Immigration

Alas, my poor blog. I have been rather busy as of late, and have somehow not had much time to blog and even less time to think of something good to blog on...so it has been a while.

I have been hearing a lot about the immigration issue lately, and am not quite sure what to think. It is true that we need what immigrants have to offer, and if we expelled all of the illegal immigrants without replacing them our economy would be in trouble. But it is also true that one of the reasons that America is not a third world country is that we do actually enforce our laws.

It is a heart wrenching problem because this is not something abstract. People's lives and futures are at stake. There are a huge number of people here in the US who broke the law by choosing to enter this country illegally. Mexico is a third world country. Most of the people who have come here illegally from Mexico have come in search of a better life, and many have found it.

However, is it justifiable to flaunt the law and then accuse the government of unfairness when they enforce the law? Perhaps the law should not be there, perhaps we should have open borders. Perhaps. But that is not the case now.

If America was almost any other country, this wouldn't be an issue. But America is softhearted. America might actually respond to international guilt trips. This puts my country in a really hard situation with no obvious right answer. No matter what happens, there will be problems.

It is, however, the ability to deal with situations like this in a just manner that helps to make America great. I don't know what the right answer is, but I trust that given time, the answer will come, and things will change. I don't know that I trust the government to do that, but if they cannot, the voice of the people will be heard. It is the American way.

Having said that, I have thought of some possible options. The most logical way out of this situation seems to be to deport all illegal immigrants while drastically increasing the number of legal immigrants. That way those deported have a better chance of making it back into the country if they want to, and also the economy won't collapse from lack of a labor source.

One argument against this idea is that it is cruel to uproot people who are upstanding citizens and have lived in this country for a long time. Anyone who is in the US illegally, however, knew the possible consequences when they came (other than those who were infants or very small children at the time). They should be thankful for the time they did have here before they got caught. That is they way this country works....you break the law, you pay the price. The issue isn't the color of someone's skin, the issue is the enforcement of laws to avoid anarchy.

Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave

I randomly came across some clips from general hospital and they got me thinking. The show itself looks like a typical sitcom or soap opera, and therefore probably not worth watching (not that I know much of anything about the show). It did, however, make me think. The clips that I saw were about the drama that happens when people sin. A marriage falls apart because the man is in drugs and is unfaithful. The woman turns to her best friend, who happens to be a guy, and they end up sleeping together. Not to unusual in the land of TV melodrama. What happens next is what made me start thinking though. The husband checks into rehab. The woman finds out she's pregnant, and it is her friends child, not her husband's. Now what? There are no right answers. Her husband is back, and has straightened out. They have a son from before their marriage hit the rocks. Her friend knows that it is his baby, but has agreed to what is best for the baby, whatever that is. Should she marry the father of her baby, separating her son from his father, and probably causing her husband to go back down the tubes? Should she just not tell her husband whose baby it is? Should she tell, and stay with him anyway? There is no right answer. No matter what they do, someone will be ripped apart. And no one other than the children is innocent. Everyone deserves to be ripped apart.

That is what sin does. That is why our world is what it is. When we disobey God, we rip the fabric of our lives and those we love, and it cannot ever be the same. God's mercy mends our rips and tears and creates something beautiful, but the consequences are still there. Our lives become a patchwork, and something of the original beauty is lost.

God's rules aren't about thou shalt and thou shalt not. They are about saving us from self destruction, saving us from destroying everyone we love. His mercy isn't just about fire insurance, it is about mending our lives now, healing us now, so that we can live as whole selves, not tattered shreds of who we were made to be.

My utmost apologies for having neglected my blog so. I lost track of how long it had been since I had posted an essay here. Hopefully I will be able to continue posting them every week. I also apologise for the lack of an essay on Dante's Paradisio. I was assigned to read about Bernard of Clairveaux instead of writing an essay.

Paradise Lost:: Who is responsible for the fall of humanity?

There are two aspects to humanity’s fall: whether it is God’s fault or the sinner’s, and whether it is the tempter’s fault or the sinners. The first question must be answered before the second can be attempted.

If God is omniscient, then he knows if his creature will fall. If God creates a creature that he knows will fall, it seems that it is God’s fault when his creature falls, because he knew and still created the creature. There is a flaw with this reasoning, however, as can be seen in the example of Satan. God made Satan. He gave him only good, and all that he asked in return was gratitude. That is perfectly reasonable. There is something very wrong with someone who will spit in the face of the one who has given them everything. In giving Satan only good, God did everything possible short of taking away Satan’s free will to prevent Satan’s fall. Since God gave Satan every reason not to rebel, Satan is culpable for his fall, not God.

