It does–because it has a Spanish keyboard and I´m not searching for the Ñ in the symbols. It will probably eventually slow my English writing. The @ is a combination of the Q-key and this thing called ‘alt gr.’
But it´s a quick little bugger, and it´s got Windows 7–not bad that–and I´m (apostrophes are a bit harder to reach) learning the joys of OpenOffice, which are considerable.
Why don´t any word processors other than WordPerfect allow one to click and drag margins?
Posted by unknowing on December 31, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/new-computer-allows-sermons-to-be-written-faster/
Wonderful how after a day of contemplating the text, and a day of putting things into order and thinking how exactly it all ought to be shaped, it only took an hour to put together the notes I’ll use.
I hope it is a system that will work better for me in the future. I struggle like Billy-O with my notes, and some of the problem is that I start writing them too soon. I think I have figured out how to make myself notes for when I get ready to type the notes.
Well, we’ll see how this system works out. It does feel like a little triumph. No doubt part of the sense of triumph is due to the feeling that I am at last beginning to understand that glorious man, Isaiah.
That’s two triumphs this week: the bulletin and the notes for Sunday night. There was a third minor one. For some reason they have till today stored a lot of junk and uncleaness (markers, candles, tacks, metal rods) in the pulpit. I asked the lady cleaning the church today: Why is the pulpit used as a trash can? It was clean (utterly bare) 5 minutes later. She made some remarks about—well, that’s the last place they should—and—only ought to be a Bible there.
Posted by zartman on December 28, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/a-good-work/
The Book of Ebenezer le Page
Thanks, Linda!
Posted by unknowing on December 27, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/among-the-loot/
Posted by unknowing on December 25, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/25/gledileg-jol/
For Lincoln MacVeagh
Never tell me that not one star of all
That slip from heaven at night and softly fall
Has been picked up with stones to build a wall.
Some laborer found one faded and stone-cold,
And saving that its weight suggested gold
And tugged it from his first too certain hold,
He noticed nothing in it to remark.
He was not used to handling stars thrown dark
And lifeless from an interrupted arc.
He did not recognize in that smooth coal
The one thing palpable besides the soul
To penetrate the air in which we roll.
He did not see how like a flying thing
It brooded ant eggs, and bad one large wing,
One not so large for flying in a ring,
And a long Bird of Paradise’s tail
(Though these when not in use to fly and trail
It drew back in its body like a snail);
Nor know that be might move it from the spot—
The harm was done: from having been star-shot
The very nature of the soil was hot
And burning to yield flowers instead of grain,
Flowers fanned and not put out by all the rain
Poured on them by his prayers prayed in vain.
He moved it roughly with an iron bar,
He loaded an old stoneboat with the star
And not, as you might think, a flying car,
Such as even poets would admit perforce
More practical than Pegasus the horse
If it could put a star back in its course.
He dragged it through the plowed ground at a pace
But faintly reminiscent of the race
Of jostling rock in interstellar space.
It went for building stone, and I, as though
Commanded in a dream, forever go
To right the wrong that this should have been so.
Yet ask where else it could have gone as well,
I do not know—I cannot stop to tell:
He might have left it lying where it fell.
From following walls I never lift my eye,
Except at night to places in the sky
Where showers of charted meteors let fly.
Some may know what they seek in school and church,
And why they seek it there; for what I search
I must go measuring stone walls, perch on perch;
Sure that though not a star of death and birth,
So not to be compared, perhaps, in worth
To such resorts of life as Mars and Earth—
Though not, I say, a star of death and sin,
It yet has poles, and only needs a spin
To show its worldly nature and begin
To chafe and shuffle in my calloused palm
And run off in strange tangents with my arm,
As fish do with the line in first alarm.
Such as it is, it promises the prize
Of the one world complete in any size
That I am like to compass, fool or wise.
—Robert Frost
Posted by unknowing on December 24, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/24/a-star-in-a-stone-boat/
And so, in the cool of the morning we got on the bus out of Mongui and back to Sugamuxi. In the glorious terminal we changed buses but remained with the same company (flota Sugamuxi). This time our destination was the onion farming metropolis of Aquitania on the shores of the blue lagoon: el lago de Tota.
