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
Monday, January 21, 2008
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Augustine College, Semester 2, week 1
Hey all,
Well I'm not sure how long this might last, but I thought i might attempt to follow in the footsteps of my roommate Jenny who keeps a blog of what we're learning here at school. While hers is comprehensive and insightful, mine will not be, but I think it might be good, if for no other reason, for me to briefly review what i've learned during the week.
Monday: Latin at 8:30, not 7 hours after I got home from the airport. It was a little rough, I'll be honest. He said "Today I'm going to do the translating" and then proceeded to pepper us with questions....
In philosophy class we talked about Augustine's On Grace and Free Will, which was quite interesting and we even manage to stay away from a heated debate and hurt feelings among the classmates from varied backgrounds. We thought about the exact moment when a man turns from bad to good (in the action itself, or in the intention to do the action, or when the man sees that the good action is good....?) and whether this is initiated by man or by God. We'll finish talking about this work next class, and start to cover Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, which we read over the week and is very dense and reminiscent of Aristotle (not surprising since his whole goal was to synthesize Christian and Aristotelian thought).
I made chick pea/ hot italian sausage/ jalepeno/ tomato/ carrot soup and I've been eating it all week! :)
Tuesday: Art, where we talked not about art, but about seeking truth and using reason and how Christians are often so suspicious of reason but how really it will not fail you; its not your reason that is limited its just that we often lack reason...
Then in Sci/Med/Faith with Dr. Patrick, we talked about
a) the sermon on the mount- rejoicing under persecution and being salt of the earth. He has this thing that the sequence in the beatitudes is a character sequence, and that at any point in the sermon on the mount if you can't handle what Jesus is saying you have to go back to the beginning, 'blessed are the meek', back to humility, and start all over again.
b)the first scientific revolution. we talked about Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. we also have an assignment on William Harvey and John Ray for next class.
c)sexuality and the benefits of natural family planning over contraception (one of his favourite topics)
After community dinner we had our first book club of the semester, which will now be led my Emily (our RA). We're reading CS Lewis' The Four Loves which I'm excited for. I found out that most of my class had never smelled sweet peas before! (he talks about them in the first chapter) so I'm resolved to send them as gifts at some point, if possible...
Wednesday: Latin again, this time it was better because it was a little fresher in our minds, we'd spent tons of time over the last two days on our homework, and Prof. Blaedow spent a good 10 minutes telling us a story about Cicero tearing down this guy names Catiline in defence of the Republic. The quiz was pretty hard though, he sprung a new type of question on us...
In music class we talked about Bach and Handel, compared them, and listened to music for the coronation of George II.
Thursday: Literature class was spent talking about the allegories he was handing back, intro-ing the next part of Paradise lost, wrapping up loose ends about the romantics, and introducing George McDonald's Lilith, which we are reading this week (i'm a little over half-way through it). Oh and we also talked about Dicken's A Christmas Carol, which we did before the break. so it was a pretty intense class.
In the afternoon we had scriptures class, we're talking about re-creation and I'm not gonna lie, it seemed pretty random and hard to follow to me (and to my classmates as well) but I took lots of notes and hopefully someday I'll look back on them and get more out of them... Just tonight I read Homilies by Chrysostom and Augustine on Romans 8, we'll talk about that next class which should be more interesting.
Chapel was good, we sang the first noel and we three kings because father Hayman holds that they're actually epiphany songs :)
On Thursday evening I went to the young adults group at the Met Church, it was really fun, especially since Jasmine and Kendra came along with Peter, Ben, and I. (that's one third of our school haha). They're doing a series on love there as well so we'll be talking about it lots in the next few weeks. I decided to go to the winter retreat with them next weekend; its at the tim hortons camp and promises to be lots of fun, and I should be able to work hard this week to not have a lot of homework on the weekend.
Friday we had Sci/Med/Faith with Dr. Metelski, he talked about Copernicus and got more into the physics and astronomy side of things than Dr. Patrick had. Then over lunch we discussed the phrase 'True Christian' and whether it should be used and whether such a thing exists and how it would be defined (we have a discussion over lunch every Friday- its called Disputatio et panis salubris) and then in Trivium we looked at fallacies with Dr. Tingley, such as false dilemma, non sequitur, begging the question, hasty generalization, and 'no true scotsman' (don't ask).
After all this, all the girls got together for some biscotti with brie and cranberries and nachos with homemade salsa supplied by Kendra's generous family (yum!) except for Kendra herself who went home for the weekend and Rosie who rushed to Toronto because her friend had had a baby that afternoon! I went and bought the book I needed for literature, read, did Latin...