Satan agrees with this reasoning. He dwells in depth on who is to blame as he watches the earth. As he thinks on his past, he vacillates between blaming God and blaming himself for his fall. He reasons, “Whom hast thou then or what to accuse, / But heaven’s free love dealt equally to all? / Be then his love accursed, since love or hate, / To me alike, it deals eternal woe.”[1] In the next line he goes on to say “Nay cursed be thou; since against his thy will / Chose freely what it now so justly rues.”[2] Satan is sorely tempted to blame God for his fall, but then admits that is his own fault. While Satan’s logic is not to be trusted implicitly, he is inclined to clear himself of blame when stretching the truth. The fact that he came to the conclusion that he himself is to blame shows that even Satan has to admit that it is the sinner who is to be blamed, not God.

In the case of Adam and Eve, the question of who is to blame is a bit more complex, because not only are there sinners and God, there is also Satan, the tempter. In the case involving only the sinner and God, it is clearly the sinners fault, as seen above. In a case involving a tempter, however, it is not as obvious.

If God is omnipotent, it seems that he should step in and stop the tempter. This, however, is a faulty idea. God is not responsible for the choices his creatures make, tempted or not. If he is responsible at all, he is responsible to warn his creatures. Nothing more is necessary, and this still seems like a mercy. God does step in and warn Adam and Eve through Raphael[3], so completely absolving himself of guilt in that quarter.

Even if God isn’t culpable for humanities sin, Satan might be to blame for the fall. After all, he deceived and manipulated Eve. Milton, however, combats this idea in this passage:

Man, with strength entire, and free will armed, [was]

Complete to have discovered and repulsed

Whatever wiles of foe or deeming friend.

For still they knew and ought to have still remembered

The high injunction not to taste that fruit,

Whoever tempted; which they not obeying,

Incurred, what could they less, the penalty,

And manifold in sin, deserved to fall.[4]

Adam and Eve knew what they were doing was wrong. They did it anyway. According to Milton, they are to blame. End of story.

This may seem harsh at first glance, but God gave them everything they could have wanted or needed. He was so good to them, and asked only one thing of them. One thing forbidden in the mist of immense bounty. No matter what anyone said to them, they had no right to even think about disobeying God. They had what God had commanded. They had the minds that God had given them, and they should have used them. They didn’t. They were ‘absent minded’, and conveniently forgot everything that they owed him. As Milton said, they “deserved to fall.”[5]

---

[1] Milton Paradise Lost IV.67-69

[2] Ibid. IV.70-720

[3] Ibid. V.222-245

[4] Ibid. X.9-16

[5] Ibid. X.16

Amazingly funny

The World According to Student Bloopers

Richard Lederer

St. Paul's School

http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~beej/bloopers.html

---

One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following "history" of the world from certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eight grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.

The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cul- tivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother's birthmark. Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons to be partiarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.

Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fougth with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.

Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns - Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears in "The Illiad", by Homer. Homer also wrote the "Oddity", in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athen was democratic because the people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought the Parisians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.

Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History call people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March killed him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyrany who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, and the victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, the Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense.

In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote liter- ature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head.

The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the "Vir- gin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself be- fore her troops, they all shouted "hurrah." Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.

The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Mac- beth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miquel Cervantes. He wrote "Donkey Hote". The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote "Paradise Lost." Then his wife dies and he wrote "Paradise Regained."

During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and the was called the Pilgrim's Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians, who came down the hill rolling their was hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porposies on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their pacels through the post with- out stamps. During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.

Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented elec- tricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared "a horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

George Washington married Matha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Them the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, "In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a sup- posedl insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.

Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called "Candy". Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are flaling off the trees.

Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolu- tion, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. Then the Spanish gorrilas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inheret his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear him any children.

The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. He reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis Pastuer discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturailst who wrote the "Organ of the Species". Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.

The First World War, cause by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.

So you call yourself a Christian?

What does it mean to be a Christian? Jesus cared about people. That’s why he died. Christians are called to be like him, so why don’t the majority of people who call themselves Christians care enough to do something about the people around them who are dying. How do we dare ignore what is going on all around us? We whine about abortions, but what are the majority of us doing to ensure that women have no need of an abortion? It is not enough to try to ban it. We have to make it unnecessary. We have to get involved in the nitty-gritty everyday fight to reach girls before they get pregnant out of wedlock, to reach them when they are pregnant with no idea what to do next, when they have no money to feed another mouth, when they are so strung out that they are not capable of caring for a child.

