University, he went on to work elsewhere, and then a few years later found out that they had renamed the whole city Thunder Bay! This man is amazing.

We finished talking about Augustine last week in philosophy, and moved on to Aquinas. They seem to be of the same point of view on a lot of things, except that Augustine is more of a Platonist and Aquinas is a huge Aristotle fan, always referring to him simply as 'the philosopher'. Aquinas' Summa is super organized, he looks at every question from every possible angle, and he lists all the objections to his opinion and then refutes them and gives another author who supports his view. I definitely don't understand everything he's saying, but he's all about man fulfilling his nature by using all the parts of his soul correctly: The passions (simple and emergency, or 'concupiscible and irascible' as he calls them, and the intellect (practical, or the will, and speculative, which knows for the sake of knowing. We read some Schaeffer, who doesn't think Aquinas saw the fall as complete. He thinks that Aquinas put too much stock in the human intellect and only saw our wills as fallen. Tingley doesn't see that so much in Aquinas. He thinks that to use our reason less than it has potential to be used is to throw God's gift to us back in his face...

Last week in Literature we talked about Lilith, the novel by George McDonald. It is so strange, and its weird because he sees it as his most important work, like it has all this important in it which God has shown him (either he put it very cryptically or it is a Christianity unlike any other I've ever seen). He was a Scottish clergyman (Anglican i think), but only worked as a priest for like 2 years, after that he mostly just wrote. The thing that completely rocked the boat for me is that he is a free-will theist, meaning that he thinks everyone will eventually be redeemed (after time in hell, for those who are non-christians in this life). He thinks that the final victory would never really be won if there were to always be souls suffering in hell. I don't think I agree with this at all, there is just way too much Scripture that seems to contradict it. But then I really don't know anything about the ideas or opinions involved...

What else? We did some copernicus and kepler in science class, astronomy stuff. Talked about the Renaissance and humanism in Art. Went through the entire Messiah in music, John Chrysostom's homilies on Romans 8 and on Baptism in Scriptures. And in trivium we listened to a talk by Janet Smith called "contraception: why not?" She advocated natural family planning (which is apparently actually really effective if you do it right now that they know so much about how it all works) and I have to say she has a pretty convincing argument. I'm kinda glad I dont' have to think about decisions like that yet, I have enough on my plate as it is! :)

most of my classmates have been busy applying for colleges, and in the case of my roommates, scholarships for their med school which will resume in May/July. I plan on phoning the UofS this week to make sure I don't have to completely re-apply, I'm 99% sure i don't have to. So far I've been feeling fairly at peace about the prospect to going back to my science degree next year, although i still have no clue as to where it should lead me. I'm realizing that if I want to be a doctor it has to be a very clear and persistent calling, otherwise I'm setting myself up for misery. Do I feel that? Well the persistent part is definitely missing right now, and John Patrick always paints a fairly bleak picture of what the medical world is like... I seem to change my perspective on it every couple of months.

This weekend I went on a retreat with the Metropolitan Bible Church young adults group. We went to the Tim Horton's camp in Quebec, it was really beautiful and the weather was great on Saturday which was a blessing since it has been frigid yesterday and today. We played games and sang a lot of worship songs and listened to a speaker talk about the biblical metanarrative. I can't say i really learned a lot but I was challenged to think about what the real world is like and remember that having a bunch of intellectual head knowledge won't do much if its not engrained into your heart. Augustine is such an amazingly great place to learn and question and be envouraged, but it is a bubble. When everyone was talking about how great the weekend was and how much they learned, I realized I'm at an 8 month spiritual retreat. Which is great for growth, but will be hard to leave. Anyway I met lots of people and had a good time, I'm glad I went for sure.

This week promises to be busy, I still have tons of reading to do. My roomates will be leaving for a retreat with another church this weekend (St. Alban's, the one we actually attend on Sunday). So i should be able to have a productive weekend even if its a bit lonely. We're hosting an Indian Food night on Wednesday, Jenny's been cooking up a storm for like 2 weeks so i'm excited :)

Must get to bed, I want to get groceries before class tomorrow...

Love,
Starr