The Medieval Mind

So for a little fun reading when I have a few minutes I’ve picked up A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance by William Manchester. I don’t know squat about medieval history and I thought a book by Manchester would be a nice place to start. Manchester is the author of the fabulous Last Lion series of biographies about Winston Churchill which I loved.

I thought I’d blog this passage as it’s a pretty mind bending point of view about what life was like for medievil peasants.

In the medieval mind there was also no awareness of time, which is even more difficult to grasp.

Inhabitants of the twentieth century are instinctively aware of past, present, and future. At any given moment most can quickly identify where they are on this temporal scale - the year, usually the date or day of the week, and frequently, by glancing at their wrists, the time of day.

Medieval men were rarely aware of which century they were living in. There was no reason they should have been. There are great differences between every day life in 1791 and 1991, but there were very few between 791 and 991. Life then revolved around passing of the seasons and such cyclical events as religious holidays, harvest time, and local fetes.

In all of Christendom there was no such thing as a watch, a clock, or apart from a copy of the Easter tables in the nearest church or monastery, anything resembling a calendar.

Generations succeeded one another in a meaningless, timeless blur. In the whole of Europe, which was the world as they knew it, very little happened. Popes, emperors, and kings died and were succeeded by new popes, emperors, and kings; wars were fought, spoils divided; communities suffered, then recovered from, natural disasters. But the impact on the masses was negligible.

This lockstep continued for a period of time roughly corresponding in length to the time between the Norman conquest of England, in 1066, an the end of the twentieth century

Wow.

A Scrap with a Prayer

I’m sorting through boxes of school files tonight searching for my notes on welfare state retrenchment and expansion.  I’ve happened along a lot of random pieces of paper that I’ve stored up over the four years of graduate school.

Among them is this prayer on an old torn piece of paper that was once a bulletin.  It’s so old and beat up it almost qualifies as an artifact, and in a way it is: it’s all the way back from my year in Chicago which seems so far away, so other worldly and other me-ly, that it’s strange to hold an object from that testifies to me that I did live there.

Anyway, I’ll probably keep the piece of paper but just in case didn’t want to lose the prayer so it’s typed out below.

Lord Jesus, help me to understand the weight You carried on that long road to Jerusalem.  How much destruction did You see beyond the rubble of the Jerusalem temple?  How many nations did You see beating their plows into swords and their pruning hooks into spears?  How many Stalins and Hitlers did You see gathering darkly on the political horizon?

How many genocides did You witness because there was no peace between nations?  How many homicides, because there was no peace between neighbors?  How many suicides, because there was no peace in the human heart?  How much hatred did You see through Your tears?  Help me to see that Your tear were not just for Jerusalem but also for Rome, for Gettysburg, for Treblinka, for Hiroshima.

I pray for our world which Your Father cradles so closely to His heart.  A world that is on the brink of breaking apart, war-torn and weary.  A world that knows so little of the peace You offer.

Help me to know that Peace, O Lord, especially in my suffering.

Help me to kunderstand the dark secret of love, the secret that only suffering can reveal:  that if I love long enough and deeply enough, someday my heart will be broken.  As Yours was broken.

Isaiah prophesied You would live among us as a broken-hearted Man, a Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.  Help me to realize there are things, like the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, that can only come to pass through suffering.  Like character and compassion.

Help me to understand that there is a communion with You that can only be shared through the sacrament of tears.

Ken Gire, “Moments with the Savior”

The Work Life I’m Currently Living

So, despite my current day of sickness, I usually spend five days a week at my job, which is still relatively new to me. I don’t blog to much about it. Given the very public nature of the job that seems unwise. I’ll keep most of my thoughts and reflections close to the vest unless you call or email but I thought I would post a few pictures from my recent travels for work.

The vast majority of days I mostly sit in my windowless office wondering if the building is making me ill (for I have no illusions that the State paid for low VOC carpets). But occasionally we go on site visits. Working for the departments that I do these can be rather fun or interesting and even occasionally beautiful

Last week we went to the coast for three days of visits and the week before that we went to the mountains for four days of visits. I brought the camera along and managed to snap a few fun shots.

On the Limited Power of Ideas

I’m home sick today and in between waves of queasiness I’m trying out A History of Modern Germany: The Reformation by Hajo Holborn.  I’m only to the forward but I liked this quote a lot and thought I’d share it.  I’m more and more convinced that I’m limited in how well I can express and know my desires.  This quote seems to get at that a bit, though on more of a societal level.

To be sure, ideas, more than any other expression of life, reveal human motives and aspirations.  They also establish a connection over the ages and for that matter even between civilizations.  But it would be erroneous to assume that man possesses the capacity of expressing the full range of his aims in clear ideas and, least of all, that he has the ability to direct the course of human affairs more than partially through ideas.

If it is the ultimate intent of historical study to comprehend the potentialities of man in history, we must view him in all his struggles within the conditions of his existence, from the necessity of making a living and of adjsting to the social and political order that surrounds him to the actions through which he intervenes in the historical process, as well as to the thought through which he attempts to trancend his narrow station.

