Seder Supper and Easter Services.

Happy Easter!!!

The sun is shining brightly today, and even though it's cold the bright light is warm and encouraging. Susan and I just got in from church, where we got to enjoy the lovely Easter liturgy of the Anglican tradition. We did, I must admit, sneak out during the last hymn because the choir that usually only sings in the 11 o' clock service had stepped in to sing the Halleluia Chorus for us 9:15ers. Now I have heard this choir before, and let's just say it was less than angelic? Their hearts are in the right place, but they really do butcher the music. So what would Handel have done? Susan gave me the option of sneaking out to avoid hearing the massacre and I accepted... if they practiced hard and ended up delivering a wonderful and perfectly in-tune performance, well I guess I'll never know. Anyhow, the service was good and very joyful.

Another great part about my Holy Week was the seder supper Susan and I attended on Thursday evening. (Jenny is in Texas this week). I'd never even heard of this before this year, but the seder is the Jewish Passover meal, like what Jesus and the disciples shared in the Last Supper. The Christian Passocer Seder is to remember the Pasover meal Jesus had with his disciples and to retell the story of how God rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and to remember how God in his mercy passed over the Israelits' homes in Egypt and saved the Israelite children.

So its starts with the women lighting the candles on the table ('the festival lights'- symbolizing the coming of the Messiah, the Light of the World)

The women pray (of the mother would be the one doing this if it was done in a home):

"Blessed are you, O Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has set us apart by His Word, and in whose name we light the festival lights."

There are four cups/toasts of the Passover. The first is the "Kiddush" (Sanctification) where the feast is blessed and the words of Luke 22:17-18 are read: "take this and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes."

Next is the "Urehatz" (washing), where you wash your hands in a bowl on the table to remember how Jesus washed his disciples' feet at the last supper. (I think sometimes there is actual footwashing involved).

Then everyone eats the "Karpas" together, which is a green herb (we used parsley). It represents life. But you dip it in salt water before eating it to remember that life in Egypt for the children of Israel was a life of pain, suffering, and tears. "Blessed are you, O Lord, Our God, King of the Universe, Creator of the Fruits of the Earth."

Next is the "Magid", the Recital of the passover story. A child asks questions and parents answer the questions:

"why is this night different form all other nights?" (the parents answer with the story of the exodus and the plagues- then everyone eats the Matzah, the unleavened bread)

Why are there bitter herbs on the table?" (life was bitter and hard for the Israelites)

"Why is there something sweet as well?" (this is the Charoseth, a fruit and nut kind of relish. It reminds us of the mortar the Egyptians used in slavery under pharaoh, but is sweet to remind us of the hope the Israelites had).

"Why is there a hard boiled egg of the table?" (Pharaoh hardened his heart towards God and his people)

"What is the bone for?" (the meaning of the paschal lamb for Jews and also to remember Christ the lamb of God)

Then you drink the second cup which is a cup of thanksgiving to God for His salvation: "This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood"

Next comes the meal. We ate lamb and potatoes and carrots and salad.

The Third cup is accompanied by a thanksgiving prayer. Everyone prays:
"We will bless the Lord,
From this time forth and forever.

The Lord is my strength and my song,

And he has become my Salvation.

The stone which the builders rejected

Has become the chief cornerstone..... etc."

The last cup is "Elijah's Cup". In the Jewish tradition there was an empty place left for Elijah and the door is left open for him to come in and announce the coming of the Messiah. But as Christians we know that Jesus is our messiah and he is here with us already, so the cup of Elijah is a sign of hope for salvation for everyone who doesn't know this.

"In Christ's death, there is life

In the shedding of blood,

There is atonement for sin.

In the coming of Jesus,

Our Passover is complete."

It was a lovely experience and I hope I get to do it again.
After the supper there was a Maundy Thursday communion service upstairs. Did you know that 'maundy' comes from the Latin 'mandatum' which basically translates into 'mandate'? So basically, its about the new commandment Jesus gave his disciples at the last supper: "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." (John 13:34). As the service ends and a hymn is sung, the all the decorations are taken down and the altar is stripped bare to symbolize how Christ was totally abandoned on the cross. The lights slowly go out and the service ends in darkness.

