Eleven

Tomorrow I have to shop for a present for a boy who's turning eleven. I know he also likes to get as many dollars as he is years old. I know that because he quite openly says so. Kid knows the value of a dollar.

Sort of. He found a way to print monopoly money on his printer at home and was quite excited that he could generate more money at will. When his grandma and I tried to explain why printing more money decreases the value of the money, he was puzzled and somewhat annoyed.

Of course, the rule doesn't apply in Monopoly anyway.

Great nature's second course

Last night, I read an article (via Instapundit) about how important it is to get enough sleep, and I was so convicted I went straight to bed.

Liturgy

I'm not a Roman Catholic, but I like to watch Catholic services on EWTN. One reason is that I like liturgy. I like that they say things every week and have these responsive parts of the service. Another reason is because there are not many other church services on TV that I care to watch because it's not always done with integrity. A lot of church services on TV are at best highly schmaltzy, even cheesy, and at worst manipulative attempts to get money. Finally, it's handy that EWTN shows a church service every day, not just Sunday.

Regarding the authenticity of the daily mass on EWTN, it's a worship service held every day by a Franciscan community of brothers in Alabama. So the purpose is not to make a TV show but for a monastic community to have a worship service, and they also film and broadcast it. It seems to be a small sanctuary with about six rows of pews, and people from the outside the monastery attend.

And it's great that they worship every day. I can only go to church on Sunday, but I can watch this service any day, if I happen to be available to have my TV on at one of the broadcast times.

Then, the liturgy. The priests and helpers process in, there are incense and candles. I've started to know some of the responses. I know when to say, "Amen," or "And also with you." I like that, giving the blessing back to the the clergyman when he blesses the congregation: "You, too. Back at you."

I partially know the prayer of confession, but not fully. I searched it on the web and this is how it goes:

I confess to almighty God,
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have sinned through my own fault,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done,
and in what I have failed to do;
and I ask blessed Mary, ever virgin,
all the angels and saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord, our God.

I like that the congregants ask each other to pray for them in their struggle with sin.

I also know the responses to the priest's words before communion:

Priest: The Lord be with you.
All: And also with you.
Priest: Lift up your hearts.
All: We lift them up to the Lord.
Priest: Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God.
All: It is right to give him thanks and praise.

When I was a little girl, attending Protestant chapel on Air Force bases, I knew the Lord's Prayer, the Doxology, and the Gloria Patri by heart even before I could read, because we said or sang them every week. And if not before I could read, at least very close to it, I also knew the Apostles' Creed by heart.

I still know them all because anything you learn by heart when you are a little child you remember all your life. But I don't know what the next generation will know by heart. I can't imagine the looks of astonishment if I went to my church's worship community and suggested we use certain worship elements every week. Well, I do them an injustice. When the children go to children's worship, they exchange blessings with the congregation every week, although there are at least two different blessings they use, depending on the season. And when the pastor finishes reading the Scripture passage on which he is going to preach, he says, "The very words of God," and the congregation repeats, "The very words of God." When I was at Regent College I grew accustomed to a form used often in Presbyterian churches (and perhaps others) after the Scripture reading, where the reader says, "This is the word of the Lord," and the congregation responds, "Thanks be to God."

In my church's worship services we follow a certain pattern every week, but we vary the specific words and songs. Perhaps this really does help keep it from becoming words without meaning, which I suppose could happen if you did always use the same words. But like I say, I wish there were ancient elements that we share with many Christian traditions that we used often enough for children to absorb them into their hearts.

Whoever said "orange is the new pink"

In the movie Legally Blonde, starring Reese Witherspoon, the main character says (if I recall correctly), "Whoever said 'orange is the new pink' was seriously twisted."

Tonight when I got home from work, the sky was full of the sunset. Pink clouds and orange glow. I thought that, while in fashion orange and pink don't go well together, in sunsets they do.

Something to ponder.

I didn't take a picture, so for visual interest I must include an Amazon link to Legally Blonde instead of a picture of a sunset.

Or, close your eyes and imagine a sunset.

Sunday night

Still cloudy and cool, but not cold, today. Still working my way through Wolf Hall.

