a tirade.

Over Life Chain weekend back in October, I noticed an influx of opinions in the "letters to the editor" section of my local paper. I noticed the same thing in WORLD magazine. They all said one of three things:

~Killing babies is wrong, and you know that's the definition of abortion.

~Abortion is merciful. These babies are going into the foster system with every disadvantage in the world, and no future.

~Pro-lifers need to practice what they preach.

The last two are particularly provocative.

Everything a Christian does should support their position on abortion. Holding a sign once a year doesn't cut it.

And as I stood out there on Life Chain Sunday, holding my sign, I couldn't help but think about the absurd hypocrisy of my demonstration. Pro-life, huh?

~When I push aside siblings and little "unimportants" unless they're convenient at the moment?

~avoid facing punishment and accepting responsibility for my crimes (disrespect for parents, anger, laziness, lack of self-control)? Why do I expect another woman to take responsibility for hers?

~When my goal is to spend my life glorifying myself? Be honest here. Any inconveniences to my pre-programmed agenda just have to be ignored. I'm gonna be a great linguist (you fill in the blank) someday, and everybody better get out of my way. (So. With that attitude, how would I deal with a hypothetical crisis pregnancy?)

~I hate my brothers in my heart. (Murder! Murder!)

~I'm emotionally insecure in friendships.

~Not to mention (this eats me, though I know it's not particularly wrong for someone in my sphere of life), I do nothing tangible that helps these women that I condemn. I don't volunteer at the crisis pregnancy center. I don't do ANYTHING! Not even, say, making baby clothes.

So. Here I am, holding my sign, as my conscience shouts (rightfully so) "HYPOCRITE! First take the plank from your own eye, so that you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

Being pro-life involves positive, offensive action on the part of the whole Christian community. But I look around, and I see. Families self-absorbed. They have their perfect kids to raise, and they can't adopt someone else's crack baby. Noooo way. They don't have any experience (where, pray tell, would you get that from?), enough money, a big enough house, or any time. But let me tell you, there are families with $20,000 a year incomes who have multiple mentally handicapped or physically challenged children who are all healthy, happy little kids. They choose the way in which they spend their time.

And it takes work and committment. That's where alleged pro-lifers get shy. We can encourage women to take care of their own babies, through life service centers. But there are other aspects to being pro-life that we as a community strategically ignore. Foster care. Inner city alcohol-addicted infants. Abusive homes. In other words, nasty places we just don't want to be.

If they won't come to us, we won't come to them. (Any Christian will be thinking, at this point: WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!!) But do you strategically search out vermin, so you can keep them company? Search yourself first.

The director of an adoption agency wrote to WORLD magazine just a week or so after Life Chain Sunday, complaining of this very thing. In effect, she said this: For all the hundreds of people praying out on the curb on Sunday, hardly one will take an abandoned black child on Monday. Is something wrong here?

Yeah, I know. Adopting kids is not your calling. Well, don't condemn the struggling, unregenerate and pregnant woman for aborting her child. Maybe having a child wasn't her calling either.

Something to think about. :P

Hector Berlioz wrote this book...

I have read a ways into "Evenings in the Orchestra." As a P.S. to my previous entry, here's a *brief* review:

~Description: a book divided into 24 evenings, each with a long (or very short) episode. Certain members of the orchestra form a sort of "cast," and the author himself seems to be a member of the orchestra, for the book is written in first person. It's about a wee little orchestra that puts on all sorts of musical performances (the varied styles are each in turn majorly caricatured by the author) in a lyric theatre.

~Is it funny? Yes, in parts. The basic premise from which the whole book arises is interesting: in the orchestra, when playing light operas and generally dull pieces, each member brings a book to set on his stand, that he reads through the whole performance (while pretending to count rests and study his part. Har har.). The performers tell each other stories and share books while they pretend to be playing music. Some of you will say, "oooh...Kay?" Some of you (like me) will just find it absolutely HILARIOUS!!!!!

~It's definitely light reading. Definitely borders on "the woes of the composer/musician" propaganda in most places. Probably gets pretty dull after awhile.

it's all in the name...

There's a famous poet who changed her name to "I."

Can you imagine?

~how you would cite her in a bibliography?
~what awful-sounding sentences you must construct when referring to her?
"Jane sent a letter to I." "I has a new anthology in print." "Bill saw I at the gym on Thursday."

~What motivation would one have, naming herself thus?
~it's infamous
~it's egregious
~it's really simple
~in fact, unbelievable
~it's something frivolous for which you have to pay money
~The name on the binding of her book would just be one letter long. More room for poetic titles.
~after every poem that appears solo in a magazine or other publication, it would read "By I," which (I guess) sounds kinda cool.