We didn't make it to any good Friday services, but we did watch the Passion of the Christ, which I hadn't seen before. Something in me doesn't like the idea of 'hollywood-izing' the Passion. And I was worried that just showing all the physical suffering of Christ would overshadow His spiritual suffering and fail to clearly show the reason for and effect of his death and resurrection. I have to say, though, although it was extremely hard to watch (or not watch, in some cases, I couldn't) I think it stayed Biblically accurate (within the Catholic tradition, anyway, there are apocryphal stories included) and with flashbacks and such really does connect the events with salvation. Of course we don't like to see the gruesome reality of what Jesus went through, but He did it for us and sometimes its good to get out of our comfortable sunshine-and-daisies kind of Christianity and realize how serious a thing our sins are and how high a price was paid (and is still paid) for them.

So today is Easter Sunday. Christ has risen!

"Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1-4)

Alleluia, Amen.

week 10?

This afternoon is wonderfully sunny and warm- such a nice change from last week! I've decided not to do any homework on Sundays, and I've discovered its an amazing thing to have a guilt-free day to rest and do non-school related things, even though I do enjoy my schoolwork (for the most part). They gave us palm crosses at church today, to celebrate palm sunday. This afternoon my goal is to back up my files only cds, since Susan's computer quit working this week and I figure I should take the hint. Susan and I plan on going to a Seder Supper on Thursday at St. Alban's church, a commemoration of the Last Supper that uses the Jewish Passover traditions with Christian readings. It should be really cool! Jenny is taking off for sunny Texas on Wednesday, spending Easter there and partying with her med. school classmates.

The birds have started to come back. I heard crows on the way to school on Friday, and there've been few times when that sound has come as a bigger relief.

I came down with a cold this week, but it wasn't too bad and its starting to go away. Yesterday and Friday night I managed to get a first draft of my Rembrandt paper written, so I'll finish that up tomorrow and get started on my Scriptures paper Tuesday.

We continued to talk about Kant in philosophy this week. His system managed to remove the threat to science caused by Hume but it posed a serious threat to metaphysics, and therefore to ethics. He based his ethics on duty, he talked about categorical and hypothetical imperatives, the former being things that are determined by duty. His ideas did bring in some positive things, like the idea of respect. We also started talking about John Stuart Mill who wrote about utilitarianism. Unlike Kant, his philosophy was based on empirical knowledge, we have to always keep the consequences of actions in mind. We'll do more on him tomorrow.

Tuesday was a Student for a Day, day. There were probably about 7 kids there, who of which have already applied and had interviews so it looks promising for enrollment next year; they always get most of their applications over the summer. We're up to the 18th Century in art class, so we talked about Rococo a little bit and then moved on to neo-classicism, the academies in Europe, and Jacques-Louis David in particular.

There wasn't much for new material in Dr. Patrick's class, I think he was catering more to the parent and student visitors than to us... anyway it was good to get a bit of review for once instead of pouring yet more new information into our heads.

Prof. Blaedow surprised us all in the quiz this week by giving us sentences to translate from a few weeks ago... I had to dig to the dregs of my memory to remember what the latin word for barber was!

We had a busy music class- Brahms, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Liszt! We listened to a ton of music, and my list for what we need to know for our listening exam has gotten ridiculously long! We got our midterms back, so we're definitely on the final stretch now!

We continued to talk about Frederick Bueckner in Lit. class, and for next week we get to read a couple of essays by Wendell Berry, which should be beautiful.

We talked about Calvin in Scriptures. Being made in the image of God, the Nature of the Soul, Original Sin, Regeneration and Free Will...

Dr. Metelski taught us calculus in science class- he has no idea that most people get completely lost when he does this kind of thing. He has the best intentions- he said several times that he doesn't expect us to be able to do any calculus, he just doesn't want us to have any fear of it. I don't mind the review, but I felt kinda bad for the girls who've never done any calculus at all....

We've begun to do rhetoric in Trivium class, which will be more specifically focused on apologetics. Some of us read out assignments we wrote giving reasons for why we are Christians, and we talked about the way non-christians would hear them and what problems they would see in it. Its really great and challenging to do this, and also good to be reminded that apologetics isn't about winning an argument, its something you do for the sake of the other person.

We just found out last night that we're supposed to have a big section of Martin Buber's "I and Thou" read for philosophy tomorrow, but since I'm not working today it'll have to wait till our break tomorrow. In the evening we plan on having an essay editing/green beverages party in honour of St. Patrick's day, our lack of funds to allow us to go out, and our paper due tuesday. I'm actually really enjoying the lack of topic sentences and endnotes/references in this blog post. I only have 5 more weeks with my classmates, which makes me really really sad, but I'm trying not to think about it. For now, we're just taking things one day at a time, learning lots, writing lots, reading lots, talking lots, and laughing lots. (and sneezing lots, at the moment)

Happy Holy Week,

Starr

snow on snow...

