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2013 Resolutions

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The other day I did a review of my 2012 Resolutions and it’s now time to write some for 2013!

Resolution #1. Go dancing at least once a week.
Last year one of my less successful resolutions was to dance “more”. This year I’ve decided to continue the resolution, but this time be a bit more specific. I have to go somewhere at least once every seven days.

Resolution #2. Check bank statements once a week.
Like the entry above, this is a resolution carried over from 2012 which has been made a bit more concrete in an attempt to force me to do it properly. Last year I said “Keep better track of finances”. In 2013 I have to log into my Internet banking once a week.

Resolution #3. Complete Reading List
I’ll be publishing my 2013 reading list here later this week.

Resolution #4. Give up Facebook for Lent
Now that I’ve got my blog posts publishing directly to Facebook, I’ll have absolutely no reason not to get that digital monkey off my back…

Resolution #5. Guard free time more jealously
Last year was the “Year of Martha“. My schedule was packed and at times things got quite stressful. My aim this year is to make absolutely sure I don’t take on too much and that I get plenty of time to rest and recharge. This will involve a weekly Holy Hour, come what may. 2013 is going to be the “Year of Mary” 🙂

Resolution #6. Invest more time in friendships
This resolution flows from #5. I have some really good friends. I should spend more time with them.

Resolution #7. Blacklist TV Shows
Also flowing from #5, I’ve got to stop wasting time watching junk on TV. No more Scrubs, Family Guy, Always Sunny in Philadelphia etc.

Resolution #8. Run a half marathon and do a 15 minute plank
Here’s the mandatory fitness resolution.

Resolution #9. Cook a proper meal once a week
I really do enjoy cooking, but I don’t do it nearly as often as I should. That will change.

Resolution #10. Write the book
I’ve had “Write a book” on my bucket list for several years now and this year I’m going to finally cross it off. It’s going to be an expansion on my Leading Bible Study blog series and I’ll probably publish it with Lulu.com (although I will probably also send the manuscript to Ignatius Press just for fun of pretending to be a real author).

resolution

What are your resolutions for 2013?

The Great Divorce: Chapter 7

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Summary

Made uncomfortable by the Water-Giant, Lewis leaves and continues to make his way downstream again. He meets a “tall…a lean hard-bitten [ghost] with grev hair and a gruff, but not uneducated voice” leaning against a tree.

The ghost asks Lewis if he’s going back and Lewis says he’s unsure. The ghost explains that he is since he’s “seen about all there is to see.” He just came up to “have a look around”. He did the same on earth: “Pekin… Niagara Falls, the Pyramids, Salt Lake City, the Taj Mahal” and didn’t think much of any of them, claiming that they were “All run by the same people…a World Combine”.

He’s exceptionally disappointed with Hell, saying “They lead you to expect red fire and devils and all sorts of interesting people sizzling on grids… but when you get there its’s just like any other town”.

The Hard-Bitten Ghost claims that there’s no possibility of staying in Heaven since “You can’t eat the fruit and you can’t drink the water and it takes you all your time to walk on the grass… All that idea of staying is only an advertisement stunt.”

After complaining about how uncomfortable Heaven is, Lewis said that “There seems to be some idea that if one stays here one would get…acclimatised.” The ghost rejects this, saying he’d been told that lie his entire life. In the nursery he was told that if he were good, he’d be happy, at school they said Latin would get easier, he was told marriage would would “settle down”, during the World Wars that peace would eventually come.

Our ghost is a conspiracy theorist. He goes on to claim that, just in the same way “[Mummie] and Father were the same firm”, that Heaven and Hell are run by the same people and it’s an elaborate joke. He argues that Heaven and Hell can’t be at war, otherwise Heaven “would attack and sweep the Town out of existence”.

After complaining that there’s nothing to do, either in Heaven or Hell, Lewis asks the ghost would he would like to do if he had a choice. The ghost rejects the entire idea, saying “It’s up to the Management to find something that doesn’t bore us, isn’t it? It’s their job. Why should we do it for them?” He goes on to say that the same thing was wrong with “the parsons and moralists” who “keep on asking us to alter ourselves. But if the people who run the show are so clever and so powerful, why don’t they find something to suit their public?” Regarding the idea of becoming “solider”, the Hard-Bitten Ghost cynically asks Lewis what he would think of a hotel which told you that you’d grow to enjoy eating bad eggs eventually!