On the Progress of Late-Night Conversation

Here's an interesting phenomena.

Last night, my sister and I were up kinda late, and of course our conversations got worse and worse as the night went on. I have discovered that our general tendencies are opposite: Sister's conversation gets shallower as the night progresses. Mine gets more and more abstract (stupid and "deep"). It's pretty funny.

I started saying something like this: I know that all these physical handicaps, anomalies, mental deficiencies are these infinitely complex problems... and we get frustrated because we can hardly scratch the surface of the explanation... But wouldn't the world be so coarse and ugly without its complexity? I mean, the thing that frustrates us so much is actually what makes the world an exciting place to live. Imagine if we could understand every genetic malfunction. Well, things would have to be a lot bigger and simpler, because we're just too limited to understand them as the way they are now. In other words, if we were God, we would have a really gross world. And if we knew everything, the world would be an infinitely boring place. But what a mystery it is! I mean, just one human cell...

Sister: Don't start! It's late. I'm stranded on the sand, and you want me to swim in the trench with the sharks!

Dad: BED TIME.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Great things about being 16:
~you can get a university library card.
~you can get a job.
~you can get a driver's license
~(and in my house)you can wear make-up
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If I should be truthful, instead of "Great Things About..." I would write "The Additional Complications of..."

Well, no. The library card is a great thing. :o)

ever built a radio??

SUMMER IS ALMOST HERE!!!!

That's all I can think about right now, which is too bad for my school-work...

I went to the library yesterday evening and checked out a book by Hector Berlioz entitled "Evenings in the Orchestra." We shall see how it turns out. I haven't started reading it yet...

On a different note. My brother has this radio he made from a kit. It actually picks up our local NPR station, but it is so very soft that whenever we want to use it, we have to go to the bathroom and lock the door. We hold one wire to a wet metal surface (i.e., the faucet), and hold one in our (wet) hand, and that somehow provides the power needed to make it run. If I only had a brain.... maybe I would know enough to explain that one. erk.

I'm tired, tired, tired. Our neighbors just gave us a big plate full of oatmeal cookies. They *were* very, very good. :D Sorry, you can't have one. >:D

Fairy Tales.

~Grimm's Fairy tales. I LOVE LOVE LOVE these! Last night I read "The Six Servants," "The Twin Brothers" (I think that's the title...) and "Godfather Death." *shivers* Romantic fairy tales can only be appreciated if they're really romantic, and creepy ones are best. The first time I read "Godfather Death" I nearly got sick!!! (I didn't get over it for at least a month. It served me right.)
And here are some sundry things I'm working on...
~beating the expert level of Minesweeper. (SIXTEEN BOMBS! ONLY 16!!)
~a violin piece: Aucassin and Nicolette
~an advanced math textbook. o-o
~Latin homework
~Christmas presents. (huh?) (no, not kidding. I still have one that needs to be finished...)

Now. Back to fairy tales... "The Six Servants" is akin to "The Six Chinese Brothers" that I heard about when I was a little kid. These six guys--one who can stretch himself taller and taller, one who can blow himself up thousands times his size, one who can hear anything, one who can endure fire and ice, and one whose eyes shatter anything they see. It's about a man who meets these six fellows and enlists their aid to go marry a beautiful princess.

"The Twin Brothers"--one of them slays a dragon to (again) marry a princess. But he gets turned into stone by a sorcerer, and his brother rescues him. The actual story has many other elements to it.

"Godfather Death" is about a boy whose godfather is Godfather Death. He grows up and becomes a doctor, but when Godfather Death stands at the foot of the bed, his patient dies. Well, his father falls ill, and in a last attempt to save him, the doctor turns the bed around, so that Godfather Death stands at the head instead of the foot. His father lives. Godfather Death is angry, but says that because he's a relation, he can do such an operation only once.

Then a beautiful princess falls ill, and the young doctor tries the same thing. When Godfather Death stands at the foot of the bed, he turns the bed around. It works.

Then Godfather Death takes the doctor down into a cave, where thousands of candles are burning... "Each candle is the life of a person," he explains. "When a candle burns short, I replace it, or let it burn out." He shows him a sputtering stub of a candle. "This," he says, "is your life."
"Replace the candle!" the doctor begs.
Godfather Death blows it out, and the doctor dies.

