Pulling It All Together

This class was challenging to say the least. Not because it was hard reading, but for my mind to grasp the ideas so foreign to my own background was difficult for the first month or so of class. My Christian tradition is so unlike the one taught in class. I feel ever so strong about my own tradition, but I think I came to a better understanding of the one presented in class. I still resist it, but I think I understand it a little better.
My main question during the term I have not expressed is "Is it wrong to resist someone else's epistemology?" I keep coming to the fact it is okay to resist what I believe to be untrue, but to accept the person who believes differently. I do not believe this is intolerance. I believe every single person does this everyday. Christians believe what they believe to be true. On the other hand postmodernists believe what they believe to be true. Muslims, animists, pantheists, Catholics, Hindus all believe what they believe to be true. This does not mean a person should kill someone else because they believe differently as Montaigne argues in his essay "Apology for Raymond Seabond."

I saw a constant theme through every book I read this semester. Montaigne summarizes:
For likewise these are my humors and opinions; I offer them as what I believe, not what is to be believed. I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me."

This led him to say, "Only the fools are certain and assured." These two concept I found in all of the books I read this semester except for Dante. However, Dante changed throughout his journey through hell.
Wordswoth writes:
"Though changed, no doubt, from what I was, when forest
I came among these hills...
I cannot paint
What then I was." Tintern Abbey (66-80)

Professor Anderson writes: "I remember the intellectual joy I felt when I realized that this faith of my tradition and that it makes sense, it answers to my experience. It's about my experience, and all experience - it says experience is more important than dogma, more important than systems."
I believe he is talking about the experiences happening externally and then creating new internal experiences that are life changing at times.

Augustine wrote: "This is the way I should like him to rejoice, preferring to find you in his uncertainty rather than in his certainty to miss you."

Although I see the connection between these books and the thoughts they consist of I do resist them. I believe I can be certain of God because He gave man special revelation through His Word and general revelation through nature. Psalm 19 says that the heavens declare the glory of God. Unlike Wordsworth I believe God is not nature, but created nature and that is how we see God's glory, through the intricacies of all living things, the workings of the earth's systems, and the magnitude of the universes vastness. These all point to a Creator or Higher Being. I can be certain of God's characteristics because He told man through His Word. The Word is His Word not man's invention.

Even though I resist the epistemology of the writer's the class studied I hope my grade reflects only my ability to understand and interact with the texts rather than my resistance to them.

Associated Memories

Wordsworth writes in Book XI about the death of his father. He remembers:
"And afterwards, the wind and sleety rain,
And all the business of the elements,
The single sheep, and the one blasted tree,
And the bleak music of that old stone wall,
The noise of wood and water, and the mist..."
"That in this later time, when storm and rain
Beat on my roof at midnight, or by day
When I am in the woods, unknown to me
The workings of my spirit thence are brought."

He remembers a scene that reminds him of the time around his father's death. Whenever he sees these same things throughout his life, he is brought back to the death of his father.

In my own life I have a memory somewhat like that. I remember being young with my brother sister and dad. We were in a mall and he bought us ice cream cones. I had mint chocolate chip. From that day on that was my favorite ice cream. Until recently I did not realize that it was not the flavor I liked. It was being with my dad. He divorced my mom when we were quite young (I was 2). He was in the Army and so he was never around. He was in Germany and then in Korea for a long while. And then in other states far from us. When we did get to see him they were special times to me. I was saw daddy's girl before he left and I always felt a strong connection with my dad.
My birthday was last weekend and my husband bought mint chocolate chip ice cream for me. Having the ice cream brought me back to that day in the mall having a cone of ice cream with Dad.
I like other ice cream flavors better than mint chocolate chip, but whenever I have it I am brought back. Sort of reminds me of that Kenny Chesney country song "I Go Back." He sings about every time he hears certain song or eats certain things he is reminded of different experiences of his childhood.

Deliberate Holiday

"-Ah! better far than this, to stray about
Voluptuously through fields and rural walks,
And ask no record of the hours, given up
To vacant musing, unreproved neglect
Of all things, and deliberate holiday.


It feels like forever since I took a deliberate holiday without having a pit in my stomach telling me I need to be doing homework or I need to be packing or unpacking.

My husband and I moved to Oregon from Michigan the week of Christmas. We spent time with our families and then went to the task of unpacking and going from store looking and finally buying furniture to suit our taste and our apartment. We had a week to get our registration done, but by then all the advisors were on vacation. We next had to find where our classes were. I had never been to a public school and it seemed huge at the time. (Now not quite so big.) We then continued to unpack our house and open a bank account and go to school.
Life was busy, but it got even busier when school started. Being an English major means there is a lot of reading. I thought my eyes were going to bug out and my mind could not input another word and that was after only the fourth week. My dad's wedding was three weeks into the term and there was no fun to be had because I knew I had to do Geology reading, Writing reading, and other reading for my English classes. I was with my brother and sister and of course they wanted to stay up to 1:00 and 2:00 in the morning. Monday came around and set me back two weeks (I played catch up.)
My birthday was last weekend and I had a paper due Monday morning. The pit got bigger.
Things are wrapping up and maybe in a week that deliberate holiday is coming. I can almost taste and see it.