You climb out of Sogamoso till you can almost see the whole of it sprawled in the valley under the usual pall. You climb along the mountains, pausing to pick up settlers from the outlying regions until the bus is pretty full of hearty, rough people bearing sacks of potatoes and other such bulky parcels home. The soil is still yellow; the cactus, eucalyptus and pines—glorious pines and cedars—still dominant. The hills roll away full of crops and cows cropping the meadows. Dirt roads wind into the distance.
Once over the hill, you come within sight of the lake with all the onion fields spread around it, the groves of pine, the farm huts. Several places to stay, at least three, before you get to Aquitania. Everywhere the smell of the onions, like the smell of an honest peasant. You can see the gleaming bundles of long onion (green onions, only grown larger: everything is rougher, harvested at a less tender stage here in Colombia).
Aquitania is a pretty trashy place, but mostly farmers live there and you can look at the people instead of the buildings, though the church is pretty impressive. We went into an old one beside it, a dim hall of elevenses. The thing up at the lake is to eat trout. We didn’t, but we had some pretty good hot sauce with the empanada I had, the pastel de yuca she had. They had cochinitos—a sort of hot dog empanada. Didn’t try it.
We were going to travel all the way around the lake, but in consultation with the bus drivers decided we would instead simply return. On another trip, not carrying a four-pound ruana everywhere, we’ll explore the lake surroundings better. (That is the difficulty though. The ruana is perfect for the climate of those regions, but a lot of bulk to heave about. We should have stayed in Iza and from that paradise ventured to circumambulate the lake. Next time.)
So an hour or so out, and hour back, a wonderful view all the way and a bright, sunny day (both days, actually). Nothing like green pines on the hillside, the rusty needles on the slope under them, the blue above, and the blue lake in the distance. Back in Sogamoso in time for an excellent lunch. Coffee and some studying, some strolling in the sunlight, then a ride home.
Home, and the stupid crowds on the TransMilenio. Home and the gas shut off because a bill I thought I’d paid was not (home and the internet—on which I paid the bill and got the gas working now). Home and a brisk cold shower and then the reviving of a pizza idea that went awry before we left. Home to formulate plans to leave again, to spend time in the TTS waiting to depart it for better regions. Wish I lived in Sogamoso.
Posted by unknowing on December 23, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/aquitania/
Most of the chaps hawking rides in the TTS don’t have a clue where the bus to Mongui usually parks, for all that one leaves every 20 minutes or so. The TTS isn’t that long either—about the length of a soccer field (una cancha de balonpie—to use an odd and infrequent word). Head toward the entrance where the taxis line up—legally. Wander around there looking for a sign.
It costs 3000 COPs from Sogamoso to Mongui and the first part is the worst. Sogamoso is expanding out beyond the coliseum and the bull ring. They’ve even got what somewhat resembles a mall building out that way, and all kinds of industrial parkery. You go through the valley and count the brick kilns, and if it is early in the morning there’s a pall of dust over the valley from the coal mine and the brick burning. Peculiar smell, that of the brick kilns.
One of the nicest things about that ruinous country is that they produce the bricks and so they don’t build with uglier materials. The bricks are from that very yellow soil, and turn out almost purple, some of them. Any house made of those bricks has a certain fundamental decency to it that even the atrocious building habits of some Colombians cannot eradicate.
As you move along that not-altogether-paved road toward Mongui, you climb into the country of pines and eucalyptus, and the industry falls behind. Lots of cactus looking flora that way, along with the eucalyptus. It has the smell of a dry country, and the bare earth under the eucalyptus. There’s a variety of cactus that likes the old mud-brick walls especially, and you see it there.
Eventually you wind into Mongui and there you notice a wonder: they’re trying to preserve something of the aesthetic symmetry and appeal of their town. It is a bit like Villa de Leiva which for reasons of tourism they keep to colonial standards of architecture and painting. Only Mongui is less monotonously painted than Villa de Leiva, and is not crawling with filthy tourists. They have the obligatory white with green in Mongui, but they trimmed the green with red and gold. They must have done it recently: it is all very nice. Best town in the country.
