We will drain our dearest veins, but we shall be free!

George Grant writes on the victory of the Scottish over the English at Bannockburn, on the 24 June, 1314. (See the two posts written on 24 June)

Justification and Baptism

Rev. Peter Leithart has been writing on justification and baptism recently. I enjoy reading what he posts, but sometimes I can barely understand what he's saying! It takes too much brain power to muddle through all of that scholarly language. I'm glad he's posting these now; they're more easy to read and understand than usual. I recommend reading them; they clear up a few issues that people seem to be debating lately.
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What's this I hear about the Anglican Communion giving the Episcopalians a deadline for straightening up before they're excommunicated?

Too late!

One thing she prays for every day: "I pray not to cause scandal or bring shame upon either of my traditions."

This part in particular made me laugh: "I am both Muslim and Christian, just like I'm both an American of African descent and a woman. I'm 100 percent both."

I don't even know what to say to that. It is such a preposterous statement that it doesn't deserve an argument.

Epiphany Ahead!

An epiphany not unlike my last one ("God is better than humans!").

From WilburBlog, a quote from Robert Capon's Bed and Board:

“The reason the headship of the husband is so violently objected to is that it is misunderstood…the Bible does not say that men and women are unequal. Neither does the Church. There are no second-class citizens in the New Jerusalem. It is husbands and wives that are unequal. It is precisely in marriage…that they enter into a relationship of superior to inferior—of head to body. And the difference there is not one of worth, ability or intelligence, but of role. It is functional, not organic. It is based on the exigencies of the Dance, not on a judgment as to talent. In the ballet, in any intricate dance, one dancer leads, the other follows. Not because one is better (he may or may not be), but because that is his part. Our mistake, here as elsewhere, is to think the equality and diversity are unreconcilable. The common notion of equality is based on the image of the march. In a parade, really unequal beings are dressed alike, given guns of identical length, trained to hold them at the same angle, and ordered to keep step with a fixed beat. But it is not the parade that is true to life; it is the dance. There you have real equals assigned unequal roles in order that each may achieve his individual perfection in the whole. Nothing is less personal than a parade; nothing more so than a dance. It is the choice image of fulfillment through function, and it comes very close to the heart of the Trinity. Marriage is a hierarchical game played by co-equal persons. Keep that paradox and you move in the freedom of the Dance; alter it, and you grow weary with marching (53-54).”

I am not thirsty.

What with Kombucha, Kefir, raw milk, and fresh tomato juice, not to mention water...I've never had so much to drink in my life!
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So, the PCA GA made their decision to approve the FV/NPP report. Reformed News has this summary of the effects:

"The Assembly's adoption of the recommendations has the following effects: 1. The assembly commends the committee's report to the PCA for consideration, 2. The assembly reminds the PCA of the role of the Westminster Standards "as standard expositions of the teachings of Scripture in relation to both faith and practice", 3. The assembly commends the 9 declarations of the report to the denomination as "a faithful exposition of the Westminster Standards" and calls upon ruling and teaching elders to inform "their courts" (i.e., sessions, presbyteries) of any differences between their views and the 9 declarations, 4. The assembly reminds Sessions and Presbyteries of its duty to exercise doctrinal oversight, and 5. The assembly dismisses the study committee with thanks. ...

"Two questions confront Presbyteries as they examine elders who are either accused of holding suspect views or elders who submit their views to Presbyteries for consideration: a. do their views in fact fall under one of nine disallowed views, and b. if so, will their views be considered allowable exceptions or become grounds for further discipline. Currently the PCA does not have uniformity with regards to what exceptions are allowable or disallowable by every presbytery."

Has anyone heard anything else?

I am now the proud owner of...

a Kombucha mother! I felt it appropriate to name her, since she is the Mother of my Kombucha tea. I have named her Eve-- it seemed the best fit. Kombucha is almost like very mild tasting, slightly carbonated apple cider vinegar. That's really the best description I can give. You should try it for yourselves! It warms you right up.