...on snow on snow on snow! It's been going since about 11 this morning, and shows no signs of stopping. There was also a little wind this afternoon, which is uncommon here, but not really a wind by prairie standards so it could be worse as far as blizzards go. Its actually kind of fun to walk in, provided you don't care about getting wet and being slow. We'd had 11.69 feet so far this winter. Think about how much snow that is. And they're forcasting another 50 cms with this storm. It's beautiful but... I've been catching myself daydream of tulips and crocuses.

Today I've been trying to do research for my art paper. I had a frustrating time, since we need at least one good primary source and no one seems to have written on the things I'd like to talk about. I think I've decided on Rembrandt and something to do with Protestant art... its just too bad that a lot of the scholarly articles on him are written in Dutch! I was at the U of O library... I'll try the public one tomorrow.

Speaking of art, we got to go to the national gallery for class this week- it was great! Time was a little short, of course, but we'll be heading back there next month so I'm excited. Dr. Tingley is totally in his element at the gallery, he worked there as a curator for a few years.

All this just hours after he lectured for 2.5+ hours on Immanuel Kant. I understand why people say "Kant changed my life". I haven't thought through it enough yet, but basically he developed his philosophy because he was disturbed by Hume's, who de-objectified ethics, causality, metaphysics, the self... He said all our ideas come from sensation and are justified by sensations. There can be no such thing as a moral argument because ethics is not rational- he gets rid of the because in 'good because'. He says ethics doesn't need to be rational, it can just rest on our feelings. Just as he got rid of the 'because' in morality he took the 'because' out of causality (which destroys causality completely) (Causality: the necessity that a thing that happens was brought about because of another thing.). There is no foundation for the belief in necessities in nature in this thinking, which is what disturbed Kand because it made SENSE, but it threatened to totally undermine Scientific thinking!
SO Kant said that there is objective reality but that we can have no idea of what exists apart from how we see in and eventually came up with the idea that instead of the mind conforming to reality, reality conforms to the mind. Space and time and truth are judgments, but all humans have the same framework of mind so we usually perceive the same world. Anyway I'll stop confusing everyone with my incomplete and probably incorrect philosophy synthesis...

The rest of the week was fine. In Science with Dr. Patrick we learned that in 1952 a guy names Toynbee in 'An Historian's view of Religion' made a list of indicators that a society is dying (from looking at all past cultures in history) :
-Schizm of the Soul (which leads to cultural suicide- no coherence)
-A growing sense of antinominalism (lack of respect for the law)
-Escapism (retreating into private lives)
-Drift yielding to inevitable determinism (fatalism)
-Guilt and self-loathing (no more repentance/ forgiveness)
-General promiscuity- intellectual as well as sexual

yeesh, our culture fits into all of those! But Dr. Patrick thinks that our generation can be hopeful and that a change is completely within reach- he's a big advocator of starting with the family.

We covered Schubert and Schumann and part of Brahms in music. PLUS we wrote our midterm (which went well, i think).

In Literature we talked about Godric (by Frederick Bueckner) which is a really really cool book- completely different from everything else we've read. It makes you squirmy in a few places- its about this guy who lives a totally ascetic lifestyle and everyone else thinks he's this great saint but he is the narrator and is totally aware of all his sins... I had to madly read it since I didn't have much time to do so, but there are definitely a lot of passages to re-read and meditate upon.

I'm still struggling with what to do for my Scripture paper. Ugh. We have no Latin homework this weekend, however, which is a blessing indeed, especially since my phil. assignment on utilitarianism took longer than I would have liked.

We had the Weston Lecture on Friday- Craig Gay from Regent College in Vancouver came and talked about Dialogue, how its being lost in today's culture, and how it is very important for us as humans. It was interesting!

My roommate just informed me that its time-change day, so we're losing an hour of sleep! :( i guess that means its time for bed. Our house may well be buried in the morning, so I'll need lots of energy to tunnel out!

xox
S

March Madness

Good Evening!