The ghost prepares to leave and asks Lewis if he’ll join him. Lewis cheekily responds that
“There doesn’t seem to be much point in going anywhere on your showing”. When he comments that at least it’s not raining here, the Hard-Bitten Ghost points out at that it’s bound to soon and, when it does rain, the raindrops “will make a hole in you, like a machine-gun bullet”. Convinced that “they” won’t catch him that way, our ghost leaves.

Questions

Q1. What do you make of the Hard-Bitten Ghost?

Q2. Why do you think the ghost was so unimpressed with everything on earth?

Q3. Why is the ghost so unimpressed with Hell?

Q4. Why is the ghost so unimpressed with Heaven?

Q5. Why does he reject the idea that the ghosts will become solider over time?

Q6. Why does the ghost not think Heaven and Hell are at war? Why does he think they are colluding?

Q7. Why does the ghost not suggest anything he’d like to do?

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Why palms?

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Today’s post is one of those blog entries which I wrote quickly wrote and then forgot to schedule for publishing. Well, better late than never…

Tonight I went to an Eastern Orthodox parish for Saturday Vespers and I was struck by how they decorated their church in preparation for Palm Sunday:

Gregory Of Nyssa

Now, the reason for decorating with palms was obvious, given that Sunday is called “Palm Sunday” and in the liturgy we’ll hear the account of Jesus being welcomed with palm branches:

The next day a great crowd who had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” – John 12:12-13

However, I got to wondering…why palms? Was there any significance to it?

Thinking about it, I realized that many of the icons in my own parish featured palm branches. What was the symbolism? I was curious, so I went looking…

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The Great Divorce: Chapter 8

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Summary

After his interaction with the Hard-Bitten Ghost, Lewis is left sitting on a stone by the river feeling utterly miserable at the thought that the Solid People may, in fact, be malevolent, and he wrestled with the question as to why the Solid People did not do more to help those in the Grey Town. Could it be that they just came down to the plain to mock the ghosts?

He thinks of the punishment of Tantalus in deepest Hades, who is made to stand in a pool of water underneath a fruit tree’s branches, with the fruit always just out of reach and the water receding before he could drink it. He thinks of Revelation 14:11. He thinks of William Cowper who, upon realizing that he is dreaming and is, in fact, doomed to perdition says “These are the sharpest arrows in His quiver”.

The sense of danger he felt upon coming to this land returns with full force. “Terror whispered, ‘This is no place for you'”. He walks away from the river towards a thicket of trees in the hope of some kind of safety.

Thirty minutes later, he comes into “a little clearing with some bushes in the centre”. A Ghost enters, “a well-dressed woman…but its shadows of finery looked ghastly in the morning light”. She tries to hide by pressing herself against the bushes.

One of the Bright People enters and the Ghost squeals at him to go away. The ghost points out that she’s heading in the wrong direction, away from the mountains. He suggests that she could lean on him in the journey to ease the hurt of her feet.

The ghost responds that she can’t go “out there among all those people, like this” and says she’d “never have come at all if I’d known you were all going to be dressed like that”. When asked to explain herself she says “How can I go out like this among a lot of people with real solid bodies? It’s far worse than going out with nothing on would have been
on earth. Have everyone staring through me.”

The Solid Person explains that “we were all a bit ghostly when we first arrived, you know. That’ll wear off. Just come out and try.” The ghost says she’d “rather die”. She says she wish she’d never been born and asks “What are we born for?”, to which the ghost responds “For infinite happiness… You can step out into it at any moment”

The ghost continues to protest, but the Solid Person compares shame to liquids too hot to touch, but not too hot to drink: “Shame is like that. If you will accept it-if you will drink the cup to the bottom-you will find it very nourishing: but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.”