My husband and I plan to go camping and see some of Oregon we have not seen for a long time. Then the mad race to finish the term starts all over again. And a deliberate holiday will once again be far off in the distance. Maybe that is the way it is supposed to be. If I had no homework and no job I would be twiddling my thumbs and wasting my life.

A Clothes Dryer Ride

As Woodsworth says, "Sometimes it suits me better to shape out/ Some tale from my own heart, more near akin/ To my own passions and habitual thoughts..."

Here is spot of time in my life:
My sister and I worked at a summer camp together for the first time. I was in between my Junior and Senior year of high school and my sister in between her Freshman and Sophmore year. We were best friends at this time and I was the sane resposible voice that kept her out of trouble.
One day my sister was up in the laundry room with a few other staffers. The camp just got a new clothes dryer and it was humungous. My sister was small. The dryer was so big everyone thought Sherri would be able to fit inside. She crawled inside and they shut the door and they turned it on. She went a few revolutions and the door flew open. The maintnance man yelled for her to come out. He said he would be telling the director of the camp.
My sister was scared spitless. She was afraid she would be fired. We talked to a cook in the kitchen and he thought she would be fired too. My sister decided to go talk to the director about it, thinking it would be better to have her fess up than not.
When she told him he did not say anything. At the next staff meeting a few days later he asked the staff to stay out of the dryer and that was the end of the matter. He showed complete grace and mercy. 10 years later my sister is on full time staff as the program director.

I guess this illustrates a habitual thought I have. God's grace. He is gracious to me even though I deserve death. To me it is amazing. I also think God forgives me so easily when I make big mistakes why do I find it hard to forgive my husband for making small insignificant mistakes? God's grace puts things in perspective.

Disenchantment

Woodsworth in his poem “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” describes his love for nature and the mystical spirituality it provides for his life. He then goes to France and sees the beginnings of the French Revolution. He becomes disenchanted with life, but then he returns home to see the beautiful sight he knew so well. He tried to get back the spiritual experience nature brought him in the past. He presents a hope even in the presence of doubt.

Parallel to this is I Corinthians 13:11:
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”

I watched a Martin Luther movie as I blogged about yesterday. The prince who was in Martin Luther’s region repeated this same verse in reference to his worship of relics, which Martin Luther was preaching against. The prince was innocent before when he was worshipping the relics. He was going along with what the Church expected of him. Then Martin Luther disenchanted him and he analyzed the situation. And came to a greater innocence by putting the relics away. He no longer wanted to worship the relics, but still was apart of the Church. He questioned his faith and then came to a deeper faith by his analysis of it.

Martin Luther

Tonight my husband and I went to small group Bible Study and we watched a movie on Martin Luther.I felt so strong about the issues.

The Roman Catholic Church said there were no Christians outside the Roman Catholic Church. The common man/peasant needed to pay indulgences to keep his soul and the souls of his family and dead family from purgatory. They believed in the relics to keep man out of purgatory.
My heart aches.

Christ died for a much bigger cause than a basilica to worship in. He died for more than giving a small window of opportunity of going to heaven rather than hell.
God is so much greater than petty political battles.

He (Christ) died for so much more.
He died and we can be free.
We need no more. We need no less.
His work paid for all my sins. For every man’s Sin if he would just believe.
Martin Luther I believe is the man who coined the phrase "“Scripture Alone!”" We need nothing else, but God’s word and Christ’s sacrificial death.

I was listening to a guy at the study explain how he does not call himself a Christian, but a Christ follower.” They mean the same thing. His point was that he did not want to be affiliated with any church. Isn’t that sad. I am not so sure that is what God wants from His Church. He wants unity in belief and purpose.
We as man have perverted what He perfected.

I too say “Scripture Alone!"

Time Stamping

Out of all the special moments in my life there are only a few that stick out in my mind. I have long since given up on journal writing a past time my husband wants me to pick up.
This is the craziest thing, but I remember the exact date I received my last tetanus shot. It was December 17, 1997. I got it right after I got my driver’s license.
Everyone remembers the day they got married, but how many can remember the day they got engaged or the date they graduated from high school or the date they road their first bicycle. These are all mile stones, nut the dates somehow get lost in the memory, which brings me to the question of what is the importance of date stamping?

Have you ever watched a Christmas movie and every important aspect of a person’s life has happened on Christmases past and present. A Christmas Carol for example. Why is that? Is it important that it all happen on Christmas? It sure makes it easy to review ones life if everything happens on one day a year.

However in real life it just does not happen that way. Life is full of ups and downs, which too often become forgotten with new and recent memories.

When I was first interested in my husband I wrote everything down in my journal. What I thought he meant by such and such, when I first fell in love with him, etc. We look back to those things and relive those moments. It revives the feelings of first falling in love.

I guess I wish I still wrote a journal what I feel and experience, but all too often I am just trying to live day to day without reflection of that day. Life sort of just passes by. Yes, it is sad.

I liked what Vicki Tolar Burton said on Monday. She was talking about John Wesley. She said that John Wesley strongly believed writing a journal is reading your own life. I feel right now I read too much, but maybe I need to be reading even more and not only reading, but also reflecting.