Since I have nothing much to mention, here's the Old Testament reading from today's lectionary, in which I have emphasized the part that seems most beautiful to me, although I have no special application for it:

Hab 1:2-3; 2:2-4

How long, O LORD? I cry for help
but you do not listen!
I cry out to you, "Violence!"
but you do not intervene.
Why do you let me see ruin;
why must I look at misery?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and clamorous discord.
Then the LORD answered me and said:
Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets,
so that one can read it readily.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late.
The rash one has no integrity;
but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.

Unmentionable

Another theme of Wolf Hall is incest, especially as defined by canonical law. Henry VIII became convinced that his lack of a son with Katherine of Aragon was a sign of divine displeasure at his having married his brother's widow. This was a forbidden marriage by Roman Catholic canonical law at that time (I don't know about today), and therefore a pope had to grant a dispensation for it. When a later pope would not annul the marriage, Henry VIII took the stand that the pope had had no right to overrule canonical law in the first place, and furthermore that the pope had no authority in England, being merely the "Bishop of Rome," while (Henry and his legislators alleged) the papacy was a later corruption of an earlier tradition in which the sovereign also was the religious leader of his people.

Anyway, Henry thought marrying his brother's widow was incest. Later, one more of many reasons he found to discard Anne Boleyn was that their marriage had also been incestuous because Henry had previously had an affair with her sister, Mary Boleyn (their affair is a known historical fact; there were also rumors that, earlier yet, Henry had had an affair with the Boleyn sisters' mother, but Henry himself denied that).

Then, Anne was accused of incest with her brother when the king wanted reasons to execute and defame her. Also the novel's plot gives credence to a rumor that has survived (the truth of which is unknown) that Jane Seymour's father had an affair with the wife of his son, Edward Seymour. Finally, in the fictional world of the novel, Thomas Cromwell has an affair with his deceased wife's sister, which I don't think has ever been speculated by historians to have occurred.

A Man for All Seasons

I do think Wolf Hall portrays Sir Thomas More unjustly, as some kind of priggish hypocrite who got a sadistic pleasure out of torturing Protestants. More held office in an age when no country practiced religious toleration. He was a devout Catholic who did not want to draw persecution on himself when Henry VIII took England out of the Roman Catholic Church but who would not deny his faith when he was put on the spot. He did not seek martyrdom, but he was willing to die for his faith, and I respect that.

He also started the Tudor fashion for educating one's daughters, which was carried out to such stellar effect in the case of Henry VIII's daughter, Elizabeth. It is perhaps ironic that Anne Boleyn, whose rise caused More's downfall, had the daughter who benefitted from More's trailblazing in women's education.

I know where is an hind

I'm reading Wolf Hall on my Kindle. Both my siblings have read it, and I realized from their conversation about it that it is about Henry Tudor's advisor Thomas Cromwell. I have read a fair amount about the Tudor monarchs, but not that much about their counsellors as separate people from them. I thought this would be sort of a biographical novel, so I was surprised at how slowly it moved--Are we still on the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey, and how long will the courtship of Anne Boleyn drag on? Poor Anne Boleyn--Henry VIII's passion for her changed England forever, but her role on the stage of history was a short one, especially her term as his queen, not for nothing is she called Anne of the Thousand Days. Later, examining the table of contents, I realized it deals just with a few years, which at first I thought must cover Anne's rise and fall, but on looking up the date of her death I realize must end prior to her downfall. It must be that the main theme of the novel is England's break with Rome.

Well into the story, you discover that Wolf Hall is the residence of the Seymour family, whose member Jane Seymour succeeded Anne Boleyn as Henry's wife. And Henry was involved with her before Anne's death. She was one of Anne's ladies in waiting, as Anne was a lady in waiting to Henry's first wife, Katherine of Aragon. I recall reading that on the day Anne was executed, Henry waited on a hill outside London for the signal she was dead (bells or cannons, I can't remember), and when he heard it he mounted his horse and rode off to marry Jane, who, incidentally, gave him the son he had tried and failed to conceive in his first two marriages (although at the cost of her own life).

