Yfalle in Felaweshipe

"It Sometimes Looked a Little Like This"

2006-08-08T09:16:00.000-07:00

“The reason we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.”
—Jewel the Unicorn in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle

What is music? I don’t believe in magic except two kinds: the supernatural power held by the angels and demons, and the unusual and yet extremely human power of music. “Heavenly magic” I can slightly wrap my mind around on good days. But music is different. We don’t really understand it, because, even though we seem to have invented it, and probably did, we’re still completely unable to reach out and point to what its essence is. We don’t know what we’ve “created”—only what it does to us.

What does music do to you? Some music makes you want to cover your ears and run away, admittedly. It varies from person to person. But for everyone there’s at least one kind of music, or one song, that wakes something up inside, or touches them from afar, or fills them with a warm fuzzy feeling. Sometimes it’s just an overwhelming surge of the positive—these songs are usually hard rock for me. But sometimes it’s horribly beautiful and has just enough grief in it to make you almost want to stop listening to it…except you can’t, because you want to listen to it over and over again. I believe this is the sort of experience that C. S. Lewis described as “joy”.

But why on earth does music do this to us? Such a question has troubled me for quite some time. It’s a bit unsettling—it’s hard even to define music, because “sounds of a particular pitch combined in rhythms with layers of harmony” just doesn’t cut it. It’s as though we don’t even know what we’re dealing with, like we’ve discovered a mysterious clear-colored liquid in a beaker and, even though we really like how it makes us feel when we drink it, there’s that haunting little question of um, what is this stuff, anyway? Is it frightening to be so susceptible to the power of an unknown? We’re drawn back to it repeatedly because we’re pretty sure that it’s good, but there is a definite underlying vibe of otherworldly to music.

Yet this vibe is mixed with a strong sense of human creation: we make the music, we listen to it, we’re continually revising and crafting and improving it even to this day (some of us are making it worse, and, amazingly, some others of us are still inexplicably cheering them on). How can something, in one sense, feel like we know it inside and out, and yet, in another, feel completely foreign to our comprehension? The unknown part, whatever it is, must have come first. The “known” part—the part that we feel we have created, because we invented music—cannot have, because humans really can’t create things, we can only copy them. It’s a sort of mini-creating, like a child who draws a car that can fly because he’s seen cars and he’s seen planes.

So this unknown essence, this magic that (almost) all music has, exists at all, it can only have been the original. If you think about it, you know that all our human, technical, man-made musicality—the music theory, the notes, the composing, even the feeling of knowing that another human put together in his or her mind the harmonies and beat and rhythm and melodies and chords of any particular song—all of it, despite its grandeur, does feel like trappings around the edges, or like trimmings covering the core of the actual music. We must have put these on ourselves onto the original thing.

What do we call it when humans reach toward an unknown essence and try to pull some out it down to ourselves and tack an idea of our own onto it in order that we might be able to relate to it? Symbol. A letter is a symbol that collects a tiny amount of linguistic meaning and puts it in an outfit through which we can recognize it. A red rose, in our culture, is a symbol that, absurdly, attempts to sum up the depth and breadth of one of the deepest and most incomprehensible human emotions in a way such as that it can be presented to another human being. (Not that this always works, but no human symbol is infallible.)

It would seem that, right now, the only reasonable explanation of why music has this eerie, difficult-to-understand, incredibly enjoyable magic within it is that music is a symbol. In ten years, maybe there will be a revolution in musical theory or possibly philosophy that will overthrow this hypothesis and explain it all in an entirely different way. I can’t say for certain. But if you try to think back on times when you’ve listened to music and “experienced the magic” (not at Disney World), you might recall a sort of feeling of, huh, I don’t know where else I could get this quite as strongly as listening to this song. We think we’ve seen the magic somewhere else before, but music is where it comes right up close enough to almost touch us.

What is it a symbol for? That’s a question to which I don’t have an answer. But we have clues as to where to look. Why, for instance, is music used so often in movies? Is it because the audience would become bored if there wasn’t something else for them to listen to besides the dialogue? Certainly not. Listen to the soundtrack next time you’re watching a movie and you’ll notice that, in the scenes where the dialogue or the actions are sad, there will often be sad music playing, or, in scenes where the actors are supposed to be expressing a show of bravery and valor, there will be heroic music playing. Could this be because the magic exists behind that scene in the movie as well, and the music is the catalyst for bringing it out even more strongly? The mist or the veil between the human audience and the unknown essence that the film is trying to bring into our sight swiftly recedes and becomes much easier to see through when there is music helping us, acting as a more powerful symbol than even the script or the talents of the cast or the sweep of the camera. We have trouble understanding music, perhaps, but we can recognize it. And sometimes we need help recognizing whatever lies behind a scene in a movie, but if we can identify it and see it more closely we have a better chance of interpreting what it means.

Will we ever know? Why are we so strongly, almost inevitably, drawn toward music? Could it possibly be that someday the veil will drop completely and we won’t need the symbol anymore? Will the unknown suddenly become intensely familiar? Will that essence, that something of which we have up till now been allowed only a faint taste, draw us into its presence so that we can practically chug it down? Will the magic, that power which, every so often, overcomes us just a little bit, someday take control of us entirely and never let go? We might step off the map of human imagination, look around, and declare, “Now I understand. The reason I loved music so much is because it reminded me of this.”

That will be a glad day indeed.