Today I've done more latin and more reading of various things, but I also went walking in the gorgeous warm sunlight and exchanged a couple Christmas gifts that didn't fit. Whilst writing this, I'm listening to CBC's tribute concert to Oscar Peterson. I'm a little sad that they're doing more talking than playing music, but I guess it would probably be more meaningful if I was listening closer. Its quite sad that he has died, but he certainly was an amazing musician... Its time for bed though the church service starts at 9:15 and I wanted to get a few more things read tonight!
love,
Starr
Well I'm not sure how long this might last, but I thought i might attempt to follow in the footsteps of my roommate Jenny who keeps a blog of what we're learning here at school. While hers is comprehensive and insightful, mine will not be, but I think it might be good, if for no other reason, for me to briefly review what i've learned during the week.
Monday: Latin at 8:30, not 7 hours after I got home from the airport. It was a little rough, I'll be honest. He said "Today I'm going to do the translating" and then proceeded to pepper us with questions....
In philosophy class we talked about Augustine's On Grace and Free Will, which was quite interesting and we even manage to stay away from a heated debate and hurt feelings among the classmates from varied backgrounds. We thought about the exact moment when a man turns from bad to good (in the action itself, or in the intention to do the action, or when the man sees that the good action is good....?) and whether this is initiated by man or by God. We'll finish talking about this work next class, and start to cover Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, which we read over the week and is very dense and reminiscent of Aristotle (not surprising since his whole goal was to synthesize Christian and Aristotelian thought).
I made chick pea/ hot italian sausage/ jalepeno/ tomato/ carrot soup and I've been eating it all week! :)
Tuesday: Art, where we talked not about art, but about seeking truth and using reason and how Christians are often so suspicious of reason but how really it will not fail you; its not your reason that is limited its just that we often lack reason...
Then in Sci/Med/Faith with Dr. Patrick, we talked about
a) the sermon on the mount- rejoicing under persecution and being salt of the earth. He has this thing that the sequence in the beatitudes is a character sequence, and that at any point in the sermon on the mount if you can't handle what Jesus is saying you have to go back to the beginning, 'blessed are the meek', back to humility, and start all over again.
b)the first scientific revolution. we talked about Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. we also have an assignment on William Harvey and John Ray for next class.
c)sexuality and the benefits of natural family planning over contraception (one of his favourite topics)
After community dinner we had our first book club of the semester, which will now be led my Emily (our RA). We're reading CS Lewis' The Four Loves which I'm excited for. I found out that most of my class had never smelled sweet peas before! (he talks about them in the first chapter) so I'm resolved to send them as gifts at some point, if possible...
Wednesday: Latin again, this time it was better because it was a little fresher in our minds, we'd spent tons of time over the last two days on our homework, and Prof. Blaedow spent a good 10 minutes telling us a story about Cicero tearing down this guy names Catiline in defence of the Republic. The quiz was pretty hard though, he sprung a new type of question on us...
In music class we talked about Bach and Handel, compared them, and listened to music for the coronation of George II.
Thursday: Literature class was spent talking about the allegories he was handing back, intro-ing the next part of Paradise lost, wrapping up loose ends about the romantics, and introducing George McDonald's Lilith, which we are reading this week (i'm a little over half-way through it). Oh and we also talked about Dicken's A Christmas Carol, which we did before the break. so it was a pretty intense class.
In the afternoon we had scriptures class, we're talking about re-creation and I'm not gonna lie, it seemed pretty random and hard to follow to me (and to my classmates as well) but I took lots of notes and hopefully someday I'll look back on them and get more out of them... Just tonight I read Homilies by Chrysostom and Augustine on Romans 8, we'll talk about that next class which should be more interesting.
Chapel was good, we sang the first noel and we three kings because father Hayman holds that they're actually epiphany songs :)
On Thursday evening I went to the young adults group at the Met Church, it was really fun, especially since Jasmine and Kendra came along with Peter, Ben, and I. (that's one third of our school haha). They're doing a series on love there as well so we'll be talking about it lots in the next few weeks. I decided to go to the winter retreat with them next weekend; its at the tim hortons camp and promises to be lots of fun, and I should be able to work hard this week to not have a lot of homework on the weekend.
Friday we had Sci/Med/Faith with Dr. Metelski, he talked about Copernicus and got more into the physics and astronomy side of things than Dr. Patrick had. Then over lunch we discussed the phrase 'True Christian' and whether it should be used and whether such a thing exists and how it would be defined (we have a discussion over lunch every Friday- its called Disputatio et panis salubris) and then in Trivium we looked at fallacies with Dr. Tingley, such as false dilemma, non sequitur, begging the question, hasty generalization, and 'no true scotsman' (don't ask).
After all this, all the girls got together for some biscotti with brie and cranberries and nachos with homemade salsa supplied by Kendra's generous family (yum!) except for Kendra herself who went home for the weekend and Rosie who rushed to Toronto because her friend had had a baby that afternoon! I went and bought the book I needed for literature, read, did Latin...
Today I've done more latin and more reading of various things, but I also went walking in the gorgeous warm sunlight and exchanged a couple Christmas gifts that didn't fit. Whilst writing this, I'm listening to CBC's tribute concert to Oscar Peterson. I'm a little sad that they're doing more talking than playing music, but I guess it would probably be more meaningful if I was listening closer. Its quite sad that he has died, but he certainly was an amazing musician... Its time for bed though the church service starts at 9:15 and I wanted to get a few more things read tonight!
love,
Starr
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Home Again, Home Again!