I also have been given some Kefir (keh-FEER) grains with which to make cultured milk! It is tasty, and it takes less time than Kombucha. I had some Kefir of my own making this morning. It is deliciously tangy and resembles very liquid yoghurt.

Fermented beverages...they're more tasty than you might think!

Miscellany

Sorry for the lack of posting; our poor computer died, and I had to wait for Dad to fix it.

I've got a couple of jobs lined up for August: house-cleaning (part-time, $30/hour) and teaching (part-time, $9/hour). I'll have those two for the school year, at least. I'm hoping to save up for my first year's total expenses at college. I e-mailed NSA a while back and they never responded-- I did manage to e-mail at the busiest time of year, though. I'm going to call them later this week, and get more information about scholarships and such things.

I stopped by Borders today and read Leepike Ridge, Nathan Wilson's newest book. It was an excellent story. If you don't have it yet, I highly recommend buying it. Or you could do what this poor girl does, and read it in the bookstore!
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"Beer, if drank with moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit and promotes health."
Thomas Jefferson

Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang, author of the many-coloured Fairy Books, also wrote poetry. Here is one of my favourites:

The Odyssey

AS one that for a weary space has lain
Lull'd by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Ææan isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine—
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again—
So gladly from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
And through the music of the languid hours
They hear like Ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.
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He wrote letters to dead authors as well. Here's one of interest: a letter to Jane Austen.

It must be the Scots-Irish in me.

I had the strangest dream last night: a villian held one of my first-graders hostage; he was going to kill her. So I shot him in the head. I told her I loved her, and then I shot him.

Chesterton again.

What can they mean when they say that we must not put militarism into boys? Can we by any possibility get militarism out of boys? You might burn it out with red-hot irons; you might eventually scourge it out as if it were a mediaeval devil; but except you employ the most poignant form of actual persecution, you certainly will not prevent little boys thinking about soldiers, talking about soldiers, and pretending that they are soldiers. You may mortify and macerate this feeling in them if you like, just as you may mortify and macerate their love of comrades, or their love of wandering…
A child’s instinct is almost perfect in the matter of fighting; a child always stands for the good militarism as against the bad. The child’s hero is always the man or boy who defends himself suddenly and splendidly against aggression. The child’s hero is never the man or boy who attempts by his mere personal force to extend his mere personal influence… To put the matter shortly, the boy feels an abysmal difference between conquest and victory. Conquest has the sound of something cold and heavy; the automatic operations of a powerful army. Victory has the sound of something sudden and valiant; victory is like a cry out of a living mouth. The child is excited with victory; he is bored with conquest. The child is not an Imperialist; the child is a Jingo – which is excellent. The child is not a militarist in the heavy, mechanical modern sense; the child is a fighter. Only very old and very wicked people can be militarists in the modern sense. Only very old and very wicked people can be peace-at-any-price men. The child’s instincts are quite clean and chivalrous, though perhaps a little exaggerated.
But really to talk of this small human creature, who never picks up an umbrella without trying to use it as a sword, who will hardly read a book in which there is no fighting, who out of the Bible itself generally remembers the ‘bluggy’ parts, who never walks down the garden without imagining himself to be stuck all over with swords and daggers – to take this human creature and talk about the wickedness of teaching him to be military, seems rather a wild piece of humour. He has already not only the tradition of fighting, but a far manlier and more genial tradition of fighting than our own. No; I am not in favour of the child being taught militarism. I am in favour of the child teaching it.
- The Illustrated London News, 20 October 1906.

Thanks to The Hebdomadal Chesterton for the extended quotations.