Beowulf in 5 Minutes: A Parody

2006-08-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

Note from the parodyess: For those of you who have read or studied Beowulf, I hope you're amused by this. For those of you who haven't...which is probably...everybody...I hope you have something better to do than to read a parody about something you've never read.

BEOWULF IN 5 MINUTES

Narrator: There were lots and lots of Danish kings. Let me tell you about them for fifty-five seconds or so.

(clock ticks)

Narrator: One of them built a big house.

Hrothgar: This is my house! It is Danish!

Narrator: We don’t want to hear about your house—there’s a time limit here.

Hrothgar: But you—

Narrator: Grendel was a monster.

Grendel: Raaargh.

Hrothgar: MY HOUSE!!!

Grendel: Grendel eat house!

Hrothgar: NOOOOOO!!!

Narrator: I’m Christian, you’re pagan.

Hrothgar: NOO-HO-HO-HOOOOO!!!

Narrator: So the pagan Danish folks worshipped their false gods.

Hrothgar: OH JUDGE JUDY, WHAT MUST I DO?!?

Narrator: This went on for quite some time.

(thirty seconds pass)

Beowulf: So I saw this Danish king on Judge Judy who needed help. I feel benevolent today.

Narrator: Beowulf went to Denmark.

Danish watchman: Who goes there?

Beowulf: It is I, Be—

Narrator: Because they wanted to see King Hrothgar oh so very badly Beowulf and his men hurried along without another word.

Beowulf: HEY!

Danish warrior: Halt! Who goes there? My name is Wulfgar. I am the King’s warrior. Let me tell you my life story.

(Wulfgar continues for about ten seconds.)

Beowulf: That’s great. My name is—

Narrator: But Wulfgar rushed them right into the audience chamber with no waiting time. How pleased Beowulf was.

Beowulf: WHY YOU!!

Hrothgar: A demon is eating my people. I hope you know some martial arts.

Beowulf: As a matter of fact I kill sea monsters on a regular basis.

Unferth: Pansy.

Hrothgar: What’s your name, son?

Beowulf: Why, how kind of you to ask. I am—

Grendel: RAAARGH.

Narrator: The monster bit off Beowulf’s head.

Beowulf: NO IT DIDN’T!

Narrator: Sorry. I was just having a bit of fun. Beowulf ripped Grendel’s arm off.

Beowulf: I AM BEOWULF! FEAR ME!

Hrothgar: Hurrah! Let’s eat ourselves silly like Danes!

(feasting continues for twenty seconds)

Narrator: I’m a Christian and you’re all pagans.

Hrothgar: Here, have some shiny, pretty armor. And a necklace.

Beowulf: I don’t want a necklace!

Wealhtheow: You’re hot.

Beowulf: Um.

Narrator: They hung Grendel’s severed arm in the food court to honor the King’s superb interior decorating talents.

Grendel’s Mother: Roar.

Aeschere: MONST—

Narrator: Mrs. Grendel ate Aeschere.

Mrs. Grendel: Buuuurrrp.

Beowulf: Curses! Now, who wants to go follow a grisly demon beast to her haunted lair?

Narrator: Most of the Danes raised their hands.

Hrothgar: Beowulf! Are you really going to swim down there thousands of feet and attack the she-monster in her dark sub-water cave?

Beowulf: Yes I am.

Unferth: Pansy.

Narrator: Beowulf took thirty-five seconds to swim to Mrs. Grendel.

Beowulf: Oh no! My time-tested-and-true sword has failed me!

Robin: Why don’t you use the Bat-Sword?

Beowulf: ROBIN! I am NOT BATMAN! Why can’t you seem to understand this?

Narrator: However, because he is buff and cool, Beowulf killed Mrs. Grendel anyway.

Danes: We are Danish!

Narrator: Then he went home.

Hygelac: Hi, kiddo!

Hygd: Here, have four pretty ponies!

Beowulf: Um. Any chance you’re in need of a necklace?

Narrator: Years passed and Beowulf got old and kingly.

Hygelac: (dies)

Narrator: Still a Christian!

Everyone else: Still pagan!

Beowulf: OH MY FREAKING GOSH THERE’S A DRAGON!

Thief: OH MY FREAKING GOSH THERE’S A DRAGON AFTER ME!

Beowulf: Give back that pretty jewel-encrusted piece of glassware you stole from it!

Thief: TOO LATE!

Narrator: The thief was pierced by guilt and died.

Beowulf: I will fight the dragon! And by this time Unferth is too dead to call me pansy!

Dragon: Hiss, roar, belch of flame.

Beowulf: Oh no! My strength is fading! I can’t believe it! I’m only seventy years old and decrepit! I took my vitamins every day! Dang it why can’t I kill this dragon?!

Robin: I’ll help you!

Beowulf: GO AWAY!

Wiglaf: Here, let me!

Narrator: The young and suspiciously potential-heir-like warrior saved Beowulf from getting his butt whipped.

Dragon: Grrr, I’m gonna gnaw at you for that.

Beowulf: Ouch! That almost punctured my skin!

Narrator: The dragon died!

Beowulf: Good thing I wasn’t seriously wounded or anything.

PETA: Cruelty to fire-breathing lizards!

Narrator: And PETA protested Beowulf to death.

Beowulf: Aaaaagh, goodbye cruel world.

Danes: Funeral time!

