Bends of the Emajõgi river

Bends of the Emajõgi river, Remo Savisaar

Click through to see the picture larger and drink in the full beauty.

A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: The Old Testament

A solid, up-to-date overview of contemporary scholarship's understanding of the language, literature, history, and culture of the ancient Hebrews; how the Old Testament is seen in the light of the New; and how each book is cited in the modern 3-year lectionary.

This book isn't for beginners, despite the title. This isn't a Bible basics overview for those who have little knowledge of the Bible. It is for those with scholarly interests or needs. I could see it being an excellent class text. As well as literary structure, cultural context, and historical perspectives, we get a look at how each Old Testament book was understood and used by New Testament authors.

Perhaps most valuable, and certainly unexpected by me, was the consideration of modern Biblical scholarship versus traditional teachings of authorship and when the books were written. Granted, these topics will not be of interest to everyone, but having recently come across statements in Wikipedia that David probably didn't exist except as a sort of King Arthur legend and that authorship of his psalms was likewise doubted, I wanted to get an informed opinion from a trustworthy source. The respectful, even-handed look at these questions, as well as that of Moses's authorship of the Pentateuch let me see the scholarly reasoning and counter-arguments and weigh them for myself. And left me admiring this book even more.

I advise looking at Amazon's sample and using the "surprise me" button to get a feel for the writing and thoroughness. You'll get to see large sections from deep within the text to give you a good idea of what's there. That's what made me take the leap and get it.

These two authors have done their readers a real service with this fine work. Definitely recommended as a resource and, if you are like me, for fascinating reading all the way through.

The only way in is on your knees

I never came into the church as a person who was being taught. I came in on my knees. That is the only way in. When people start praying they need truths; that’s all. You don’t come into the Church by ideas and concepts, and you cannot leave by mere disagreement. It has to be a loss of faith, a loss of participation. You can tell when people leave the Church: they have quit praying.

Actively relating to the Church's prayer and sacraments is not done through ideas. Any Catholic today who has an intellectual disagreement with the Church has an illusion. You cannot have an intellectual disagreement with the Church: that's meaningless. The Church is not an intellectual institution. It is a superhuman institution.

Marshall McLuhan, The Medium and the Light

Truer words were never spoken.

Miss Bailey with the African Shawl

Miss Bailey with the African Shawl, Edwin Augustus Harleston, 1930

Mother Angelica's Answers, Not Promises

From the founder of EWTN Global Catholic Network comes this profoundly practical, humorous, and common-sense approach to answering life's most vexing questions.

I was never much interested in EWTN though I knew it did untold good. Likewise, I was never really drawn to Mother Angelica, the nun who founded EWTN. However, I happened to be surrounded by people who sang her praises in 2003 when I was a fairly new Catholic. So I read this book and found that  Mother Angelica's sturdy common sense grounded in faith was good for both instruction and inspiration.

Recently, after passing along a favorite quote from this book, I wondered if it would be good to recommend to new Catholics. It had been so long that I had only a hazy memory of the contents so I picked it up again. It turns out that it is good not only for new Catholics but for those who've practiced the faith for a while. It was good to read Mother Angelica's steady advice and instruction again, a way to ground myself anew in the basics.

Examples from her life and those of people asking for advice alternate to give us real life examples we can relate to. She never discounts the realities of living daily joys, sorrows, and struggles, but also reminds us of the less tangible realities of loving God and of our ultimate goal of getting to heaven. I found it a good reminder of all those realities, a help on my journey, and inspirational overall.

Recommended for everyone.

Suddenly the wave crashed at my feet. … When I looked up, I noticed that a tiny droplet of water had hit the top of my hand. It was so beautiful. It glistened like a diamond in the sun.

The droplet affected me so deeply with its beauty that I felt unworthy of it, and to my own surprise, as I stood there, I threw it back into the ocean.

My odd little peace was broken when I felt the Lord say to me, "Angelica?"

I said, "Yes, Lord?"

"Did you see the drop?"

I said, "Yes, Lord."