Their church is impressive. It was settled by Franciscans about 100 years after Bogota. Never close to anything earth shattering, it has remained small. It’s famous for making soccer balls. So they have other leather goods. It has clear waters and abundant, a stream rushing under a bridge that took them 100 years to complete (17th to 18th century), and steep hills.
No tourists all over the place! We saw an awful lot of honest peasantry. All in ruanas—and you understand the value of them there with how chilly it is (we understood it so well we got a decent ruana; weighs 3–4lbs, all wool). I asked the guy who was telling me a good ruana costs $60 or more where all the peasants got their ruanas. He said they make them.
Everybody has a ruana there. And they’re all farmers or laborers of one sort of another. We went into a bakery with mismatched tables in the morning—ancient wooden everything there—and it started filling up with cheerful, early-morning peasants having tinto and corazones, all saying Buenos Dias and whatnot. You want to see people who live by the soil and have for generations, go to Mongui.
We stayed in a hotel at the top of the hill guarded (and I think owned, though he denied it for pecuniary reasons) by an old coot. Talkative old boy who used gestures and whistles freely when the word didn’t spring to mind fast enough. Wouldn’t give me a discount (35000 COPs a person/night), claiming he was not the proprietor and some woman was. Never saw the woman.
He was on the balcony when we walked up. Door locked. We rang. He looks out and yells how much it costs and then asks should he come down and open. Later he talked my ear off about the paramo and a volcano that exploded in the seventeenth century and whatnot. If you see anything curious in the town you can ask him about it and if he doesn’t know the explanation, he’ll invent an interesting one.
The accommodations were fine for a hick village. We got an excellent and heavy wool blanket for our bed. They have electric showers, unfortunately, but the water warms up pretty well. We had a good view—got the room with the best view because the place was deserted. Rather eccentrically run, but not too eccentrically.
So you can walk around in the highlands, and walking around in the highlands near Mongui is apparently safe (it is not so much in Cundinamarca). I want to return and do so, but various factors were opposed to this. You can hike out to the paramo, see odd rock formations, and generally enjoy the tropical sun in a chilly region. We almost stayed a second night. It really is pleasant just to walk in that town where everything is pretty old or looks pretty old, and all the natives seem friendly. We will return.
Posted by unknowing on December 22, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/mongui/
Back in Bogota, a city with a clown for a mayor and deteriorating. There’s hope: one of the three investigative branches of the federal government might suspend the mayor for three months to investigate his scandals. They’ve already seized all his goods. We can only hope he just plain flees the country, but I doubt we’ll be so lucky. He’s stubborn and he isn’t too bright, and that’s a bad combination for all of us who live here.
So we got out of the city for a couple of days, and nice days they were too. I’m still not tired of seeing Boyaca and my old town, Sogamoso. (There are many noble trees in Boyaca.) Last time we were in my old town it was raining and the place was wonderful in the rain. This time it was sunny and it is a wonderful sunny city. Llaneros (cowboy-type hicks from the plains), Bogotano-type machine-pressed people, peasants in hats and old-fashioned garb and other decent looking folk roam its busy ways, besides the bums and such. Hot weather and the chilly highlands mingle in Sogamoso, and so there’s variety.
What does one do there? First, get out of the bus terminal. Compared to Tunja’s, la Terminal de Transporte de Sogamoso (TTS—I want a t-shirt with their logo) is bright, airy, and soars like a cathedral; but that isn’t saying much unfortunately, and the fauna is about as bad. Get toward the center of town. It is the metropolis for a whole lot of peripheral hick towns, and there is a lot of different shopping there—modern and bright, ancient and dim, and of the street variety (I even saw Ecuadorians, they’re everywhere selling cheap, machine-made sweaters on all the sidewalks of Colombia).
But we didn’t go to shop, we went to eat. Two blocks straight north along the road that runs in front of the cathedral you’ll come to the Royal Sogamoso Hotel and in it find a restaurant called Los Toriles—best restaurant in the world. The otherwise excellent waiters will give you a menu from which you can choose many good things all at a good price. The service is excellent, the music is usually unobjectionable and sometimes commendable, the patrons behave themselves and the food is worth the price. You could end up spending close to $25 for two people if you go all out.