Hey Everyone,
well we returned home safely on April 18th, and after a week of rest I'm feeling a bit more ready to start thinking about things like work, next fall etc. Its good to be home, but I am definitely missing all the fun times in Europe, too!
I've put a whole bunch of pictures up on a different internet site, so if you have facebook you can go see them or you can just click on these links:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1928&l=7e3c9&id=511844214
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1927&l=78c78&id=511844214
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1923&l=b2dfa&id=511844214
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1922&l=525d0&id=511844214
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1921&l=9a304&id=511844214
I'm not sure whether I'll put any more updates on this blog or not, the posts may slow down a bit until my next overseas trip!
God Bless,
Starr
well we returned home safely on April 18th, and after a week of rest I'm feeling a bit more ready to start thinking about things like work, next fall etc. Its good to be home, but I am definitely missing all the fun times in Europe, too!
I've put a whole bunch of pictures up on a different internet site, so if you have facebook you can go see them or you can just click on these links:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1928&l=7e3c9&id=511844214
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1927&l=78c78&id=511844214
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1923&l=b2dfa&id=511844214
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1922&l=525d0&id=511844214
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1921&l=9a304&id=511844214
I'm not sure whether I'll put any more updates on this blog or not, the posts may slow down a bit until my next overseas trip!
God Bless,
Starr
Monday, April 16, 2007
Stuttgart
Hello! Wow- only a couple of days left here in Europe! Craaaaazy. We got here to Stuttgart on Thursday, and we´re staying with Sarah Weiler who went to Capernwray with the girls. She went to classes on Friday and we three went with another guy from Capernwray, Patrick, for a hike through the woods and up to a castle called Solitude schloss. The weather here has been soooooo amayingly beautiful, I can't even believe it! Yesterday we finally got smart and actually put on some sunscreen, to keep from getting sunburnt yet again. Anyway, we went to a town called Tübingen for the weekend, a beautiful old town with a river running through it, on which we went for a paddle boat ride. We found the most beautiful chocolate shop, a little french place- wow everything in there was amazingly beautiful and interesting, like chocolate with Curry and Peppers in it? Too bad it was too expensive for us to buy any to try. We went to Sarah's parents' home for the rest of the weekend, which was so good. They are a very beautiful family, so generous and kind and welcoming. We were well fed too! :) We got to meet some of Sarah's friends, and yesterday went to church with her and saw about 10 people get baptized which was cool. Now we're back in Stuttgart, and today we plan on doing a little shopping at a chocolate factory where it is apparently very cheap! hahaha. We'll also probably do a little sightseeing, and go out for supper, and have a relaxing girls' night here at Sarah's. We're having so much fun here, but sadly tomorrow we'll head to Frankfurt for our last night in Europe! If you guys haven't looked at the pictures on Sheri's blog, you should do so, I don't have quite enough time to put any of my own on yet. I have thousands of pictures to sort through when I get home!
Love love love love
Starr
Love love love love
Starr
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Back In Munich!
Hey everyone! So our time in Interlaken, Switzerland was pretty much incredible! The weather was BEAUTIFUL (I got another sunburn-oops!) and we did some super fun stuff such as kayaking and PARAGLIDING. We jumped off a mountain and flew through the air. We have pictures to prove it, which is good because I´m still somewhat in unbelief myself! Last night we had a campfire and it was all homey and BCish, what with the mountains, the lake, the birds chirping, night falling, the fire crackling. This morning we caught a bus at 6 in the morning, and took a train back here to Munich, just for one night. Its a really nice city, and I think that we´re planning on going to the Dachau concentration camp tomorrow before heading off to Stuttgard. Ahhhh one week left! Hope everyone is having fun studying for exams! (okay sorry that was kinda mean) I´ll eat some chocolate and think of you ;)
love love love
Starr
love love love
Starr
Thursday, April 5, 2007
München
Hello, I'm in Munich! Hope you're all doing well, I kinda wish I could be home for Easter. Hopefully we can find some sort of a church to go to on Sunday? We'll go to Vienna on Saturday.... Life is fantastic!
:)
Starr
:)
Starr
Monday, April 2, 2007
Prague
Hey Everyone! So I realize I haven't posted a blog in a while..... just thought i'd tell everyone that we're all alive and well, and lovin' life. We're heading to Munich in just a couple of hours (night train) where we'll be staying with some friends of Stephanie's. From there we plan on hitting Vienna and then goign back to Germany for the last leg of our trip! Ahh!!! Prague is where we are at the moment, and its a very beautiful city. All of the buildins- wow! We spent 3 days there, and pretty much just wandered the streets the whole time. The weather has been beautiful, and time is flying! I'm always thinking of everyone at home, I'll get to see you soon!
xoxox
Starr
xoxox
Starr
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