G.K. Chesterton, of course:

I opened a paper only ten minutes ago in which it was solemnly said, in the fine old style of such arguments, that there was a time when men regarded women as chattels. This is outside the serious possibilities of the human race. Men never could have regarded women as chattels. If a man tried to regard a woman as a chattel his life would not be worth living for twenty-four hours. You might as well say that there was a bad custom of using live tigers as arm-chairs; or that men had outgrown the habit of wearing dangerous snakes instead of watch-chains. It may or may not be the fact that men have sometimes found it necessary to define the non-political position of women by some legal form which called them chattels; just as they have thought it necessary in England to define the necessary authority of the State by the legal form of saying that the King could do no wrong. Whether this is so or not I do not know, and I do not care. But that any living man ever felt like that, that any living man ever felt as if a woman was a piece of furniture, with which he could do what he liked, is starkly incredible. And the whole tradition and the whole literature of mankind is solid against it. There is any amount of literature from the earliest time in praise of woman: calling her a mother, a protectress, a goddess. There is any amount of literature from the earliest time devoted to the abuse of woman, calling her a serpent, a snare, a devil, a consuming fire. But there is no ancient literature whatever, from the Ionians to the Ashantees, which denies her vitality and her power. The woman is always either the cause of a wicked war, like Helen, or she is the end of a great journey, like Penelope. In all the enormous love poetry of the world, it is practically impossible to find more than two or three poems written by a man to a woman which adopt that tone of de haut en bas, that tone as towards a pet animal, which we are now constantly assured has been the historic tone of men towards women. The poems are all on the other note; it is always “Why is the queen so cruel?” “Why is the goddess so cold?”

- The Illustrated London News, 6 April 1907.

Guess what I learned to do today?

New St. Andrew's College

Right, here's the deal. I have wanted to attend NSA for years. Yes, really. Miss No-I-won't-go-to-college-and-you-can't-make-me has kept this hidden and is now sheepishly bringing it out into the open. The desire is too great. My parents are still urging independence. And I'm not in danger of getting married any time soon (not from what I can see, anyway). What to do?

I post this is because I know you all will tell me exactly what you think. I've said over and over again, repetitively and redundantly, that I don't want to leave my family if it's possible for me to stay. They, however, are getting closer and closer to pushing me out of the nest. Can I, in good conscience, move to Idaho to go to college when they finally do the deed? Would I even have the money to go to school? Could I withstand the rigours of NSA?

My parents want me to go to college- they always have. I have consistently said no. Can I finally do what they want only because I want to do it too? That seems a silly question.

Advise me, O Counsellours. I need help to think this through.

Spring Break

I have made a huge mistake.

I've been reading Fast Food Nation in my free time this week, and it is disgusting. After learning a few things about the modern-day cattle business, I now feel completely justified in not liking ground beef and in refusing to eat at fast food restaurants. However, I'm also having trouble wanting to eat any meat now...this makes things difficult. Do I eat the nasty meat, origins unknown? Or do I go hungry? Obviously, I cannot go hungry. The alternative to the scary meat is expensive, though. So I've decided: whoever's gonna marry me had better do it quick, so we can get that farm going.

In the meantime, here's a neat website that I've been looking at: www.eatwild.com. They have state-by state lists of grass-fed, anti-antibiotic, hormone-free meat suppliers.

Also, Fast Food Nation has a story in it about a Frenchman named José Bové who ran his tractor into a McDonald's. He also came up with this great slogan : "Non à McMerde!" which (if one wishes to be less offensive) roughly translates to "No to McPoo!". There's another story about a couple of friends who were sued for libel by McDonald's and managed to drag out the trial eleven years and drag McDonald's through the mud while they were at it. You can read about that by googling Helen Steel, Dave Morris, and McLibel. It's a great story.

St. Paul is not a psycho.

I like posting things written by others, especially when I'm busy. It's just so easy. I'm only a little sorry. I'll try to think of something "original" to post soon.