Narrator: The pagan Danes held a big funeral and their women sang wailing songs because they are not Christians and I am.

Robin: And that was the end of it.

Beowulf: Shut up, you. (Dies.)

The End

Rampant Paranoia: An Educational Experience

2006-08-04T14:03:00.000-07:00

I want to learn Welsh.

Really.

I don’t think Welsh is a very popular language, but I’ve heard people speak it and I’ve seen written examples of it and it just sounds so cool. Fortunately one of our friends has a Welsh book and a series of Welsh tapes that she’s going to lend to me, so I’ll be able to start learning it. I’m quite excited.

Part of me is concerned and even slightly afraid, however, and there is a good reason for this. The simple truth is that anything from a “teach yourself” program contains hazards which could jeopardize your experience of both learning and putting into practice the skill which you are trying to acquire.

Take, for instance, a book I once read about teaching yourself foreign accents for use in theater. This book—this typed, written, no-audio-provided stack of bound paper—is supposed to tell you how to sound Scottish, Portuguese, British or African when you’re performing in a play. How can there not be risks involved in such a process? What kind of desperate low-paid actor is going to entrust his performance to the authors of this book who are saying, “To correctly pronounce the accent of southern Kalapangi, the vocal stress of the vowels must come from the back of your mouth, and every diphthong should be acutely shaped with the bottom lip and the tip of the tongue”? I cringe to think of the myriad of ways in which these instructions could be grossly misinterpreted and the poor fellow could mangle his performance on stage to the chagrin of all.

Or a banjo program. My parents both learned how to play banjo from a book and an instructional tape. Now, there’s not much you could do wrong with that, is there? you ask. Just play it exactly as the instructor on the tape tells you to and follow the rolls in the book and you’re fine! WRONG! Have you no sense of the weight of trust which one must put into the hands of these allegedly-bluegrassian instructors? Several things must be assumed: firstly, that every song in the book is actually a real bluegrass song (imagine sitting around jamming with the old mountaineers—“You don’t know Lonesome Ramblin’ Breakdown? I thought everyone knew Lonesome Ramblin’ Breakdown!”). Secondly, it must be assumed that the techniques being taught you are actually true, and not a twisted attempt to spread some “new kind of banjo music”. And thirdly, perhaps most importantly, one must assume that the people behind this instructional series are not maniacs whose primary goal is to make a bunch of money whilst laughing raucously at your pitiful attempts to follow their deliberately false teachings—in other words, that you’re not part of a grand joke of which you could not be suspected to know anything.

Paranoid? Yes, well, but these sorts of things must be considered. Fortune favors the prepared. There are hundreds of “teach yourself” programs out there and none of them are to be taken lightly.

Truth is, there are some things you simply can’t teach yourself. They must be absorbed from your surroundings—like a language—or taught by a sage and trustworthy master—like anything remotely bluegrass. This is the only way you can be completely certain that you’re not subscribing to a scam or botching your only chance of winning a role in “The Mad Irishman II: Return of the Blarney Stone” on Broadway.

And yet, we may not have come to the end of the story. Consider the quote by Mikhail Baryshnikov: “Dancing is my obsession.” Now stop considering it and go back to my original point: There may yet be a purpose for “teach yourself” techniques that transcends both paranoia and…skill. Perhaps the motive behind teaching yourself is not the eventual gain of mastery over an art or a talent, but the satisfaction of knowing you have forged your own path. You have conquered the mountain. You have stuck it to the man. The field is plowed and the chicken is in the microwave and, at the end of a long day, so are you. To be honest, you have no idea what you’re saying right now, because you learned English from a crappy tape that cost you two Kalapangi bucks, but the point is that you learned it yourself! You can succeed—or think you have!

So I may not become fluent in Welsh. I may not ever travel to Wales out of lack of finances and fear of foreign humiliation. I may not even finish going through those language tapes. But I will be able to greet you and ask about the weather in a language you’ve probably never heard of. How’s that for worth it, eh?

"I'll Praise You In This Storm"

2006-07-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

As the thunder rolls,
I barely hear You whisper through the rain,
"I'm with you."
---Praise You In This Storm, by Casting Crowns

If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness;
therefore you are feared.
---Psalm 130:3-4, NIV

This past April I had the opportunity to spend a week in Texas visiting a friend. The flight we took down South was the first time I'd been on a plane since I was very young, at which time I hadn't remembered much of what it was like to fly. Now it was a completely new experience, and amidst all the turbulence and uncomfortable seats and trying to cure boredom by reading the magazine in front of me over and over again I was amazed by how different everything looks when you're up in the sky. It gives you an entirely new perspective on the world around you. For instance, when the plane tilted to the side to turn, you could actually see the earth as if it were tipped sideways, and you fancied you could even make out the curve of the planet. Flying above a cloud bank was fascinating too: it was like flying over the artic, with everything white and snowy (although that kind of snow didn't look like it would be cold if you stepped in it).

The coolest part, however, was the thunderstorm. While passing over Dallas or some other such large city at about ten o'clock in the night, we flew right past a huge, roiling storm. It was like something out of a nature show: the thunder cracked dramatically, the clouds were huge and dark, the streaks of lightning were jagged and startling and absolutely crackling with electricity as they lit up the underbellies of the clouds with white light to illuminate their shape and grandeur. I had seen storms in movies and on TV, but never like this. And our plane was flying right alongside it at the same level. I would have been terrified, except for that the storm was far enough away that there was no way it could endanger us. So we on the flight who were still awake were treated to a spectacular light show that lasted at least a quarter of an hour and was powerful, deadly, amazing, but perfectly safe for us to be with.