But you can just tell them you want the ‘menu’, which means the day’s special executive lunch. It costs a lot less ($4), involves soup, juice, a choice of beef, chicken or trout, and the sides which vary—beans one day, lentils another, a potato either salted and boiled with the skin, or peeled and boiled, or turned into fries but always a potato and of course the rice, a very fine bit of salad and then desert. There is one waiter who’s awfully proud of the deserts he dabs onto the little dishes. You get one fork, one knife, one soup spoon and one desert spoon. Napkins are unlimited.
The soup tends to be under salted. Add salt, and add some of the hot sauce they serve in a bottle wrapped in a napkin.
The meat is excellent and the trout is pretty good too. Chicken you can get anywhere here, but I bet theirs outdistances many. Let me recommend the meat. They have outstanding meat there. Best I’ve had here—though I don’t range far and wide looking for meat. Had it two days straight and I wish I could repeat tomorrow. But I can’t because I am no longer there.
Not much to do in Sogamoso after you have lunch and then go to the excellent coffee shop on the main shopping street and have an excellent coffee and watch the people pass. I usually have two coffees, but you can get fruit juice. I saw the owner of the establishment today and were I not a timid person, I would have congratulated him. Had I had my coffee with rum, cognac, whisky or amaretto—as offered on the menu—perhaps I would have, heartily.
I know people there, but they were not around. It is a pretty nasty town in many bits—all given over to car parts, bus repairs, motor oil soaked streets and whatnot. The market is interesting because of the things it attracts out of the countryside. And the sun on Sogamoso is fierce—but in the highlands the air doesn’t get so hot—which is why I say it is glorious in the rain. If you sit in the shade or walk under the palms then the sun is glorious too. It is the old Muisca indians’ capital for worshipping the sun.
But the other advantage to Sogamoso is all the hick towns less than an hour away. We went to two.
Posted by unknowing on December 22, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/out-of-here-stage-one/
Here in Bogota you’ll find different kinds of the arepa Boyacense. An arepa is a griddled corn-meal cake. The paisas of Antioquia eat some dry and terrible ones. There are more mealy arepas in Bogota and no doubt elsewhere, which usually include cheese throughout or in the middle. The small, sweet, yellow corn variety with a sort of cottage cheese they call cuajada in it makes the boyacense arepa. They have some less authentic variations that are really good on sale downtown where the architecture is better. They have a machine that spins them and roasts the outside, and they finish them off on the griddle.
I live in a neighborhood full of Boyacense influence. They stack their ugly houses up along the treeless, concrete roads, with all kinds of stores on the street level—square affairs with each story protruding further into the tangled canyon. You see grease covered men banging on motorcycles or reclining under the obligatory poster-whore, watching time pass inside an ill lit, dingy shop. Walking by a junkery reminds me of my childhood, as does going by a small, under stocked drug-store, seeing oil saturated, hard-packed earth and smelling it, smelling the rubber of a bicycle shop, smelling the wood smoke of an asadero—meat roaster—walking under a tangle of wires beyond which might be the sky, and on sidewalks of cracked concrete and dirt. Rivers and stagnant swamps of raw sewage on which the marsh hens and the foul plants somehow survive do as well. I pass a fishmonger and all the fish look like they come from somewhere down river from here, which they do. Today I was reminded how little here has changed, and I was surprised because for so long I’ve felt that things here had really changed. I thought things had gotten worse, but really, I think they’ve always been this way.
It’s Friday and on my walk I passed the local drunk twice. He had a different bottle of beer each time. If it’s Friday and he’s not three sheets to the wind by 10AM then it’s a bad Friday. I’ve seen him when the beer guys come to exchange the crates of empties for crates of fulls: he sorts through the empties making sure they’re really empty. In the cigar and liquor stores the old guys are already sitting in plastic chairs staring at the street and being blasted with music which cannot be described as either intelligent or beautiful. The less-than-a-dollar-a-bottle beer helps with that, in suitable quantities, of course. What one misses from the dirt roads of youth are the bottle caps for pavement outside one of these establishments. It reminds me, for some reason, that butcher’s no longer advertise with a faded, red flag outside. They have signs now, though the places smell the same as always.