It is not enough to feel pity. It is not enough to pass laws, although laws are important. It is not enough to bicker about who is to blame. We have to do something. Unless you are willing to make a difference, you do not have the right to complain.

We have to get out on the streets and give the kids with nowhere to go somewhere to call home, someone to look up to. We have to show those who know nothing but death that life is possible beyond the painkillers. We have to step beyond propaganda and into people’s lives. We have lives to save. And it starts with one. When you see that homeless person asking for money, get them some food. When you see a need, get involved. You don’t have to start a movement; you just have to start moving. Our faith demands nothing less.

The Slave Trade

And no, I am not talking about something that ended long ago. I am talking about something that is very real in our world today.

We just had a chapel on human trafficking. The guy who talked to us gave us information and statistics about the problem, and then played the film Fields of Mudan, a heart-wrenching tale of a girl forced into that world. A five-year-old in a brothel. In America. And this is the story of millions. This is not something that happens to a few people or that only happens in third world countries. This is something that is huge here in the US. Most people have no clue.

On the right under Make a Change is a list of links for more information. Get involved!!!

Last night I went to my TA tutor's house along with a bunch of his other students. It was so nice to be in a small group of people who I had a lot in common with discussing things not because we had to, but because we wanted to. That is the one thing that I regret about college right now. I am in Torrey, so I get a lot of discussion time in, but sometimes it seems like we are just there because we have to. It's just another class. Lets get it over with so we can go do something fun. That is hard for me to deal with. I want our discussions to be fun, to be what we look forward to and don't want to end. But instead I find myself wanting to do the least amount of work and preparation possible so I can do something 'fun'. grrrr. I don't seem to be able to find a way around that, though I hope and pray that I can. I want to find my way back into the joy of the intellect.

Dante's Divine Comedy: Purgatory

The soul is divided into three parts: the mind, the emotions, and the desires, and there are three categories of people: God, others, and self. The order of the soul should be mind in control of the emotions and desired. The proper order of persons is God, others, self. Purgatory is arranged according to the level of disorder of the souls, or of their disordered view of themselves, others, and God. The two main sections of purgatory are Love Perverted and Disordered Love of Good.

Those in the Love Perverted levels of purgatory have put themselves above others. They have also put their emotions over their minds. This is why they are on the lower levels of mount purgatory. They have a disordered view of others, and their souls are disordered. They must learn to see their sins for what they are, and to love others as they should, as they love themselves.

The Love Deficient and Love Disordered levels of purgatory are full of those who love God first, others second and self last, but have disordered souls. In the case of those whose love is deficient, they do not have the will power to do what they ought. Their minds are not in control enough to make them do as they aught. Those whose love is disordered love strongly, but love the wrong things. They love the things that feed their appetites, and are therefore controlled by their appetites. The penance that they are given in purgatory spurs the mind to further control, and subdues the desires by showing the souls what exactly their desires were in reality.

Unlike the souls in Hell, however, none of the souls in purgatory have put self over God intentionally. True, self indulgence is a form of idolatry, but due to the disorder of the soul, not to having intentionally put oneself over God. Purgatory is a place where order is restored to those who have sought it. Hell is a place where disorder is revealed for what it is, and the souls that chose it on earth dwell there continually wallowing in their horribleness.

New Paper and Topic

I am currently writing a paper this semester on whether religion is necessary to society, and whether or not Christianity is particularly necessary, and for whom. I would love to discuss this, so comment please. The two texts that I am particularly looking at are The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

Dante's Divine Comedy: Hell

The soul is divided into three parts: the mind, the emotions, and the desires. These three sections seem to fit nicely with Dante’s divisions of hell: the incontinent, the violent, and the fraudulent. The incontinence level is full of people who act based on their desires, the violent level is full of people controlled by their emotions, and the fraudulent level is full of people who are controlled by their intellect.

The incontinence section of hell is full of the lustful, the gluttonous, the greedy, and the wrathful. Lust, gluttony, and greed are by very definition, desire. People characterized by them are people characterized and controlled by desire. Wrath does not fit into the category of runaway desire so easily. Wrath, however, is a desire to exact vengeance. To be controlled by wrath is then to be controlled by desire. The circle of hell devoted to the incontinent is full of people driven by their desires, who refused to allow their minds to control their desires.