"Where is faith? In a faithful person, you might say. But where is faith, in that person? My gut tells me that for most, explicitly or implicitly, faith, as a fruit of the Spirit's work in man, is thought to be found in a person's brain. This is not surprising since it is relatively easy to manipulate the thoughts of your brain, but it is a mysterious mission (at best) to attempt to control the thoughts of your hands and legs. We, however reformed we claim to be, still want to have some power over God. It seems what is meant by a lot of folks saying, 'sola fide' is really 'faith alone in my brain.' And then it's no wonder that hearty affirmations of efficacious sacraments make them choke. And yet the work of the Spirit is in the whole man: renewing the mind throughout our bodies. If faith is only needed in our brains, St. Paul is psycho, for all his insistence on the subduing of our bodily members to Christ. Lastly, if we as the Church make up Christ's body, and our bodies will one day be made like his body, then this has to inform not only our ecclesiology and eschatology but our ontology and epistemology. There is more going on than our brains can tell us. Not only do we need faithful brains, but we need faithful eyes, faithful knee caps, and faithful finger nails. And that, my friend, is why it's important to dance."

Borrowed from someone named Toby Sumpter- unfortunately, I don't remember who that is.

Another Winner from Sora Colvin

I've been catching up a bit on my blog-reading this morning, and I ran across a good post by Mrs. Colvin. On 17 February, she compared classical education and homeschooling. I have to say, I completely agree with her. She wrote several things that I've been thinking of lately, such as:

"...what is efficient for the teachers and administrators is terribly inefficient -- for the student."

and,

"Simply "managing" -- or, less charitably, "babysitting" -- a group of 20 seven year olds, keeping them attentive and on task as a group, takes a great part of the school day. "

I only have nine and it is extremely difficult to keep their attention. They all work at different paces, and they all want my attention in the same way. They also feed off of each other- one stops working and misbehaves, and the rest join right in. Of course they do! They're seven! Tell me again why we're running the school this way?

I can't wait to school my own children.

Sorry.

Scolded, I repent in dust and ashes.

For the curious, I am still teaching at what Lisa lovingly has termed "The School from Hell". I will not be returning next year. I have, however, tentatively agreed to homeschool three siblings next year. The two oldest are currently in my class. It will pay more, and by that I mean that I'll actually get to EAT the peanuts they poke through the fence.

In other news, we're having fun dancing every Friday night. A big group of us collegiate-types are learning (or relearning, in my case) the waltz and other fun ballrooms dances. For free!

Also, I got this great new book for Christmas (better late than never, eh?)! It's called Deep Comedy, and I am enjoying it quite a bit. Unfortunately, I haven't much time to read.

And for the deep-dark-corners-curious, I am being followed around by not one but two menfolk. One: maybe; the other: not so much. That's all I have to say about that.

What, again?

Yes, it's true. It's Snowing!

What has happened to our weather? Are we stealing Snow from some northern state? It's like a miracle- Snow three times in one winter! It's actually Winter! I can't stop using exclamation points! That's how weird this is! And how excited I am! Yay!

In honor of Snow, I present to you...
Five Things I love that are white:
1. SNOW. Of course!
2. Yoghurt. Best late-night (read: ten o'clock) snack ever.
3. Paper- to read of off, to write on, and to cut into clever shapes.
4. Milk. We found someone who has cows. :)
5. Clean sheets that are cold when you first lie down but are so warm in the morning that you don't want to move.

Enough silliness for one night. I'm going to bed- church tomorrow!

This is ridiculous.

School's been closed since Friday last and won't open again until Monday. It's just a little snow!

No really, the school parking lot, which is horrible to begin with, is a sheet of ice. Hopefully it's melted by now, but it's supposed to snow again tomorrow, so there's no telling.

That's a whole week that the kids have had to forget their spelling words. That is not good. Monday shall be quite interesting.

It's snowing!

They cancelled church! Isn't that odd? School was out Friday and will be out tomorrow, too. Meanwhile, I'm drinking coffee and cutting out snowflakes. A happy occupation.

I realised something today. My parents used to tell me that a man wanted a clever wife who could carry on an intelligent conversation. They haven't said that in a while. I was wondering if that means I should stop reading and keep my mouth shut now? I shouldn't want to be too clever and monopolise the conversation.

Anyway, it was a funny thought. It reminds me of their story about my beginning to talk- evidently they thought I would never start, and then when I did, they thought I would never stop!