I saw a tree whose name I do not know yet, but whose branches move in curves that hold hot weather in their shadow. The broad, shiny leaves begin like horns that point toward the heavens, and as they open they fall in a cascade of green and the intense white of reflected sunlight. I saw a disheveled cedar with its wild limbs, another variety with softer, longer threads of evergreen like a witch’s wild hair. Beside the airport’s embankment I saw willows with all their green freshness, their trailing, melancholy fronds. They have been using rubber trees in Bogota in the recent decade too. The great caucho sabanero for the parks—like fat men squatting at their beer but with wild grace—the smaller, startling, tequendama rubber for the avenues and roads. The wild cherries I have been able to remember from the one we had next door in Sogamoso; I see them all the time now. I have been able to name the trees more, and I need to do it more; their awareness is with me, and with it the awareness of other things.
My neighborhood is full of the influence of my childhood. Do you know what I do not remember at all from life in the department of Boyaca when I was young? Arepas Boyacenses like the one I got to go.
Posted by unknowing on December 17, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/arepa-boyacense/
Today I had my last class with my first English student. I’ve had over 200 hours of classes with him. I’ve learned from him and I left him very satisfied about his progress in English.
He works in service and understands its ways. Even though he was my client, he would always walk me out to bid me farewell. Not infrequently, he’d buy me coffee and an arepa. He was so persuaded about the importance of continuity and so committed to improving that once when he had been at work till 2 AM he was present five hours later for our scheduled class.
After my first class with him I was almost physically sick. The day had started before 5 AM and his class in those times was at night. He was demanding and it was my first day and I had no plan or even idea. I think he was very skeptical of me after that first and awful class. I was.
I’m not going to miss getting up at 5 AM (Shortly after he began we switched to two mornings a week, and it was a better and easier schedule since starting at 7 AM and only two days a week beat 5:30 PM four days a week) or the journey all the way over to his work; but I’ll miss him. He’s a sensible, 53 year-old, responsible engineer with a lot of knowledge of the world, his country and many other things (Colombia is a hotbed of engineering, but, you know, engineers are ok, mostly).
Today I also spent my last day doing administrative stuff at work. I am partly convinced this next is silly, but I love to hear English, Scottish, Australians and Irish wittering on in all their various accents. They even make the American accent interesting. Perhaps it is the variety of it. I admire the way things can sometimes be put by the English, and I will always envy the Irish, of all of them, the most. It is perhaps a ridiculous but for me nevertheless real pleasure to hear an Australian say, “Hello Joel!” with that sort of witchy U sound with which they pronounce the second vowel of my name. Had one who said that with real relish and I never told her I felt like I was in the presence of a witch because I was pretty sure she wouldn’t understand that I truly meant it as a compliment.
There are certain parts of England, it seems to me—and I’m not sure where—where whingeing is endemic. The accent suits it perfectly, and they take it very seriously. That, of course, may be just my perception. They are very soft, usually, wheedling type of people. Not as frank or reserved as the Australians. All of it reminds me of how strange it sounded one day when a bunch of Americans with our broad accents had the teacher’s room to ourselves; strange and pleasing, with our idioms and all.
Speaking of idioms, I am going to miss hearing someone enter with the question, “Where’s bloody Hector?”
Washing up, I reckon.
I asked Francis why he was leaving. “I’m returning to that sceptered isle.” Prosaically, Americans tend to say, “I’m going home.” Philly, Atlanta, Nantucket, L.A.
And one grows closer to the tacit things. When an English complains to a Scottish about a defeat suffered by an English team and the immediate, sarcastic affected devastation occurs . . . well, it’s very funny. I learned that one with the pub quiz refusal. Why didn’t I come to the pub quiz? I’m not English, I replied, and with a pained expression Gordon said he wasn’t either, he’s Scottish—he should be in Poland now (Poulind).
No more working with chaps called Tashi, or Razwan or the Irish lad who looks pained and outraged when his students fail to show up. There were a bunch of interesting personalities, and the expression of them a curious interval in my life, and I’ll miss it. Besides the grammatically technical conversations one was able to have from time to time, it was one of the best things about the ESL world.