It struck me, thinking back on this a few months after having made the flight, that such an experience is a little bit like the experience of knowing God. When you're on the ground, a thunderstorm anywhere near enough for you to witness it can be extremely frightening, because you know it could kill or injure you, if the lightning just happened to strike a house nearby or if the rain caused a flood or if the ensuing weather was bad enough for a tornado to form. Likewise, God is very dangerous, and many people who don't have a relationship with him view God as someone all powerful and all knowing who doesn't approve much of them and could ruin their life at a whim if he felt like it. In one sense, this could be taken as true. God is all powerful and all knowing, and he very well can do anything he pleases, and he does. And many people live lives which God doesn't approve of. In one sense, they have every reason to be terrified of God.

But it doesn't have to be like that, and, just like a person can get on an airplane and fly up to be on the same level as a thunderstorm, so can a person accept Christ and have a relationship with God that lets them know him more closely and get a deeper view of what he's like and how he works. And this is where the symbolism comes in most strongly. I might have thought that I knew plenty about thunderstorms from being disturbed by them on the ground. (I never have liked storms.) I didn't sympathize at all when I heard meteorologists quoted for saying how amazing storms are, or watched my brothers as they ooohed and ahhhed at weather videos on the Internet. It was only once I got up close to a thunderstorm and actually saw how amazing it really is---without having to fear for my life or my house---that I understood what it means to be in awe of one. From where I sat on the same level as it was, I saw beauty and power and the might of nature. I still don't like storms, but I would accept the chance to fly in a plane next to one again so that I could relive the experience.

God is like that. You'll think you understand well enough what it means to "fear God", but just wait until you know him and start to experience who he is when he's not your enemy, when he has control of your life and lets you experience his presence. You'll probably start writing "Him" instead of "him", for one thing. But the Bible really wasn't exaggerating when it spoke of fearing God and being in awe of Him. The overpowering sense of awe that you feel when you're close to God and yet you also know: He's really quite dangerous---it begins to make sense why "awe" can be a synonym for "fear", even as you love God and know God loves you and won't ever be against you.

I read Psalm 130 today, and at first I couldn't make any sense of the words, "But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared." Yet now I think I get it. If I were to rewrite it in my own words, it might say, "But with you a person can be allowed to come into your presence without being hurt and see who you really are; therefore you are feared." But of course I wouldn't rewrite the Bible.

Go watch a storm tonight.

The Ethics of Verbi Reprobi Auctoris

2006-07-12T17:39:00.000-07:00

Originally published 1/7/06.

It is time to discuss a very important and deep philosophical matter with a complicated-sounding Latin name (because all important and deep philosophical concepts sound more important and deep if they are in Latin).

This concept was largely ignored by serious philosophers for the first two thousand and five years and six days of human history after the birth of Christ, for it was not a very relevant topic to the thinking of the day. Indeed, most students of philosophy have dismissed this conflict as "trivial" or "inane", and have concluded that it does not merit much deliberation.

But recently it has begun to take shape as a serious issue of modern times, and so many famous thinkers have put forth their opinions on it (like PadmeKristana, and, uh, PadmeKSkywalker, and Kristin Taylor, and cimorenedd, and...uh...Kristin Taylor again...) that I felt compelled to assert my position in the great debate that has arisen regarding this concept. It is the idea often termed as verbi reprobi auctoris, but to those unfamiliar with the complex inner workings of philosophical thought, it might be easier to understand by simply calling it "making up words".

You see, this is really an issue that has only begun rearing its ugly head in the past few years. Earlier last century, mankind was still concerned with keeping to traditions, remembering the old ways of doing things, recounting the same stories and the same rules, treasuring the past. But since the Great Logic Revolution of the twentieth century, all that has changed! Those old ideas are stupid now and we don't need them! Who could ever possibly dare to suggest that something true and helpful and sacred from a long time ago could possibly still be true and helpful and sacred today? Nonsense! It just doesn't follow logically that something could be that universal! I mean, doesn't it make more sense for truth to be relative, so that if I suggest that I'm a hamburger and you suggest that I am not, we're both right at the same time? Come on, people! Break free from the old constraints of the past! We should forge our own rules and not worry about idioticy, because as long as it works for you, it's fine!

Imagine the dilemma for the modern author. The trend used to be that if you were an English-speaking writer, you wrote in English, and you used real English words, and that if you suddenly started spewing out a bunch of babbling nonsense that no one else could understand, then you weren't writing in English, and furthermore you wouldn't get anyone to read your stuff. But times are changing. Modern thinking must be updated. And so now writers are faced with a problem: what happens if there is a concept that one wishes to describe in one word, but that word doesn't exist? Consider, for instance, the word I used at the end of the last paragraph, "idioticy". To my knowledge, that word would never be found in a modern English dictionary. It is entirely made up, because it was exceedingly difficult to think of a word that meant "the quality of being an idiot" without having to come right out and say "the quality of being an idiot", because that wouldn't work. It had to be said in one word, you see, and not six, or else the author wouldn't have been able to get across the meaning she desired to express.