I just got in from snowboarding with Peter, Ben, and Stephen from my class. Harold, who has loaned us his van while he's away, will be getting back this week so it was now or never. There is a pretty decent hill only half an hour away and on saturday night the student 2 for 1 price is $11.50! So sweet. I was really tired but I perked up eventually and I'm really glad we went! My eyes aren't focusing very well though so this will be short.



It was actually kind of a crappy week. Nothing bad happened per se, which was why I was getting really frustrated with myself for feeling sad and irritable. I think the fresh air and excercise and lack of thought about school was definitely the best thing for me tonight.



Speaking of school, I haven't done an update for a while so here's an abbreviated version:







In philosophy we've covered Descartes, Pascal, and Hume. This week is Kant. Its super cool to be getting into modern philosophers!!! I wrote my paper on pascal and really enjoyed it. As research I read a book by Peter Kreeft called Christianity for Modern Pagans which was really good. Its basically just a heavily footnoted version of Pascal's Pensees. (I also used a paper by a local professor but I think it would only be good if you'd read the Pascal first).







We're up to 17th C catholic art in Art History (yes, I know we're slow!) and next week we're going to the national gallery for class which i'm so excited for!!! I'm also going to have to start writing that paper this week...hmmmm I don't know what to write it on. Maybe Dutch/Flemish school? Or maybe something about the High Renaissance. Raphael and Michelangelo et al are so huge that he kinda skipped over them quickly, I think since he knew we could learn about them on our own if we so wished. (this Picture is of the 'wheel of fortune'. Its more connected to philosophy, when we studied Machiavelli and such... but I think its really funny!

The Inspiration of St. Matthew. He had to repaint this, (you're looking at the second version) because the first one he did made Matthew look too homely and pitiful (the angel was pushing his hand and he had big gnarly feet- it offended the Church people)

Anyway, our science classes have been pretty good. People are doing presentations about evolutionary arguments and they've been doing a really good job so far. Mine will be on DNA, but later on in the semester. And Dr. Metelski lectured on Galileo and Newton this week... we're getting close to Einstein where things really will start to get interesting! :)



Latin is latin. I'm trying to not spend a ridiculous amount of time on it even though you easlily could if you wanted to know everything. Its just not worth it, especially since I can do fine with just a decent amount of work! haha.



We heard presentations this week in music class as well. Kendra talked about the French Revolution, Susan talked about Napoleon, and Stephen talked about the Industrial revolution. Prof. Warren said we needed historical background and he though it would be nice if he didn't have to teach it for once haha. THen he talked about the transition to the Romantic era from Classical and it was a super long lecture with no break and we hardly listened to any music but at the end of class he remembered that we have our midterm this coming wednesday and he had questions on there he hadn't lectured on yet so he quickly did so- basically handing us answers to two of the questions that will be on there! It was great.



Napoleon 'the schmuck'




We talked about G.K.Chesterton's THe Man Who Was Thursday again this week- such a great/weird book! Now I have to read Brueckner's Godric for this thursday...



GK Chesteron was a huge, huge man.

Scriptures was scriptures. we looked at Luther's introduction to the new testament.

'nuff said.


We began the official Rhetoric section in Trivium. He talked about why it is kind of a lost skill today and should be taught at school, and then we started watching a video called 'the Four Horsemen" of a conversation between four really well-known atheists: Dawkins, Hitchins, Dennet, and Harris. For next week we need to watch the first hour of it, because its important that we keep in mind what we sound like to non-christians when we're trying to say something about religion. Then we have to write a bit about something that is important to us, defending it. I think this section will be really awesome but its kinda hard to know how much work to put into it since its only a pass/fail class. I guess there's "always time for more homework at Augustine College" (that should be their motto. "Semper tempus mas homeworkus in Collegia Augustina est" if you want to Latinize it).

Here's the link to that Dawkins et al conversation:

http://richarddawkins.net/article,2025,THE-FOUR-HORSEMEN,Discussions-With-Richard-Dawkins-Episode-1-RDFRS

Okay that's enough about school. Since I took today off as my 'sabbath', I'll be hitting the library tomorrow after church, so lets hope for some productivity! There are about 5 books I need to read, 2 papers to edit, and 2 to write. yipee!!





peace and love


Starry

Toronto

Reading week was an overall sucess- for the first half I pretty much just immersed myself in work. I finished my music paper, did research and wrote the first draft of my philosophy paper (on Pascal and restlessness), and read our book for Book Club (Charles Williams' All Hallow's Eve-its creepy but i like it). Then on Thursday Jenny and I went to Toronto and stayed with our classmate Rosie and her family. It was much needed and so much fun!!! We went snowboarding, toured the city, went cross-country skiing, ate at a nice restaurant, did some karaoke, sauna-d, and overall just relaxed! I loved seeing the city- its really cool and although I would never want to live there forever, for a short time while you're young I can see how it would be really fun.