Posted by unknowing on December 16, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/a-day-of-endings/
One of the vices of this little chap, especially having a 15 day limit on the three books he’s allowed to check out of the library at a time, is that I tend to neglect my fine, if small, personal library. I want to finish the books checked out before they’re due back, and then when I turn them in, I have to get some more.
Which doesn’t mean I don’t return some unfinished. I started on The Brothers Karamazov, with relish, but not enough, and I took it back to leave for another time for a joy. My relationship with that book is secure, because now I’m re-reading, and while I like to be scrupulous, one needn’t be all that scrupulous with re-readings; it is legitimate just to enjoy bits. I’ve never finished Scruton’s Aesthetics of Music because it wasn’t working for me—though I hope to.
I’m almost at the end of the first volume of my two volume Mallory’s Morte. It is a book for all of life, like the Kalevala, the Silmarillion and the Worm. My relationship with that book is secure. I know I will always be able to pick it up with joy and take in a few or a lot of its swift chapters with relish for the language, for the ideals, for the persons therein depicted.
I’m giving my library more of the glad eye these days knowing that sometime soon it will be growing considerably. Time to quit hoarding some of its pleasures, such as Williams on Dante and the C.S. Lewis correspondence.
Posted by unknowing on December 14, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/books-for-all-of-life/
Water cannot rise above its own level. Neither can a Christian by any sudden spasmodic effort rise above the level of his own spiritual life.
I have seen under the sun how a man of God will let his tongue go all day in light and frivolous conversation, let his interest roam abroad among the idle pleasures of this world, and then, under the necessity of preaching at night, seek a last minute reprieve just before the service and by cramming desperately in prayer try to put himself in a position where the spirit of the prophet will descend upon him as he enters the pulpit. By working himself up to an emotional white heat he may afterward have reason to congratulate himself that he had much liberty in preaching the Word. But he deceives himself and there is no wisdom in him. What he has been all day and all week is what he is when he opens his Bible to expound unto the people. Water cannot rise above its own level.
—Tozer
Posted by unknowing on December 14, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/on-a-sober-life/
I miss Reuben sandwiches a lot. We’ll have to see about it. Katrina can get sauerkraut but its the corned beef that worries her. Why not pastrami? Have to search for the right bread too.
Want to know about weird importations? We can get refried beans here. Not because they bring them from Mexico, but because they’re part of the “Mexican food” of American cuisine, and so along with peanut butter, sweet (why only sweet?) pickle relish and Old El Paso taco products, we get refried beans.
* * *
We soujourned out of the savannah and down to hot country. The vegetation is so rampant in Colombia. On the way back it was raining on the Andes. Is there anything more comely than a hillside all in green?
One hour from here are the great guaduas (big bamboo type chaps), banana trees and orange, different flowers, parasite festooned oaks, coconut and date palms. It’s not even the jungle at that altitude, and the mountains soaring all about it, torrents and muggy weather with high ceilings and fat, lazy people and air conditioning pouring like economics from the opened doors of banks.
* * *
Having a hard bed is really nice for sitting up and reading in.
* * *
Last week of being an English teacher . . . at least for the foreseeable future. I’m ready to throw in the towel.
* * *
Looks like we’re eating the last of the tapioca too. Life draws its own conclusions.
Posted by unknowing on December 13, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/of-a-monday/
IN the providence of God the microphone wasn’t working well this morning and so it was turned off for my class. Wonderful, and they could all hear me well—we have a long, flat roof. The only thing was that our fake piano wasn’t heard too well. Maybe there’s room there to make a case for a real piano sometime down the road.
What’s wrong with artificial amplification? What’s right about it when it isn’t necessary? and, as with anything artificial, at its heart there is a lie.
Have you tried it? Have you found the difference? The difference with or without it is real when you’re trying to be heard by 100 people.
Posted by unknowing on December 12, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/12/lucky-break/
One of the members at our church once lived in London and has friends in the Metropolitan Tabernacle. So for her birthday her friends sent her the School of Theology audio. She kind of pushed it on me, and I am in a position where I can’t just brush this stuff away anymore. Joel Beeke is in there. He’s not the most thrilling preacher I’ve heard, but on this occasion he was inspiring on the Puritans.