Now, that may be a weak example, granted. But there are hundreds more of very strong examples of situations in which one desperately needs to say, "His _____ was evident in his voice" and the blank needs to mean the opposite of confidence but the words "unease", "fear", and "doubt" aren't concise enough; or when it's necessary to say "'Blah blah blah,' he said _______" and the blank needs to express that he said it in an annoyed fashion except the author already used the words "in a ___ fashion" in the last paragraph and it would be redundant to use them again and so a one-word adjective to describe the quote would be so much more appropriate; or when one desires to describe a girl's head that has barrettes in the hair and thus types "her barretted head" only to discover a horrid red wavy line beneath the word on the computer screen in front of the typist. Circumstances like these truly test the patience, and there are only two remedies: give up on what you're writing, or employ verbi reprobi auctoris. Make up your own word.

But that is taking a great liberty. One cannot go about making up words all over the place. It is exceedingly problematic. Either one will not be understood, or one will be labeled "nerd", or one will be dismissed as a babbling lunatic, or one will have to explain one's self every three sentences (probably using more made-up words in the process, which will lead to absolute and utter chaos), or one will simply frustrate everyone in the world so much that they will shut the unfortunate speaker up in a closet with nothing but peanut butter and a dictionary and not let him or her out until the entire book has been read, memorized, and recited to the captors through the closet door (with someone looking carefully through the crack to make sure the reader is not peeking at the dictionary). Making up words is in fact very dangerous and must be done only in great moderation by the most careful of experts, or else the consequences have a very high chance of being grim and bloody.

But it can be done, if done well. However, there remains a question as to the ethics of this practice. Is it morally right? Is it a beautiful example of an individual expressing his/herself, or is it an attempt to redefine something that many hold sacred and true? For that matter, can right and wrong be redefined by anyone who feels like it? Is something true for the sole reason that it "works" for someone, or are there certain truths that are true for everyone regardless of whether they believe it or not? If I sincerely believe God is a tuna fish, does that make God a tuna fish? If someone else sincerely believes that God is a llama at the same time that I am sincerely believing he is a tuna fish, does that make God a tuna fish and a llama at the same time? What would you get if you crossed a tuna fish and a llama? Would you get a llama with fins, or a fish with fur? If it was a llama with fins, would it be able to survive on land? Would the fur keep the furry fish from swimming properly, therefore causing a huge species-wide death toll that would kill them all? Would the furry fish even count as a new species? Would they be able to inter-breed and produce fertile offspring? What would the furry fish be called? A frish? Would the llama be a fama or a llish? Is it ethical to make up a new word that means a llama combined with a fish??? What if you WANT to express the meaning of a llama combined with a fish but you already USED the words "___ combined with a ___" in the last paragraph so you HAVE to use a new word so that you're not being REDUNDANT?!?!?!?!?

The answer is probably "no" to most of those questions. To put it simply, language is something that, in its essence, develops and changes over time, and morals, in their essence, stay true over time and space. And so making small adjustments to modern language is fine (assuming one pays good and close attention to the chaotic situation I explored in the paragraph about using words carefully). And making small (or large) adjustments to truth and right and wrong is not fine.

So my position is this: Assuming that the new word follows logically, and that you are not using it in the context of a gratuitous sex story, you are fully within your rights and the best interest of society to make up that word and use it. But don't come up to me and start talking about truth being relative or our modern culture having to update itself from the dredges of the past, because then I will throw frish at you and force you to read a good solid conservative-prospective philosophy textbook.

Thank you.

Religious Freedom and the Human Robot

2006-04-30T10:14:00.000-07:00

I probably don't need to draw your attention to the nation-wide issue of religious tolerance. You've probably heard about the debate over the slogan "In God We Trust" and whether it should continue to be printed on our money; you've most likely read somewhere about complaints of public prayers, like in schools or in the Navy; and you've certainly noticed the media replacing Christmas and other religious holidays with more "tolerant" titles or themes. The idea behind this all is that America is a country of religious freedom, and, therefore, these things must be kept down or gotten rid of, because they impose religion on other people.

Pardon me if I sound too frank, but that just strikes me as a wussy attitude. If our country is really as "tolerant" as it claims to be, can't they tolerate a theistic motto on the pieces of paper they're moving around? Can't they tolerate someone expressing his or her religious beliefs in school or in whatever organization they're working with? It seems to me that, in actuality, we do have a problem tolerating most religions. Why? Because they are "imposed" on us. In other words, we can't stand to be in their presence, because we're afraid that something is going to be forced on us, or that---earth forbid---we might be misled into believing them.

It all really comes down to this issue of brainwashing. Somehow, the people who support this view of religious tolerance---often liberals, a lot of who, if I may be permitted to generalize, probably also believe firmly in the human freedom of choice in regards to marriage, sexuality, and abortion---are acting like we are having our choice and rights taken from us by any imposition of religion. No wonder they don't want praying or theism "imposed" on them: then they might be forced to make a decision about it! Never mind that no one is forcing anybody to believe anything---no, religion is too dangerous, too overpowering, to risk being in the same room with it if we don't want to. It's like they think humans are robots, and, if we're not "tolerant" by keeping everybody away from these Christian words and these religious ideas as much as we can without totally repressing religion, the robots might get reprogrammed against their will, and then we'd all be imposed on and then what would we do???