Anyway now we're back at the grindstone at school. Dr. Tingley extended the deadline for our philosophy paper but we have many other assignments right on its tail so I'm going to hand mine in on the original date, I think.

I've been doing research on George McDonald tonight, I hope to write something about him for my lit paper which i just found out is worth 60% of our mark!!! eek, scary. The rest of tonight will be spent trying to find something to write on for our Scriptures paper (which is only worth 40%...). I can hear Jenny whispering Augustine outloud, so I'm assuming she's trying to do the same thing!

Last night Ben and Martine and I went skating on the canal- the ice is completely done. It didn't help that it had been snowing all day and hadn't been cleared, but even the ice itself is super soft and it was painfully slow- glide time was about 1 second. :( too bad. But on the other hand, I am definitely ready for spring....anytime... seriously...

love,

S

week 5, semester 2

Wow, week 5 already! Its no wonder things are getting busy. Only one more week, however, until reading week! I'm hoping to use the time to finish up at least a couple papers and start on a couple more! Also, I'll be going to Toronto on Thursday with a few other classmates to stay at Rosie's house for the weekend. It's very exciting!

This week was yet again busy, but I've really been enjoying the work. We also had our Restless Hearts Cafe on Tuesday, where we all got up and contributed various little performances, and on Thursday I went to young adults' at the Met and got to hang out with people there. At the cafe Rosie and I sang a song called 'heal over' by KT Tunstall, and also the song Popular from the musical Wicked. (I sang it to my roommate Jenny, it was great fun and everyone seemed to enjoy it.) Our administrator Harold and his wife sang a hymn; Trevor gave us his long and alliterated ode to the Pun (of which he is undoubtedly king); Jenny and Susan and Jasmine did a skit where they performed neuro-analysis on Jasmine, a girl suffering from social rejection after 6 months at Augustine College; Rosie and her sister Michelle did a hip hop dance, and Michelle also performed a ballet piece she choreographed; three girls sang 'twas in the moon of wintertime; and Landon played us a couple songs with his guitar, ukelele, harmonica, and whistling ability. Dr. Patrick read us some stories, one was a comedic version of an anglican priest's sunday address that went off on a million tangents and has already provided our class with several phrases for inside jokes. Professor Blaedow read us a poem about the College which he wrote that was very good; Stephanie read us a story she wrote from Horatio's (from Hamlet) point of view; and all of the boys got up to do a rousing version of 'like someone in love', which they sing every morning at their house, apparently. Emily provided excellent biscotti and banana bread and fruit along with tea and coffee. All in all, it was a very successful and entertaining evening!

Now onto what I learned this week:

Latin- we had to translate a passage from Luke 2, which we'll correct tomorrow... it took forever and I'm sure I got most of it wrong, since it employed a lot of perfect passive and subjunctive verb tenses that we haven't learned yet...

Philosophy- We 'romped through' both Luther and Machiavelli. Its too bad we couldn't get into them too deeply because of the time constraints, but this week we've read Descartes and Pascal who are really interesting, so I'm happy to carry on. On Luther we talked mostly about Determinism and how he had a different ethics from Aristotle. His writings signified a big shift in our culture.
Machiavelli stresses virtu and fortuna: power and fortune. Basically, the individual is the ultimate social unit and power is the ultimate concern. He wants to call justice and abstraction and impossible to attain so it shouldn't even be tried for. Real, for him, does not include good and evil which are only in our imagining, thining, willing, or feeling. Rules are artificial, written by the winners, and there is nothing good or bad but thinking/be powerful makes it so. His advice is practical, but this doesn't make it true. He assumes there is no authority over him and makes the metaphysical assumption that there is no God. We talked in class about whether it is possible to avoid metaphysics by being purely factual.

Art- we carried on with Northern Renaissance art (1420-1550), looking especially at altarpieces and other religious art. Lots by Memling. We talked about the use of legends and their way of communicating. Heronimus Bosch is crazy weird and hilarious- I can't believe his 'garden of earthly delights' triptych was used for worship at church! The Ghent altarpiece by van Eyck is fascinating. As is the Isenheim Altarpiece by Grunewald- this is the piece Dr. Stewart, the former art teacher, gave us a little lecture on when we went to their house before Christmas. Anyway, its amazing how much art changed in just a hundred years!