Book Four

A couple of nights ago, while reading The Lord of the Rings again, I read a passage that’s stuck with me. I know I’ve read it a dozen times at least but I’d never noticed it until this reading. Lately, when I read the LOTRs, I’ve tried to pause, and by taking my time, to notice how Tolkien weaves time and space into the novel.

That last sentence might only make sense if you knew that after my first reading of LOTRs for many years I leapt through the books from plot-point to plot-point and seldom lingered over any passage. I took this to such an extreme that I went years without reading any of Sam and Frodo’s journey, deeming it too dull. Instead I preferred the speed of Gandalf and the other companions as they rushed south to Rohan and to Gondor.

These days I’m trying a different tact as I read Tolkien again. I’m trying harder to listen. I’m trying to notice all the vistas and landscapes that he lays out for me. I’m trying to read at the pace at which he writes and in doing so I’ve found him a master of quiet description.

I’ve also found that Sam and Frodo’s journey is one of the richest stories in the book. The passage that follows is the one that’s stuck with me. It’s from Chapter Two of Book Four (about half way through The Two Towers). Sam and Frodo have just captured Gollum and are considering whether their supplies can support a third companion.

It’s an agonizing moment for Frodo and he can’t bring himself to do more than allude to the implications of his reasoning. And the folksy, good-hearted Sam comes to silence and tears. It’s a quiet moment and one that I’m glad I paused to read.

I guess it’s an interesting lesson in pace to me. I can intake all the words rather quickly collecting the plot point and following the storyline. But if I read the passage with the pace I imagine appropriate, pausing in silence to envision Sam’s tears and think his thoughts, it’s a moment that I’ve found hard to forget.

And so the season ends . . .

It was a fantastic season . . . I wish it could have ended when with a better game.

Meditating on San Francisco

Over the weekend I made my first trip to San Francisco and to California. I went to present my master’s thesis, and to my delight it received favorable reviews from the people who were interested enough to read it.

My trip was a whirlwind. I arrived in San Francisco Airport at 12:30 am local time Friday and departed at 12:30am local time on Saturday morning. In that time I had the great pleasure of playing tourist in one of the world’s great cities for a few hours alongside.

Since I only had five hours to play tourist I set off from my downtown hotel for San Fran’s most famous landmark. I sometimes wonder if you dropped five members of my family in any given city if they would all automatically go to the same spot, in this city the Golden Gate Bridge.

I took the bus through Chinatown and arrived at the Golden Gate for $1.50. The park around the bridge is beautiful, full of lush plants in a climate that feels like a cool rain forest. The light rain and drizzle swept across a confluence of multinational visitors speaking English, French, German, and Hindi, all drawn to this landmark.

I mostly thought of the bridge for its sweeping beauty and the beauty of the setting, nestled in the mountains. When I wrote family and shared some pictures I received this letter from my Grandmother which is a pretty moving perspective,

Imagine what it was to the sailors during WWII when their ship sailed out to the Pacific under the bridge. I just talked to Granddad about when he sailed to the Philippines during the war. He says that the military base was in Oakland and that they sailed from there under the Golden Gate. The war ended while he was in the Philippines and when he returned they sailed under the Golden Gate again. He said it was a wonderful sight.

Wow. I had never thought that the Bridge welcomed home so many soldiers returning from the Pacific after giving up years of their twenties or thirties even as the Statue of Liberty welcomed home those soldiers who could return from Europe following both of the Great Wars of the 20th century.

When I returned, exhausted from my red eye flight and whirlwind tour, Charity asked me if I’d like to go back to San Francisco. I said I’d love to see more of the city, to eat more sushi and to walk around the parks about the bridge. And now, I’d like to return to the bridge again and meditate on what it must have felt like for the millions of American men, American men my age, who departed under the bridge leaving behind their homes, families and jobs for years to fight in such a terrible conflict and to wonder at what they must have felt when they return to America under that same rust red span.

Any Guesses?

What famous landmark did I travel to yesterday for the first time that was just so stinking cool?

A Quote from the Sermon (from the archives)

Laughter is a divine gift to the human who is humble. A proud man cannot laugh because he must watch his dignity; he cannot give himself over to the rocking and rolling of his belly. But a poor and happy man laughs heartily because he gives no serious attention to his ego.

Terry Lindvall

Thinking on Work (dredged from the drafts folder)

Over the last couple of months, as I’ve begun to mentally transition out of graduate and into “a career,” I’ve begun to wonder at just how complex the different people’s work lives are and I’ve begun to wonder again about how people in the church who gather in a spiritual and interpersonal context conceptualize work.

Somewhere on this blog before I’ve mused about how church is really a strange vehicle for viewing people’s lives. When you’re a kid and you run around church you see that Mr. Key is you’re buddy’s dad and an elder and you know that he’s an accountant . . . but you don’t see him function as such. The adults I saw growing up with either all in academic or religious contexts.

I think this is kind of weird because people spend 40, 50, 60 hours a week at their jobs and I wonder what we as a church have to say to them. The first thing that always comes to my mind is an alleged Luther quote: “when a good cobbler makes a shoe he does it to the glory of God.”