The truth is, it's not really like that. The people of this country should be strong enough and mature enough to make their own decisions based on the views they are presented with. We're not a nation of wusses---we shouldn't be. From middle school downwards, that's one thing, dealing with kids whose parents are responsible for guiding them in the ways that they want to---but once they hit high school, our teenagers should be perfectly prepared to hold their own amidst the flood of ideas. We are raising our citizens to be afraid of new ideas, to be spiritually lazy, to not take any personal responsibility for their choices and beliefs. Is that being tolerant? Or is it being cowardly?

Some people say that we're living in an age where machines are becoming more and more like people. If you ask me---or rather, if you ask the supporters of "religious tolerance"---we're being trained to think like it's the other way around.

~ Yfalle Eruvyweth

Irrigating the Desert

2006-03-02T15:06:00.000-08:00

"Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become."

~ C. S. Lewis

I am going to make a confession, and it is going to sound very silly, but here you are:

I have cried myself to sleep before because I was so sad that the characters in The Lord of the Rings were imaginary and not real.

Now, at this point you may back away from your computer slowly and never visit this site again. You have my full permission. (Waits for the people obeying her to finish doing so.)

Okay. Now, for the rest of you. I'm sure you're still here because you believe somewhere deep inside of you that I'm not an absolute freak beyond all human possibility.

(Everyone else nods slowly.)

You in the back there. Are you sure?

(Person in back glances around himself, and then gives a jerky, hesitant nod.)

Ahh, excellent, so we're all on the same page. On to the serious stuff.

I have a friend who doesn't understand why I love reading so much. She thinks books are good things, but when I exclaimed that I couldn't understand how anyone could go their entire life without having read a book, she gave me one of those "Are you sure your head's on quite straight?" looks that I'm so used to getting. This was because she was one of those people whom C. S. Lewis's quote applies to, those who think that literature only describes reality.

In reality (ha, ha, ha), literature does much more than that. The ex-quotation-mark narrative of a story isn't the real point of the story: it serves as a vessel to present us much more important ideas than "Then so-and-so ran sideways" or "The sky was very green that day". (Personally I doubt that either of those sentences do a great job of describing reality themselves, but you'll have to forgive them, they're trying their hardest.) The narrative and the descriptive words and the entire framework of the story is like the handshake and the common friend's saying "So-and-So, this is Such-and-Such; Such-and-Such, this is So-and-So." Its purpose is to introduce the reader to characters.

I am, of course, talking about fiction, not non-fiction. It would be very educational to pick out the character that a philosophy book or a political treatise was pointing to (although ultimately and ex-textually, they are all pointing to Jesus and the Father), but fiction actually has characters in its narrative, which is what I'm referring to. The author does his very best to take the reader deep into the mind and heart of the character he's writing about. And if the reader gives the writer full command and lets the writer take her wherever he wishes, she will begin to become familiar with the character, with its quirks and flaws, its habits and motives, its humor and physical appearance. By the time the book is over, a faithful and true reader will have subconsciously allowed herself to make friends with this character, although the character's side of the friendship is, admittedly, invariably frozen on paper.

Now, please don't think I mean this so seriously that I actually believe there is a literal friendship going on. Not at all. (The guy in the back lets out a relieved sigh.) But that's the way it feels to the reader while she's engrossed in whatever book she's reading. Outside of the book, she knows quite sensibly that the characters are all made up and don't really exist...but the magic of a book is that, once inside it, she's not so sure anymore.

And so when the world is getting her down and people are sounding like idiots, she may retreat to a book, often one she's read before, and come back to the characters she knows and loves, the gentle, flowing style of the author she's come to trust, the plot that she already knows completely but isn't tired of hearing more than once. This is a very introverted, nerdish thing to do, but that's okay (assuming you don't make this your only source of comfort in life), because, as we all know, nerds = cool + awesome + smart + the Next Big Thing (just wait! Just wait, I tell you! Ten years, just ten years!).

But one day she may realize with a start that eventually those characters are going to fade away. She'll realize how much she admires these people she's read about and how so much she'd love to meet them. I hope you know what I mean. Every once in a while I get a dreadful longing to meet Peter, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie, and I have to really bang my head on something hard before I can get it to go away. Meh. (Shudders.) But I think the reason for this happening to nerds is that we can sometimes look for so much satisfaction in relationships with books...and then suddenly we realize that we're not going to get it.

There is only one book that can fully irrigate the deserts that our lives have become. And it says that whoever reads it will be like a tree planted by streams of water whose leaves do not wither.

C. S. Lewis, I would say, was right on target.

~Yfalle Eruvyweth

Math is Actually Useful For Once

2006-01-26T13:42:00.000-08:00

My mother mentioned a rather interesting idea that she read in a philosophy book once, and I thought I'd pass it on. It's really quite cool, if you think about it.

Before I tell you, I want you to try to see if you can name the trickiest concept to get your head around that you've heard recently, that someone claimed was true. Think about it. Got it? Okay. Chances are it's not what I'm thinking of, but that's okay.

All right. You all remember geometry, right? Angles and proofs and conditional statements with false contrapositives and all that. (If any of you are actually in geometry, then congratulations, if you haven't learned this stuff, you're going to.) So let's have a little geometry lesson here.

Take a triangle. I'd draw one for you, but unfortunately this isn't one of those uber-cool computerized touch-screen blackboards, so I can't. Tough luck. So you've got this triangle, and you're going to start looking for some characteristics that this triangle has and that no other shape does.