Science- Talking about the Sermon on the mount, he talked about how chapter 6 starts to deal with our practice of the Faith. Since we can't control everything, we invariably make our objectives do-able by reducing things to a series of rituals. But Jesus sets the standards much higher. We talked about prayer, Jesus tells us to go into your room and shut the door to pray. Don't babble in prayer, and don't presume in prayer that God doesn't already know what you need. We won't understand how God takes care of us until we're in a situation where we cannot depend on ourselves in any way.

Then we went over more stuff on evolution, reviewing the week's chapters in Denton and learning how Darwin himself probably wouldn't have believed his theory if he'd been presented wth the scientific data we have today. He was committed to the idea that nature does not jump, and insisted that evolution would be a very gradual progression over a long period of time. More and more, we have seen that there have to have been at least some jumps...

Dr. Patrick also talked about a book called The Fourth Greak Awakening by Robert William Fogel, who says that "the future will be limited by spiritual resources" a.k.a. virtues. THis guy is an atheist, but he says that the deprivation of purpose is widespread, but that we are starting to go through a revival of these resources such as a strong family ethic, solidarity within families and communities, benevolence, work ethic, discipline, capacity to remain faithful to commitment and to resist temptations to hedonism, a desire for education, and self-esteem. We need to find these things from among the two extremes on either side of them (sounds like Aristotle!).

Music- we talked about Mozart and got to listen to a ton of music, including the Queen of the Night aria , some sonatas, some Eine Kleine Nacht Musik, and the Ave Verum Corpus.

Literature- Chesterton said that "man is comforted by paradoxes". I read his book "The Man who was Thursday" today, and it is indeed full of paradoxes- I can't wait to talk about in on Thursday. It's very allegorical and confusing but really well written and I hope professor Tucker can shed some light on it.
During class we talked about Lewis' Till We have Faces. How we have such an ability to delude ourselves and how being in the presence of God has a silencing effect on us. We talked a lot about the use of myths in stories like this- read from a book called The Narnian. Lewis says that the fairytale form of literature "permits or compels you to throw all the force of a book into what was done or said. It checks the expository demon in me".

Scriptures- we went over some more Aquinas. Talked about the importance of the resurrection, hope, two-fold death (separation from the soul and separation from God) and two-fold life (Life of nature and life of grace). Since Christ never went through the second death, and never needed the second life, by his bodily resurrection Christ is the cause of both the bodily and the spiritual resurrection in us.

Trivium- We did some more essay writing- looked at Matin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

Alright, that's the week in a nutshell. I wrote the first draft of my music essay on Friday but its going to need serious revision. Yesterday I did Latin and Science homework and today I've read Chesterton, we're goign to the 5:00 service at church tonight. Susan had organized a 'father-daughter tea' around the valentine's theme at church, so we helped out with that yesterday afternoon. It just keeps snowing, but today is very warm. I made my first purchase on eBay today: headphones, since mine are broken and I'm going crazy with only these tinny computer speakers! Tonight I'm goign to make french onion soup and rest up for another busy week ahead! I got to talk to Kristen on Friday night, who is in New Zealand, and I have to say I'm a little envious, but not as much as I would have been a couple months ago- I get really excited with being able to learn so much here!!!

love love love
Starr

Week 4, semester 2

This week we got a whole bunch of work piled on us:

Latin- i stem nouns of the third declension (yipee!) and also we translated the first few verses of John 1, which was cool.

Philsophy- we finished up with Aquinas. Talked about man's last end, love and hate, happiness and how to get it (how we can't get it from wealth, honours, fame, glory, power, bodily good, pleasure, or a good of the soul, or any created good, but only from seeing God, the "beatific vision". Then we talked about virtue and what part the soul has in being virtuous, in correcting sin and about the 7 deadly sins and 7 cardinal virtues.