"That drop is like all of your sins, your weaknesses, your frailties and your imperfections. And the ocean is like My Mercy. If you looked for that drop, could yu find it?"

I said, "No, Lord."

"If you looked and looked, could you find it?"

I said, "No, Lord."

And then He said to me, ever so quietly. "So why do you keep looking?"

A Second-Rate Turner

Because of today's featured art.

Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it. Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of a sunset. Sunsets are quite old-fashioned. They belong to the time when Turner was the last note in art. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on. Yesterday evening Mrs. Arundel insisted on my going to the window, and looking at the glorious sky, as she called it. Of course I had to look at it. She is one of those absurdly pretty Philistines to whom one can deny nothing. And what was it? It was simply a very second-rate Turner, a Turner of a bad period, with all the painter's worst faults exaggerated and over-emphasised.

Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying: An Observation

Westminster Sunset

Westminster Sunset, JMW Turner

Russian Balloon Seller

Russian Balloon Seller - streets of Petrograd
1881 Miss Rose Rayner

C.S. Lewis on listening to Hitler

On July 19, Lewis had been listening with Havard to a BBC broadcast of Hitler's "Last Appeal to Great Britain" address before the Reichstag, a litany of threats and promises beginning and ending with a call "to reason and common sense." Lewis was intrigued: "I don't know if I'm weaker than other people," he told Warnie, "but it is a positive revelation to me how while the speech lasts it is impossible not to waver just a little."

Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, The Fellowship

Two days later Lewis was inspired to write The Screwtape Letters.

America and space

In America there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is — that is what makes America what it is.

Gertrude Stein

That certainly struck me with great force when we were driving on our vacation.

Braniff stewardesses in the 1960s

Braniff stewardesses in the 1960s, via Traces of Texas

Braniff stewardesses in the 1960s. They are wearing uniforms designed by Italian fashion designer Emilio Pucci, best known for geometric prints in a kaleidoscope of colors. I kind of wish air travel still had this sense of whimsy about it. It's become such a drudgery. Braniff, of course, was based in Dallas.

That makes any flight more fun!

Butterflies

Sarah Paxton Ball Dodson, Butterflies

Marsh Harrier

Marsh Harrier, Remo Savisaar

I don't know how Remo Savisaar gets such stunning photos, I just know that he does it over and over. It's always hard to choose which to share here.

Do yourself a favor and go to his blog to see all the other gorgeous photos he's taken.

This Diwali — Thugs Of Hindostan (Updated)

As any regular readers are well aware, we're really into Bollywood movies at our house. In addition to the fun of finding a whole new sort of movie experience, we recently realized that we've gradually been educated more about Indian culture and attitudes. (All are reviewed under the Bollywood link above.)

• Ek Tha Tiger taught us that the Indians feel about Pakistan the way we felt about the USSR in James Bond movies.
• Chak De! India taught us that the Indians struggle to put national unity above regional identity.
• English Vinglish showed us how Indians felt about the American immigration experience. And about the importance placed on speaking English in India.
• Aiyyaa (not reviewed) gave us a glimpse of the Hindi ideas of Tamil culture.
• Dhoom 3 showed us that no villain is worse than a bank. Ever.

Recently Rose began looking into top grossing Indian films to supplement her Top 100 Bollywood movies list from which we'd been drawing. This is when we realized that Diwali (the Hindu festival of lights, which is a national holiday) is the time to release your big blockbusters. So many trailers have "This Diwali!" as the release time.

And, luckily, this Diwali (early November) is coming a movie for which I've been waiting. Yes, we've finally come that far. We can eagerly anticipate movie openings.

The director of Tashan and Dhoom 3 teamed with  some of our favorite stars, Aamir Khan and Katrina Kaif, to give us what looks like an amazing historical romp set in the time of the Raj. I know I've never seen Aamir Khan looking like this (the rascally scoundrel).

Check out the trailer (it has captions, in case they don't come on automatically).

Thugs Of Hindostan - Official Trailer

Amitabh Bachchan | Aamir Khan | Katrina Kaif

Set in 1795, the film follows a band of Thugs led by Khudabaksh Azaad, who aspires to free Hindostan (the Indian subcontinent) from the rule of the expanding British East India Company. Alarmed, British commander John Clive sends a small-time Thug from Awadh, Firangi Mallah, to infiltrate and counter the threat.