Hmm. Well, it's got three corners. Vertices, if you want to be technical. All right. That's cool. Jot that down: three vertices. And what else? Oh, well, whaddayaknow, those vertices make angles. Three vertices, three angles. And look! Those angles are made up of three lines! Three vertices, three angles, three lines.

So those are three characteristics that a triangle has. Now, think about this: Each of those characteristics has its own identity. Vertices are different from angles, angles are different from sides, etc.. They're very separate properties. Someone would have to be silly to say that having three corners is the same as having three lines.

And yet, you will never find a shape that has only one of those characteristics and not the other two. There simply is no shape with three angles that doesn't have three sides. While they have unique identities, they must be united. Even though each characteristic---the quality of having three vertices, the quality of having three angles, and the quality of having three sides---is separate, they only exist together. That's how you get a triangle. You can't have three triangles where one is made up of three vertices and another is made up of three angles and another is made up of three sides. Those qualities only ever exist together in one shape, which is made up of vertices, angles, and sides.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

One God who exists in three unique, individual Persons.

That's what I was thinking of when I thought of a concept that is really excruciatingly difficult to wrap one's mind around. It doesn't seem to follow logic. I mean, for us humans, it's absolutely bizarre. We've certainly never experienced such a being. For us, a being is one person in one body. You can only have one who per what. But with God, to quote J. Budzizewski (whose name I always manage to misspell), it's "one What in three Whos."

How on earth are we supposed to understand that? I mean "how on earth" literally. How can we, as finite, close-minded human beings, living on this planet that God has designed for us, possibly be expected to comprehend such a vast, incredible concept?

Maybe---just maybe---that was one of the reasons that God invented math.

Think about that next time you're faced with a load of math homework.

~Yfalle Eruvyweth

So Dear to Mine Heart

2006-01-11T15:08:00.000-08:00

I don't know if you've had the experience of having a close friend get rejected by somebody else, and being told you couldn't associate with that person anymore. Actually, I haven't either, at least not in the sense you're probably thinking of. No, my situation is much worse. I'm being told that I can't be friends with my commas anymore.

Let me explain. There's a certain thing that the British do which I admire immensely, and that is that when they're writing and they come to a quote, they quote the thing, and then they add a comma after the quotation marks. Like this.

When Tommy refused to "take it", Dicky berated him about the ethics of folksinging.

Nota bene: The comma is outside of the quotation marks. That is because the only thing that was quoted was the word "take" and the word "it". There was no comma in the original quotation. Imagine how silly that would look:

Dicky: Take it,!

or

Dicky: Tommy, folksingers always take it,.

It just doesn't work. So the Brits were using their heads when they decided to put the necessary clause-separating comma outside of the quotation marks in a sensible, logical, and practical fashion.

Are you following me?

Anyway, I have long admired this "ex-quote comma", to the point of having adopted it as my own and using it whenever a quote comes at the end of a clause. (Like I just did in that sentence.) In fact, I use it so often that it has become very dear to me. It is logical and obeys the rules. It neatly organizes things and makes matters irrefutably clear. It keeps sentences neat and tidy. I love this comma. Whenever I see it, it brings a surge of warm happy comma joy to my heart.

Unfortunately, we come to something ugly here. We come to the unpleasant part. You see, in American we do things differently. Perhaps it was some bizarre, obscure way of sticking it to the English when we gained our independence as a country or something. You know, "We're rebelling, go ahead and keep your lousy British comma, we can top that!" At any rate, Americans abandoned all logic and started including the comma inside of the quotation marks. Observe.

Tommy berated Dicky for being "belligerent," which got quite a laugh out of the audience.

Ahh! Ahh! Suddenly it doesn't make sense anymore! Did Tommy really say "belligerent comma"?! Does the first clause of that sentence end with the comma, with the second quotation mark stuck as a permanent member of the second clause?!? If the comma is part of the quote, then where's the other comma needed to keep the two ends of the sentence apart?!?!?!? You SEE??? When things like this happen, when foolish people take stupid liberties and start thinking they can mess with the punctuation system howsoever they please, disasters occur! The comma is abused! Chaos ensues! Clear, organized sentences become inane strings of babble!

This is no credit to the intelligence of whatever American invented this crazy scheme, and it is my firm belief that it is no credit to the intelligence of anyone else who employs it, either. Therefore, desiring to uphold my grammar standards (and keep friends with my poor dear ex-quote comma, too), I have continued to use the British method even though I have been well informed that it is "incorrect" and "wrong". It simply makes more sense. It simply follows.

But all of a sudden I am being persecuted for it. My English teacher returns all of my papers with red marks (well, usually blue or green, since she prefers different pens) where there are quotes, saying I should include the comma, it's the way we do things, stop excluding that comma, put it in the quotes for crying out loud! Such words pierce me to the soul. They are like knives to my heart. Abandon my comma? Subscribe to the senseless traditions of a misled nation? NEVER! I put my foot down. I told my teacher I would not stop using that comma. I would NOT!

And yet she continues to take points off of my assignments. Bloody American way, kriffit. May it be fachied forever.

My point in blathering to you about this? Be strong. Stand up for what you believe. Listen to the Smothers Brothers. Uphold firm principles of logic and grammar, and do not be swayed by those who would tell you it's just "not the way we do it", because they don't know what they're talking about! LONG LIVE THE BRITISH AND THEIR COMMAS!!!