Art- We started talked about the Northern Renaissance artists, mostly Jan van Eyck. We read from an essay by Erwin Panofsky, an art scholar who wrote about the 'levels of iconography', as in how to 'interpret' a work of art. It was pretty interesting, the focus is on not looking for the meaning and exact people shown in a painting right off the bat, but just to look at what you see without any guessing and to see what you can learn just by observing. The thing with him is that after he does all this observation of what the painting actually shows, he extrapolates and the 'last level of iconography' is "intrinsic meaning", where you can learn the philosophy of the artist himself. But we wondered if an artist's deepest goal is always just to portray his own outlook on life. Maybe the artist actually wanted to portray a universal truth, something about God. I think we often do look at a painting in hopes of figuring out exactly how the artist's mind worked, but that's not necessarily what the artist wanted, or what is the best thing to do.

Science with Dr. Patrick- we got our papers assigned, we have to write a dialogue where the pros and cons of evolution are discussed. Also, we each will do a ten minute presentation on something that relates to the theory of evolution- mine will be on DNA. So I started reading the parts of our textbook relating to that. Then we talked about how Darwinism has become an orthodoxy, a dogma, and how it eliminates teleology. An american Jewish bioethicist names Kass makes 4 points when talking about teleology and why we can't do without it:
-organisms are organized wholes (Dr. Patrick says the most important ideal for dealing with end and beginning of life issues is central organization)
-our parts have specific functions
-we behave on purpose
-we heal
So inductive reasoning has done very well but we shouldn't have thrown out teleology completely, we just need more sophisticated versions of it. (I'm not sure what he would suggest, exactly.) Within what God has created there is teleology evident everywhere. Even "Struggling for survival" is a teleological metaphor! And the fact that our world built on delayed gratification- that's teleological too.

Book Club- the chapter of the week was on Eros. It wasn't that earth-shattering, I liked the chapter on friendship much better, but that could be because I'm not madly in love with anyone. haha.

Music- the Classical era and Haydn, who we compared with Mozart although we'll talk more about Mozart later. Prof. Warren played us a few piano sonatas in the living room (it was fun- he's so good!) and we talked about sonata form. Then we listened to a bunch of Haydn's symphonies.

Literature- we had read the last chapter of Paradise Lost- so we talked about that. Some people have criticized the last two books, but I really liked them and thought they were well-written. Here are the very last lines of the epic:
In either hand the hastning Angel caught
Our lingring Parents, and to th' Eastern Gate
Led them direct, and down the Cliff as fast
To the subjected Plaine; then disappeer'd.
They looking back, all th' Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav'd over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng'd and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon;
The World was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.

We also started discussing Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis. I loved this book, I'm excited to talk more about it. There's always a lot of discussion around gender issues in our Lit. class, since Milton makes some pretty blood-curdling comments and there are a lot of things in Lewis that relate to it as well. I'm getting kind of tired of the discussion, frankly, because we never seem to get anywhere or talk about anything that is going to change my life.

Scriptures- we talked about Thomas Aquinas' Compendium again. Mostly stuff about original justice, the fall, and original sin and how Adam's sin affects us all, but his repentance could not. Then we talked about reasons for the incarnation:
- To Recall man to spiritual things from material things.
-To show the dignity of human nature- we're not just spiritual beings 'trapped in a physical world'. Christ didn't become an angel, he became a man and was lifted up above the angels.
-God showed his love so that men might serve him not out of fear but out of charity. The pagan relationship with the gods was one of fear.
-There is a possibility of the intellect and the spirit having unity. The incarnation is the completion of what God began.
-Man can be united to the First Cause . We have hope of that restored union, of Him completing his purposes in us.

Then we had chapel, and I went to the MET on Thursday night where we heard a presentation by people from Wycliffe Bible Translators- it was really well done and interesting, although a little long after sitting in class all day. They have a program where you can go to a village for two years that has no written language, learn the language, and help them develop 40 bible stories that tell the Gospel for them to have in their oral culture. This seems really interesting, although I wonder whether there might end up being problems with the stories changing and becoming untrue if they were never written down, but I guess these oral cultures are used to it...

In Trivium we've been learning about essay writing, I think it'll be really useful.

Yesterday we went to the Metelski's for dinner, it was really nice. Today after Church we went to Winterlude and looked at all the ice sculptures that have been entered into the competition- they are amazing! We also listened to the 'junkyard symphony'- some guys who put on a little show where they drum on trash cans and such (kind of STOMP style) whilst doing funny circus stunts (jugling and balancing and such) and bringing kids up to be a part of it and do silly things. It was really cute. The weather was gorgeous- actually too warm because the ice sculptures were starting to melt. Some heads and arms were falling off!

Okay I'm going to eat.

peace out.
S