Although momentarily tempted to trust the Solid Person, but returns to her complaining. The Spirit asks “Could you, only for a moment, fix your mind on something not
yourself?” but to no avail. He therefore blows a horn which results in “A herd of unicorns came thundering through the glades: twenty-seven hands high the smallest of them and white as swans but for the red gleam in eyes and nostrils and the flashing indigo of their horns” The Ghost screams and Lewis says he thinks she makes a bolt towards the Spirit, but he himself fled from the scene.

Questions

Q1. Why is Lewis feeling dejected at the beginning of this chapter? What questions does he have?

Q2. What is the problem with the ghost he sees in this chapter? What is her primary concern?

Q3. What does the Solid Person offer to the ghost? What does he say will happen in time?

Q4. Why does the Solid Person call the unicorns?

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Why should Protestants go to Church?

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A little while ago I was commenting on a friend’s blog where we were discussing the practice of church attendance on Sundays. Given that a lot of Protestants comment on his blog, I posed the following question to all those commenting:

What actually is the Protestant motivation for going to church on Sunday?

Now, this might seem like a silly question, but I asked it due to a certain train of thought that I had noticed during my time in the Protestant world. It’s a train of thought that I feel leads to unavoidable, awkward conclusions…

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Mere Christianity – Book I (Summary)

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Book 1
You can look at my more detailed notes, but this is an overview of the content of Book I of “Mere Christianity”…

Preface

Quotations

Mere Christianity

…I have thought that the best…service I could do for my unbelieving neighbours was to explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times…So far as I can judge…the book…did at least succeed in presenting an agreed, or common, or central, or ‘mere’ Christianity…it may possibly be of some help in silencing the view that, if we omit the disputed points, we shall have left only a vague and bloodless [Highest Common Factor]. The H.C.F. turns out to be something not only positive but pungent”

Omitted Topics

I should be very glad if people would not draw fanciful inferences from my silence on certain disputed matters…There are questions at issue between Christians to which I do not think we have been told the answer…you cannot even conclude, from my silence on disputed points, either that I think them important or that I think them unimportant. For this is itself one of the disputed points…I have a reluctance to say much about temptations to which I myself am not exposed…

The Roman Catholic beliefs on that subject are held not only with the ordinary fervour that attaches to all sincere religious belief, but…with…chivalrous sensibility that a man feels when the honour of his mother or his beloved is at stake…contrariwise…Protestant beliefs on this subject…it seems that the distinction between Creator and creature (however holy) is imperilled.

[Regarding contraception], I am not a woman nor even a married man, nor am I a priest. I did not think it my place to take a firm line about pains, dangers and expenses from which I am protected; having no pastoral office which obliged me to do so.

The name “Christian”

When a word ceases to be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer tells you facts about the object: it only tells you about the speaker’s attitude to that object… A gentleman, once it has been spiritualised and refined out of its old coarse, objective sense, means hardly more than a man whom the speaker likes

The Hall Analogy

It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms…it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in…you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling…Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here?…be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house

Questions

1. Why does Jack say that this book not help someone decide between two different denominations? Why did he write the book in this way?

2. Was it a good idea to leave out controversial topics? Why does he say he does this? Do you think this hampers the book?

3. How would you define “Christian”? How does Jack define it? Do you think this is a sufficient definition?

4. Do you find Jack’s “Hall and rooms” analogy helpful when talking about different denominations? What advice does he give for interacting with Christians of other denominations? What do you disagree with and what advice would you add?

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Why stop now?

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For the last six weeks Catholics have been abstaining from meat on Fridays as part of their Lenten observance. Lent is over!…Easter is here!…does that mean that we can stop now?

In centuries past

Christians have historically done penance on Fridays to remember our Lord’s Passion, as well as on Wednesdays to recall Judas’ betrayal:

…fast on [Wednesday] and [Friday] – The Didache (1st Century), Chapter 8

What about now?

There has been some confusion over this subject in recent years, but Canon Law states:

The penitential days and times in the universal Church are every Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent – Canon 1250

So, it’s clear that every Friday is a penitential day. But what kind of penance is required?

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