What a tale. It's so gruesome I can't even think of its moral implications, though I know it has some... o_o

Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism

For my paper on the iconoclasm, I had to do a little research on Eastern Orthodoxy.
A short essay (excerpt) follows, for your enjoyable boredom:

Eastern Orthodox Christianity centers around the icon. This is a manifestation of the heavenly ideal: Christ and the saints united with a worshipping congregation. Man, being created in God’s image, carries the “icon of God” within himself.
Catholicism formed a doctrine of justification, with priests, purgatory, and indulgences. They set up a legal system involving the pope as “supreme judicator” of the physical church (and in the Middle Ages, the whole world). But in Eastern Orthodoxy there was no such thing. Instead, the emphasis was placed on the incarnation of God and the re-creation of man. Man’s sin blotted out or diminished the divine likeness and inflicted injury upon the original God-image. Christ came to earth to restore this image (or icon) of God in man. Salvation, then, was this restoration of the God-image.

While the West began to equate salvation with justification, the East saw salvation as sanctification: rebirth or re-creation, transfiguration.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I found myself agreeing with Eastern Orthodoxy over Catholicism. Funny, the way bias works.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's a Byzantine church--the San Vitale, in Ravenna: It's a beautiful old Byzantine church, built around 538 AD.

The Queen and the Soldier

That beautiful song from my sister's newest album, Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts, is running through my head, as it has been all yesterday evening, all last night, and ever since I woke up at 5: 30 AM.
(I love Kathryn's voice. I wish she'd put out something I'd want to buy... >_> <_<)The Queen and the Soldier:
A soldier came knocking upon the queen's door,
He said, "I am not fighting for you any more,"
And the queen knew she'd seen his face someplace before,
Slowly she led him inside....

Kathryn plays this slow, pulsing piano (it sounds like a death-knell sometimes), singing in her low clear voice that complements the sound of the 'cello. The song itself is full of emotion, depth, drama. It's most certainly a ballad from England, it's so sad. There's a flute that comes in on the last verse. I'm certain it's there just to make you cry.

Though I've been a long-term fan of Kate, and am not a great fan of Kathryn's music, I must admit that Kathryn's songs are the best on the album.

My second favorite track is Ned on the Hill. What a sweet song.

some observations on Luke 8

The skeleton of a muse that I wrote in my journal yesterday:

Luke 8:
faith, hope, and love
hearing and doing the words of Christ

Hope:
~a windstorm comes down on the lake, and the boat fills with water. The disciples, knowing the jeopardy of their position, cry out "Master! We are perishing!"

~a man possessed with legions of demons: "Whyat have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, do not torment me!"

~a woman with a hemorrage that no one could heal

~the servant comes to Jairus--"Your daughter is dead. Do not trouble the Teacher."

Romans 8:38-39--
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,
Nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Death nor life: Jairus' daughter
Angels nor principalities nor powers: the man possessed by demons
Things present nor things to come: the woman with the illness that no one could heal
Depth nor height: The waves smashing around the disciple's boat

Christ demonstrates the power that accompanies His love.

Faith:
a key theme: "Where is your faith?"
"Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has made you well."
"Do not be afraid; only believe, and she will be made well."

Reactions to the love of Christ:
"Who can this be? For He commands even the winds and water, and they obey Him!"
Fear (the Gadarenes who witnessed the casting out of demons)
Devotion--they found the man clothed, in his right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus
"Return to your own house and tell what great things God has done for you"
The woman goes away "in peace."

Home Sweet HOUSE!!!

What a day.

something I absolutely hate: hand-me-down cross stitch projects that are half finished, with stitches that are 100% incorrect. They waste thread, money, and time. Right now I'm attempting a restoration on one particularly large project. It's a sampler with four Victorian houses on it, and four trite little sayings of the "Home Sweet Home" variety.

All I can think of, when I look at it, is that line from The King and I:
(speaking of what the children learned in school)
Young Prince: "East or West, Home is Best."
the King: "East-West-Home-Best! Home is HOUSE!"

:D :D :D!!!

It's a waste of time, but maybe it'll be funny if I inscribe the lines from The King and I on the back of the frame....

What did you expect??

Hi there.
This is a sort of introductory post.
I've been wanting to do a blog for the longest time, but my first semester of school kinda caught me off guard.
Now, here I am.

But today I'm still recovering from the fog of Christmast break.... oh my I know breaks are necessary for one's sanity, but sometimes they do more bad than good. My memory got ten times worse, my brain got lazier, and I'm still coming off of all the sugar and lack of sleep.

Well, here are some topics I anticipate writing about:
~pro-life issues and special needs kids
~academics
~books (!!)
~music
~theology and Bible
~and any various bits of short stories that I deem worthy of the cause.
>:o)