Wolf Hall introduces as early, and credible, rumors about Anne that she was promiscuous and that she committed adultery with her brother, accusations that were brought against her when Henry VIII wanted to get rid of her. From the non-fiction I've read, it's hard for biographers to get a grasp of Anne's actual personality. She was the center and cause of so much intrigue and controversy, and all her contemporaries had opinions about her, but there are not many, if any, unbiased sources of information. Catholics viewed her as the whore who seduced King Henry from the true faith. Some Protestants viewed her as the virtuous queen who led England out of the cesspit of papacy. She seems to have been quite unpopular at court; only the king was enamoured of her, and when he turned on her, then she had no friends. Was she an ambitious, power-hungry, calculating shrew, the innocent victim of the king's lust, the powerless tool of her ambitious relatives, or the Protestant heroine? No one knows for sure.

My eye was caught early in the novel by the description of her "hard, impersonal touch-me-not smile." That is an allusion, I presume, to Thomas Wyatt's poem beginning, "Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind" which many believe is about his unfulfilled passion for Anne Boleyn. (A "hind" is a "doe--a deer, a female deer.") He uses the Latin phrase "Noli me tangere," which means "Touch me not." He was one of those later accused of committing adultery with her. His son revolted against "Bloody" Mary Tudor, when she became queen and briefly restored Catholicism, attempting to put Anne Boleyn's daughter Elizabeth on the throne instead. "Wyatt's Rebellion" failed, but despised Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth I, became arguably the greatest monarch in England's history.

The Lover Despairing to Attain Unto His Lady's Grace Relinquisheth the Pursuit

Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But, as for me: helas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them, that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer; but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And, graven with Diamonds, in letters plain,
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold - though I seem tame.

Step into my parlor . . .

This spider looks like he's floating in mid-air. I could see his web--just barely--from some angles, but mostly it was invisible. That's how spiders catch insects. He's sitting right in the center of his web.

Sometimes on misty mornings you can see webs in detail because water is clinging to every strand, making the web look white.

Saturday morning

Oops. I went to bed last night and didn't post. I thought of it after I was under the covers, all cuddled up with my puppy, and I decided it would have to slide. Sometimes I'm just so tired at night. The nice thing about Friday night is that I don't have an appointed time I have to wake up on Saturday morning, so I can sleep out my full sleep. Work day mornings I have to force myself awake when I don't want to wake up. What I should do, I suppose, is go to bed earlier, but then I feel like all I do is work and sleep. I like a little time to myself in the evenings, so I steal it from my sleep.

This morning when I got up the sky was cloudy, but with breaks of blue.

I like cloudy, cool weather, mist, light rain. No rain today, and the clouds have cleared off, but still cool. It is Fall, now. My dad is mowing the lawn.

I sat on my deck a little while this morning. The 1/2-barrels on the other side of the pond have double impatiens in the middle, with creeping jenny (lysimachia nummularia) around the edges. Some of it did grow up and cascade over the sides as was my intent. Next year I think I'll buy more creeping jenny plants, hoping to utterly hide the barrels with vegetation.

A chill in the air

Yesterday and today we have had heavy fog in the morning that suddenly dissipates in the early afternoon, after which the sun shines beautifully. Today felt autumnal to me. More trees are getting color, the sun was almost down by the time I got home from work, and the air felt chilly -- autumnally chilly -- for my evening walk with the dog.

So it goes. Summer and winter and springtime and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses above join with all nature in manifold witness to his great faithfulness, mercy, and love.

What a character

I was browsing through the Kindle store and accidentally ended up in the book category "Biographies and Memoirs." Among the actual biographies and memoirs, I was surprised to come across Glinda of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. Later I saw Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. Good books, wrong cyber-shelf.

Back when I taught home-schooled students online, my local paper did an article about my job, and the reporter quoted me as saying that Jane Eyre was one of my favorite novelists.

Let's just get this straight. Jane Eyre, italicized, is a novel. Jane Eyre, not italicized, is a character in the novel Jane Eyre. Charlotte Bronte is the novelist who wrote Jane Eyre about Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre is fiction; Jane Eyre is a fictional character.

Ditto Glinda of Oz, Glinda of Oz, and L. Frank Baum.