It seems to me that the things that everybody in the congregation have in common are spiritual issues, As such I’ve taken a typically academic approach, I’ve delved into the depths of Davis Library and come out with a book.

So before I start my new job on Monday I’ve been sitting down to skim through Church on Sunday, Work on Monday, a sociological book written out of a series of interviews with Christian businessmen and clergy from across the religious spectrum.

I thought this quote was really interesting,

“Most conceptions of religious happiness turned out to be subtractive in form: spending less time at work and more with family, needing less money, buying fewer consumer items. At no time were the potential contributions of business seen as a path to faithfulness or the happiness of faithfulness.” pg. 141.

Two Weeks!? (since I’ve last blogged)

Alas! Most of the blogging I think about doing these days is related to explaining how and why I’m not blogging these days.

Since that’s a relatively boring topic I’ll purge with this post and share a picture that caught my eye as I was playing hooky today from church (yes on Easter Sunday!). It’s been cool today to watch it open and shut with the light; beautiful.

A Zinger from Wendell

Yesterday I picked up Home Economics by Wendell Berry to begin my alternative readings in economics series.  I flipped to the essay titled “A Defense of the Family Farm” in which he gives a particular variety of professors this stinging rebuke,

Perhaps (the bad advice of experts) could be dismissed as human frailty or inevitable bureaucratic blundering - except that the result is damage, caused by people who probably would not have given such advice if they were themselves in a position to suffer from it.

Serious responsibilities are undertaken by public givers of advice, and serious wrong is done when the advice is bad. Surely a kind of monstrosity is involved when tenured professors with protected incomes recommend or even tolerate Darwinian economic policies for farmers, or announce (as one university economist after another has done) that the failure of so-called inefficient farmers is good for agriculture and good for the country.

They see no inconsistency, apparently, between their own protectionist economy and the “free market” economy that they recommend to their supposed constituents, to whom the “free market” has proved, time and again, to be fatal.

Nor do they see any inconsistency, apparently, between the economy of a university, whose sources, like those of any tax-supported institution, are highly diversified, and the extremely specialized economies that they ahave recommeneded to their farmer-constituents.

These inconsistencies nevertheless exist, and they explain why, so far, there has been no epidemic of bankruptcies among professors of agricultural economics.

Whew! Don’t hold back Wendell!

The Idiot

It’s Saturday night and I can hear a cold wind howling over the tree tops through the jazz I have on in the living room. Last night I at last finished The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky which was a long and complicated novel about Prince Myshkin and the two loves of his life, Nastasya Filippovna and Aglaya Yepanchin.

These three are a triumvirate of characters that I’m not likely to forget: a Christian of such innocence and selflessness that everyone mistakes him for being mentally handicapped, a woman who is so divided between self-hatred and love that she burns down her own life to lose the man that she loves, and a spiteful girl of twenty who is cruel to everyone and especially the Prince, though she is the only character to actually see the Prince for who he is.

Part One was breathtaking for its speed and building fury and Part Four was notable for its devastating tragedy. I still have a sinking feeling when I think of the end . . . and there was a lot of philosophy and 19th century Russian social criticism that I didn’t follow sandwiched in between.

Both the first and last sections had me wondering what it is that people love in art. This art was terrifying: Part One in its whirlwind and Part Four in the disaster that wrought upon the characters. After the first section I was left wondering if this would make a workable movie, what pace! At the end I was left wondering whether or not anyone want to see a movie in which the major characters meet such ruin.

All this has me wondering what the point of the book was in the end. I wonder if there is some larger social point that Dostoyevsky was trying to make about a Russian society and the noble class of the time. So much to wonder about . . . so little time.

Feeling Unfaithful

I once ask a friend if he was planning to get a new dog when his current dog died. We talked about it uncomfortably for few minutes and he finally said “Talking about this makes me feel . . . unfaithful.”

That’s about how I feel endorsing Google Reader over Bloglines. I’ve used Bloglines for many years now. It was a great invention when it started, allowing me to survey all the blogs I subscribed to at a glance and see who had posted without checking every single one. I’ve been very pleased with it but now Charity has started using Google Reader and . . . and . . . I’ve converted.

It’s set up to do all the same things as Bloglines except it has one great feature hidden under Settings then Goodies. When visiting this page you simply drag the Next » button onto your bookmarks.  From then on new posts are just a click away.  And the best part is that when you click on Next » button the blogs themselves appear, not just the text and pictures.  No more formating issues or missing pictures.

Not only do you get to read all the comments that other people have made but you also get to see the beautiful formats and designs of their websites.  Suddenly reading blogs is a very colorful experience!  I now read all my friend’s blogs this way and have been slowly feeling less “unfaithful” to a product that served me so well for so long.  Soon I’ll be ready to declare “Come!  Give your life and information to Google!  It’s better over here. ;-)”

(and I also really like it because when there are no more new entries to read it directs you to go read a book!)

The Lecture Series

We finished our Winter Lecture Series this weekend and greatly enjoyed our speakers. It’s been a cool thing to see our living room transformed and feel a bit L’Abrish. We’re hoping for a shortened Spring Series in April. Feel free to email if you’re interested. We’ll host anyone who flies in (especially from Nebraska!).