This may wind up being the first Indian movie we actually go to a theater to watch! There are some theaters north of us with a large Indian community where English subtitled films can be seen. Can't wait!

UPDATE
We did go see this at the theater and enjoyed it enormously. It was a big spectacle and we loved it.

 Hannah and Rose discussed it in episode 39 of An American's Guide to Bollywood podcast.

Café Américain

Café Américain, Edward B. Gordon

One can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth.

It seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.

Simone Weil

I love that phrase, "falling into his arms." This resonates with me particularly since I found God by wondering what the truth was. And I fell into his arms thanks to that pursuit.

Night's Bright Darkness by Sally Read

In the spring of 2010 Sally Read was heralded as one of the bright young writers of the British poetry scene. Feminist, atheist and deeply anti-Catholic, she was writing a book about women's reproduction and sexuality when, during her research, she spoke with a Catholic priest. That mysterious encounter led Sally on a dramatic journey of spiritual quest and discovery which ended up at the Vatican itself, where she was received into the Catholic Church in December of that year.

Read confronts head on the burning question for God that every true Christian harbors: What do you want me to do? In an age of increasing secularism, and in the wake of disillusionment with the Catholic Church following disclosures of abuse, the book takes us to the core of what the Church is all about: Christ and the yearning to be near him.

This was my book club's recent selection. About halfway through I was not sure if I liked Read herself very much but I was sure that I liked her unutterable honesty. She was aggressive and argumentative and irrepressibly attached to extreme progressive thinking. We've all either been her or met her. What I loved was her searing honesty about herself and her conversion. I can forgive almost anything of such an honest person. By the end, as happens with us all if we allow God His way, Read has become someone who is both changed and more herself in a way she never was before.

It was interesting being a convert and reading this. I recognized moments so specifically from my own journey and yet, of course, they were completely foreign because they were shaped to Sally Read's soul and not my own. It made them all the more inspiring for me.

Moved me to the point of tears several times and has helped me on my own journey at this point. Definitely recommended.

Gingersnaps

A recipe for classic crisp, spicy gingersnaps truly worthy of the "snap" in their name. These are the ones I make every Christmas. Simple and delicious.

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski

A stirring group biography of the Inklings, the Oxford writing club featuring J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis is the twentieth century’s most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met weekly in Lewis’s Oxford rooms and in nearby pubs. They discussed literature, religion, and ideas; read aloud from works in progress; took philosophical rambles in woods and fields; gave one another companionship and criticism; and, in the process, rewrote the cultural history of modern times.

Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized reality, wartime writers who believed in hope, Christians with cosmic reach, the Inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the twentieth century's darkest years--and did so in dazzling style.

I've read enough about Tolkien, Lewis, and the Inklings that I resisted this behemoth of a book until now. What hooked me was that the authors delve into both their faith and their literary works more deeply than the other things I've read. I read slowly, just picking it up here and there, and it was oh so satisfying.

One of the things I especially liked was that it humanized and made likable some of the characters who came off as one dimensional in other biographies. For example, Lewis's father always seemed an unfeeling fellow who continually made Lewis miserable. In this book we see excerpts of letters between the father and Warnie, Lewis's much loved brother, where both are worried about some activity of Lewis's. So we get another angle. The same goes for Edith Tolkien who I've simply seen written about as miserable and unfulfilled as a person. That angle is not ignored, but we also see the Tolkien couple's devotion to each other and the good things she got from her marriage to J.R.R. Lewis's wife Joy and their relationship gets similarly balanced treatment.

I'd say that this is the only book you need if you are interested in biographies of Tolkien and Lewis, or simply interested in the Inklings. It is superb and superior to any other books I've read on these subjects.

We're Back!

And we had a wonderful time exploring the Old and New South in Charleston, Savannah, Muscle Shoals, and points en route.

I will share more later ... am diving back into "real life" today and paddling hard to keep my head above water!