Puppy dog eyes

Insert topic here

Oh,  no. Another night where by the time I think to blog, the only topic on my brain is how tired I am. So, what I would ask my readers to do is think of something funny, clever, witty, and/or profound, and then imagine that you read it here. Better yet, write it in the comments.

And here's a picture.

Actually, looking at a picture of the sky does remind me of that topic that never fails to be of interest: the weather. The last couple days it looks like fall out, cloudy, windy, rainy, but then when you actually step outside the temperature is extremely mild, like summer.

Lighter Fare

I finished the Bonhoeffer book, and it was good. Now I'm in the mood for something light and relaxing, so my second Kindle purchase was a Georgette Heyer book, The Reluctant Widow.

Let there be light

This afternoon, I went on a light bulb changing spree. I had a total of five burned out bulbs around the house, and I replaced them all. Fall equinox has come and gone, the days are getting shorter, and I need more light indoors.

Early autumn pleasures

I accidentally went two days without posting. It's because I've been so involved in reading this book about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm up to the part where he's just been transferred to the second-to-last prison he was in before his death in the final days of WWII. What a tragedy that such a brilliant theologian, who also was such a devout Christian with so much integrity to his faith, died so young at the hands of the Nazis. But his suffering and death are a witness, as he had hoped. The word martyr actually means witness in Greek. A willingness to die for a faith or principle bears witness to it.

Yesterday, I managed to combine reading this book with another favorite activity (if you can call it activity): sitting out on my deck. We had a sunny, pleasant fall day.

I sat out reading my book on my Kindle. Here's a picture of the Kindle when you send it to sleep--a random picture comes up:

And here it is with the book displayed. I have set it to a slightly larger type face than the default.

Here is the view to my right hand, where I have my coffee, glass of water, and Kindle all sitting on the hose caddy next to my chair.

Notice the dog in the background. He's standing by the door, which is his way of saying, "Why are we out here on hard surfaces, when we could be indoors on cushy ones?" Here he is yawning with ennui.

I enjoy what time I can on the deck now, as I know the days of that pleasure are numbered for this season. It is raining more frequently (this very morning, in fact), and it is usually sometime in October that I concede it has become too cold to sit outside, and I put the lawn chairs away, cut back the plants, and place all the pots and containers near the wall of the house, in hopes that they will stay a little more warm and sheltered there and possibly make it through the winter. Last year was a mild winter, and many plants did survive. When we have had more severe winters, then fewer do and I have to replace more of them in the spring. And, of course, some are annuals.

So yesterday afternoon it was a gift to be able to sit outside in the pleasant sunshine.

More Bonhoeffer

To them [the "German Christians" who accepted Reich rulership of the church], all that business about doctrine was folderol that didn’t matter to the man in the street. Bonhoeffer’s attitude was that it must be made real to the man in the street, and that was where the church was failing.

“A truly evangelical sermon must be like offering a child a fine red apple or offering a thirsty man a cool glass of water and then saying: Do you want it?”

"Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic. . . . Do not defend God’s Word, but testify to it. . . ."

Thoughts

In the biography I am reading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I have highlighted these thoughts so far:

"[T]here is always only one really significant hour—the present"

“The religion of Christ,” he said, “is not a tidbit after one’s bread; on the contrary, it is the bread or it is nothing."

“Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.”

[H]e believed communicating what he knew theologically—whether to indifferent businessmen, teenagers, or younger children—was as important as the theology itself.

"God is free not from human beings but for them. Christ is the word of God’s freedom."

And the following, he reported to a friend, he said to a little boy who sobbed out his heart-break because his dog ("Herr Wolf") had died and then asked Bonhoeffer if he would see his dog again in heaven:

“Look, God created human beings and also animals, and I’m sure he also loves animals. And I believe that with God it is such that all who loved each other on earth—genuinely loved each other— will remain together with God, for to love is part of God. Just how that happens, though, we admittedly don’t know.”

Glowlessness

The remarks about my Kindle screen not glowing are not complaints. I'm sure that it's because the screen doesn't glow that the Kindle doesn't cause eye fatigue the way a computer screen does.