Peter Masters too, and what was interesting at the end is that he called out the pastors for their worldly amusements. He preached against rock music, he preached against spending too much money on clothes, and he preached against watching TV on the Lord’s day. Amazing! And amazing the way he approached the point of his applications.
You’d have to listen to how Masters puts it—hehehehe, kind of gagged any opposition, but in this case, knowing the guy is reasonable and godly it would be bigoted of one to dismiss him without hearing him—before you could judge, and I don’t think these are available for free, but I say a hearty amen to him.
Posted by unknowing on December 11, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/odd-places/
Met with the pastor today and he told me some of my responsibilities. It probably isn’t that much, but it just looks like a lot.
It still beats teaching English.
For now, I’ve got to figure out an introduction to Isaiah. Song of Solomon was bad because I knew nothing about it. Isaiah is bad because it’s so long and I’ve never understood it. This is one of my weaknesses though: I don’t have a good grasp on all the books of Scripture, and what better way to find out than having one book after another thrust on one?
But there’s a wonder in the Bible, and it really is one of the best books to teach. It has depths below its surface unimaginable and where else will you find a being like God?
* * *
I don’t help myself with missing the winter by reading the Kalevala every December, but speaking of some of the best books, it really is. Have you done it yet? A runo a day was how I pulled through the first reading, and this second time is going faster. It is one of those books where knowing what’s coming helps. The atmosphere of it is the best thing.
Posted by zartman on December 7, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/07/whelmed-over/
Finally got to the botanical gardens. If they planned more flora in this city, it could be a wonder.
One does see, in the better sections, the Urapan fresno lining the streets.
Another common one is the Seuco (Sambucus nigra) otherwise known to me as the white flower trees. Very common, and usually with a yellow twisted trunk. We have one right outside our bedroom window.
One sees a lot of pino romeron here (Retrophyllum rospigliosi) but I was unable to google a picture. Insted, here is a scene from the hills outside of Manizales where you see the Guayacan de Manizales (elmy chap called Lafoensia acuminata).
You will notice on the hill above, the standing palms. They’re wax palms. They plant them here and when they’re small they look bedraggled and stupid, but as you can see, in their glory they’re straight, white trunked, and give and exotic tropical feeling. Some more:
And then there’s this maply chap, the American sweetgum known here by the first word of its latin: Liquidambar (+ styraciflua).
Our oak is the Quercus humbolditii, otherwise known as el roble.
Posted by zartman on December 6, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/the-flora/
I had the sense last night of living stones. I was with people, watching them talk and listening. I was close enough to enter from time to time and yet apart enough mostly to observe. In their conversation they were airing their concerns, ideas and hopes about churches and pastors—about me, in an opportune and indirect way. I think I have said enough with that to suggest why I had a sense of living stones. I need to say it was a rich sense, the adjective and noun gleaming in juxtaposition in facets of meaning like emeralds.
It is a curious metaphor for Peter to use, but it is an attempt to suggest and so becomes language at its most powerful—or perhaps it may be said, its most original. People are often intractable, like stones. And yet they’re living, and being builded; their very intractability a quality of permanence and strength.
Posted by zartman on December 6, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/living-stones/
1 – That we need to persevere if we wish to understand Scripture. This is never an old lesson because we are always tempted to quit trying. The Lord loves those who insist: knock, he says, ask and seek. I got the impression from some in school that Bible study involved a preliminary reading of the text and then a search through commentaries in order to determine what the text means. It is as if we go in order to learn how to use prestigious, sophisticated commentaries. This is what Tozer warns against, and I don’t think his warning is outdates. It makes me afraid of finding things out by any easy way. Instead there ought to be the work of careful consideration at the level of the original language, the background studies, and everything which a good commentary resumes. The value of a commentary is not in providing you with a shortcut to being an interpreter, but in functioning as a corrective after you have done so. I sometimes wonder if commentaries would be more truly judged and rated, and less sold, if people practiced more of what they were taught in the exegesis classroom. In considering the Song of Solomon especially, one is tempted to jump toward the commentaries for explanation. Knock instead, ask and seek. We do not seek eccentric or private interpretations by avoiding commentaries first, but rather seek to please the Lord and be found faithful going by the straight way, rather than by the alluring shortcuts. We must come, like Gabriel, from the very presence of God bearing a message, and not merely from the presence of those who at one time have come from the presence of God. A derivative study is not of the same quality as an original one, however unskilled the interpreter so long as he is faithful. God promises to open, to answer, and that we will find.
