Sunday, June 27, 2010

Mr. Eliot's Verse on a Sunday Morning

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

In Honor of Today's England v. Germany Match

God Save the Queen:

God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen:
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us:
God save the Queen.
O Lord, our God, arise,
Scatter her enemies,
And make them fall.
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all.
Thy choicest gifts in store,
On her be pleased to pour;
Long may she reign:
May she defend our laws,
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice
God save the Queen

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Shalom

On May 22, my father spoke at Bethel University's commencement. Along with being hilarious he made some good points:

  1. You are going to die. Remember that and live your life understanding that death awaits.
  2. You are never unemployed (particularly relevant to college grads) because your job--your primary job--is to build shalom in this world. You are called to bring justice and mercy and love and peace to those around you. 
It's some good stuff to think about when your job or life ain't going to well. Or you are wondering what the heck to do with your life.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Quote of the Day

I never expected to quote the heir to the throne of the United Kingdom in this blog or anywhere, but he has said some really interesting things:
When we hear talk of an “environmental crisis” or even of a “financial crisis,” I would suggest that this is actually describing the outward consequences of a deep, inner crisis of the soul. It is a crisis in our relationship with – and our perception of – Nature, and it is born of Western culture being dominated for at least two hundred years by a mechanistic and reductionist approach to our scientific understanding of the world around us.
So I would like you to consider very seriously today whether a big part of the solution to all of our worldwide “crises” does not lie simply in more and better technology, but in the recovery of the soul to the mainstream of our thinking. Our science and technology cannot do this. Only sacred traditions have the capacity to help this happen.
In general, we live within a culture that does not believe very much in the soul anymore – or if it does, won’t admit to it publicly for fear of being thought old fashioned, out of step with “modern imperatives” or “anti-scientific.” The empirical view of the world, which measures it and tests it, has become the only view to believe. A purely mechanistic approach to problems has somehow assumed a position of great authority and this has encouraged the widespread secularisation of society that we see today. This is despite the fact that those men of science who founded institutions like the Royal Society were also men of deep faith. It is also despite the fact that a great many of our scientists today profess a faith in God. I am aware of one recent survey that suggests over seventy per cent of scientists do so ...
As the English writer G.K. Chesterton put it, “real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them as a root.” I would also remind you of the words of Oxford’s very own C.S. Lewis, who pointed out that “sometimes you do have to turn the clock back if it is telling the wrong time” – that there is nothing “progressive” about being stubborn and refusing to acknowledge that we have taken the wrong road. If we realize that we are travelling in the wrong direction, the only sensible thing to do is to admit it and retrace our steps back to where we first went wrong. As Lewis put it, “going back can sometimes be the quickest way forward.” It is the most progressive thing we could do.
HT: Burke's Corner

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Israel, Gaza, the Sea, and the Pic of the Day

A lot of smarter people than me are saying smarter things about the incident in the Med. Needless to say, Israel has made both a tactical and strategic blunder with their handling of these ships trying to break the blockade. From a tactical point see pic:

You'd think they would be able to do much better than this. Do they not train? As Fred Kaplan from Slate asks:
The questions here are fairly obvious: Why shouldn't the Israeli commandos have expected resistance, at least as an operational premise? Why weren't they equipped with nonlethal weapons? Why didn't they fire a few canisters of tear gas as they boarded or once the first brickbats flew?
Strategically, it gets even worse. At the end of day, Israel leaders have created sympathy for Hamas (who vows to destroy Israel...not good) and antipathy to the blockade and any reasonable manner to contain Hamas in Gaza. This is going to get worst before it gets better.