This could be the start of a movement that sweeps the nation. Who knows.

~Yfalle Eruvyweth

"If Gold Ruste, What Shal Iren Do?"

2006-01-08T14:16:00.000-08:00

"This noble esample to his sheep he yaf
That first he wroughte, and afterward he taughte.
Out of the Gospel he tho wordes caughte,
And this figure he added eek therto:
That if gold ruste, what shal iren do?
For if a preest be foul, on whom we truste,
No wonder is a lewed man to ruste...
A bettre preest I trowe ther nowher noon is.
He waited after no pompe and reverence,
Ne maked him a spiced conscience,
But Cristes lore and his Apostles twelve
He taughte, but first he folwed it himselve."

---Chaucer, General Prologue to "Canterbury Tales"

Do you ever read passages in the Bible about hypocrisy and not really get it? Or do you think it's just some kind of religious mish-mosh, one of those long, fancy "theological" words that pastors debate about what the real Greek translation was? Do you think it's not really relevant to you as a Christian? Perhaps because the writers of the Bible were addressing people back in the old days, or because there's really no danger at all of you ever being a hypocrite, or just because you don't really know what the word means?

In the prologue to his set of short stories, called collectively the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer describes a large group of individuals ranging from knights to cooks to millers to monks to hatmakers to businesswomen and everyone in-between, and one of them is a Parson. This was the medieval equivalent of a country pastor, and in the lines quoted above, and in a much larger portion of the text which I felt obliged to leave out for relevancy's sake, Chaucer describes this man as a preacher who loved and served God above all else, and showed that in his life. He gave to his people that which "first he wroughte, and afterward he taughte"; in other words, he made the Gospel real and true in his own life before going on to preach it to others. "A bettre preest I trowe ther nowher noon is," says Chaucer in praise of this man's ways.

The Parson does not forget his mission, and he does not forget the danger of not truly, devotedly, and honestly following God in every aspect of his life. "If gold ruste, what shal iren do?" he laments. "For if a preest be foul, on whom we truste, no wonder is a lewed man to ruste!" If the man who claims to be a man of God does not commit his life to that and really let God be visible in his life, how can the "iren", the iron, the people who do not even claim to be men of God or even interested in Christianity---if the Gospel is being preached by gold that has allowed itself to rust in denial of the truth of the Bible, how can these non-believers be expected to be joyful recipitants of the good news of Christ? If we throw around the word "Christian" and live however we please, thinking that we're not going to get in trouble with God because we've already gotten our ticket to heaven, how can we expect the rest of the world to view us any differently? Christianity will become a religion. It will become just another one of those "lifestyles" that isn't really a lifestyle because once it's done bowing the specific number of times to God and saying the right words, it'll go right back to being just as sinful, pessimistic, reckless, uncaring, and ultimately God-rejecting as every single other person's lifestyle on the entire planet.

That's why the Bible warns against hyprocrisy---the act of not practicing what you preach. The act of claiming you have this great message for the world, but living like it doesn't mean anything to you. The act of calling yourself a Christian but not carrying yourself as one. That's why the Bible warns against hypocrisy---because when people become hypocrites, the true message gets diluted, the brilliant salvation of the world becomes just another hollow philosophical option, and the call of the voice of God begins to be ignored more and more and more. That's why the Bible warns against hypocrisy: God seeks to call all iron to himself and turn it into pure gold.

So what? If Christianity should be more than just a religion---more than just eleborate ceremonies of "pompe and reverence", more than just the holier-than-thou attitude of a "spiced conscience"---then what does that mean for us? It doesn't mean stop evangelizing to people because you're never going to be perfect yourself! For one thing, if you're a Christian, you will be perfect someday. God will wash us clean of every sin in heaven, and we will be the people we were meant to be. But for another thing, you can already be the perfect Christian. It's not an issue of doing everything right. Nowhere in the definition of "Christian" does it include "a person who never messes up with God", or even "someone whose life is lived in accordance with exactly everything the Bible teaches". Get this: It doesn't even mean that every Christian has to act like a Christian all the time or he won't get to heaven.

What it means is that you are a person who has believed in Jesus, accepted His forgiveness, salvation, and authority, and will live the rest of your life with the Spirit of God in your heart, letting God control your life, and following everything He commands you to do---to the best of your ability. And if you do your utmost, God will do the utterly more: He'll let other people see Him through you. Yes, you'll mess up. Yes, you'll mess up again. Yes, you will mess up so many times you'll start looking for something hard to bang your head on in exasperation. (Side note: This actually helps, but don't ever do it with anything heavier than a math textbook.)

But the point is, just like the Parson, we have a mission. And if we start going around and telling people we have a mission but not actually having one, the mission will fail.

Let us live like the Parson, so that we teach, but first we follow it ourselves.

~Yfalle Eruvyweth

Welcome!

2006-01-08T11:09:00.000-08:00

I hope this new venture will turn out well. I'm very excited about it.

Yfalle in Felaweshipe is going to be a blog wherein I post all of my philosophical, theological, linguistical or literary rambles. Most of these will still be posted on my Xanga site at www.xanga.com/eruvyweth, but I want to have a place to keep them especially. Yfalle in Felaweshipe is an Old English phrase that means "fallen into fellowship", which is what I hope everyone is who comes to this blog and starts reading. I may post every few days, once a week, or whenever; I will try to be consistent and as regulated as possible.