I have learned from this difficult book, and a great and valuable lesson came at one point when instead of closing up and resting satisfied, I waited a little longer, considered again, and prayed. And it is a great consolation to know that it is a fresh interpretation, while at the same time it is in nothing original.
2 – If the Song of Solomon is wisdom literature, then it must somehow follow the pattern of Hebrew wisdom: juxtaposition—thus wisdom is vindicated by all her children. We find, on the one hand, that it is a celebration of human love and marriage. But on the other hand, we realize that all Scripture points to Christ, and if this book is part of Scripture, it must also point to Christ. Another juxtaposition in evidence in the Song of Songs (a Hebrew superlative = the Best Song) is this: marriage is given to man—the companionship of a woman—because it was not good for him to have exclusively the companionship of God; and yet there is a mystery in marriage which has at its heart a relationship between God and man, between Christ and his people. Adam lacked the love of an equal, we might say, and so God gave him a corresponding partner. But in doing so, he intended to give Adam more than marriage. We know from the words of Jesus that marriage is a temporary institution in our race: in the resurrection it will not exist.
And yet one of the first events we anticipate in the resurrection is a wedding—the marriage feast of the Lamb. Our temporal matrimonies will be swallowed up in that eternal matrimony of lesser and greater. How? Only because he has descended to join our race, and by that means has exalted it. God became a man so that men might become gods, said Athanasius.
Why has God instituted matrimony? Why has he consecrated sexual intercourse by limiting it to this exclusive relationship? In order to teach us the jealousy of love, which is to say: the consecrating power of love. It is love that consecrates a man to a woman and a woman to a man. Love has such a power that it seeks exclusivity, is jealous at the violation of exclusivity, and gives rise to hatred when this is broken (I hate divorce, says the Lord; and we know it is not the life but the death of something, and a gate of misery). This consecration of love is not chiefly aimed at morality among human beings—that is an accident, not unintended, but a by-product. The consecration of love teaches us about God, as all the commandments do. It teaches us that he believes love to be a consecrating thing. He expects his people to love him in this way having a human pattern and example in the beauty of marriage. He is jealous for his people and hates our spiritual adultery. God in Christ has condescended to spiritual marriage, has determined his bride before he made the world and will have for her no other husband than himself.
God wants to lead us from love to love, from lesser to greater, from present matrimony to that eternal union in the resurrection. And that is why Solomon sings that best of Songs. A song of marriage and a song of Christ.
3 – So we learn to find in the pattern of human love something everlasting, something about Christ. It has a surface in our marriages (all those descriptions that do not go below the skin!), and luminous depths in the marriage of the Lamb.
-We learn about this affection, love: the power it has, how it is strong enough to consecrate by union. 5:8; 8.6-7. The love of the chief commandment ought to consecrate all other loves.
-We learn how love gives life to all of life, it makes it vivid. 4:11; 5:1; 7:10-13. All things are not lost by that consecration of love, but life in all things is gained: true, abundant, vivid.
-We learn how love concentrates all of life upon its object. 5:9-16. Thereby implying monogamy. 6:3,8-9. And what is the worst thing that could result? Separation. 3:1-5; 5:2-8. Take away everything, but do not take away Thyself.
-And we learn in that curious section after the deep reflections of 8:6-7 beginning in 8:8, that love will not long itself be the object of attention: all attention must return to the beloved. It is almost comical at that point in the book (I am like a wall and my breasts are towers!), a frivolous interjection about a flat-chested sister. But the beloved must be the main object of attention and not second to love itself. However awesome, love in love does not require a whole lot of attention. It is probably all too real a fault in the Christian that we turn our attention to our own love, minding it, fussing over it, measuring it, foolishly trying to sense or grow it, exhibiting it than we attend to the beloved object without which love withers.
Posted by zartman on December 4, 2010
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/lessons-from-the-song-of-solomon/