The violent circle of hell is contains those who were violent against others, against themselves, and against God and the things of God. Violence is the outward expression of emotion, the result of a failure to control emotions, namely hatred. Some might ask what the difference is between those in the wrathful part of hell and those in the violent part of hell. Hatred is the emotion that violence most often stems from. It is differentiated from wrath in that wrath is a desire for revenge, while hatred is a step beyond that into hating there person for who they are. Wrath can be satisfied when the other person gets what is coming to them, but hatred never dies. No matter what happen to the other person, the hatred will only grow. Hatred can grow out of wrath, but is much worse.

The fraudulent circle of hell is a bit more difficult to characterize. At first glance, there seems to be nothing wrong with the order of the souls here. Mind is in control, with the emotions and desires submitted to it. That, however, is why these souls are in the deepest part of hell. There are three categories of people: God, others, and self. The proper order of persons is God, others, and lastly, self. Those who are in hell have put self first above God and above others. This is why hell is organized with the most disordered soul at the top, and the ordered soul at the bottom. Sin is the result of disordering the order of persons, and the more order a soul, the more efficient it is at sinning, and the worse the sins. The fraudulent, then, are ordered souls who have chosen to make themselves their god, the very thing that condemned Lucifer.

Metamorphoses

Although most likely there is a deeper message to metamorphoses, on the surface it teaches a worldview of mediocrity. The beautiful women all ended up raped by the male gods, and despised by the female gods. Those who did excellently were attacked and destroyed. It also teaches a worldview of submission to the powers that be. Those who refused to submit to the gods suffered. Those who were prideful, and thought that their deeds and accomplishments made them equal to the gods were soon disabused of that notion by a display of the might of the gods.

By portraying beautiful women as the objects of the gods, Metamorphoses is teaching that beauty is not to be desired. It teaches that beauty is, in fact, something that should be avoided, because when the gods desire a mortal, chaos results, usually including great loss to the object of that desire. So, following this to its logical end, beauty leads to pain.

In the same way, excellence is seen as resulting in suffering. Arachne is truly excellent at weaving. When she contested with Athena she did not loose. That gained her nothing, however, in the long run. In the end her excellence destroyed her. Arguably it was her arrogance, but it seems that since not even Athena could best her, her arrogance should have been forgivable. What destroyed her was that she was at least as good as the goddess, if not better.

When those who refuse to submit and are prideful are attacked by the gods, that teaches that those qualities lead to great pain by showing pain as a result of pride and insurrection. For example, Niobe was very prideful, and the gods smote her mightily. Penthius is an example of insurrection against the gods. He denied the deity of Bacchus, and threatened him with bodily harm. This resulted in him getting his head ripped off by his mother as she celebrated Bacchus. Insurrection equals death and pain. Pride equals suffering.

These stories are able to shape the worldviews the simple who read them because they are stories. Stories reach into our souls and allow us to think outside the box without hurting our minds, because they can be read without engaging our minds at all. Because we tend to suspend value judgments when we read myths, we are unable to combat the values presented. When we have no defense against something, it will shape us.

The Aeneid

It is important to submit your emotions to your mind, because otherwise you will be unable to perform your duty. Dido is a perfect example of this. At the beginning of the Aeneid she is a very good queen[1]. By the time Aeneas leaves, however, she has forgotten her duty to her people, and thinks only of her pain and how to end it[2]. Because she has ceased to care, her city stops functioning and becomes vulnerable to attack[3].

Aeneas, on the other hand, does not sacrifice his duty for the sake of love. For a short amount of time he does forget his duty, but when the gods remind him of his fate he acquiesces[4]. He had to choose between love and duty, and picked duty, forcing his emotions to submit to his reason[5].

If you allow your emotions to reign, you may go mad. “And so Dido was overwhelmed by grief and possessed by madness”[6]. Dido’s love certainly seems to make her go mad. This is because if you submit your mind to your emotions it ceases to function logically because emotions are not logical.

If, however, you submit you emotions to your reason, your emotions, while paining you for a while, will eventually give up the fight. When Aeneas chooses to obey the gods and leave Carthage, it hurts him to leave Dido in such distress[7]. However, he does his duty and leaves, and when he sees her again while he is touring the underworld, while feeling pity for her, it does not seem that he is still madly in love with her[8]. His main response seems to be feeling badly about the injustice of her death[9].

So, in conclusion, “Love is a cruel master”[10], because it ought not be master. We were created so that our minds need to in control. Our emotions do matter, but they cannot be allowed control. When emotions are allowed to rule, chaos and anguish will eventually result. In the ensuing chaos, duty will be forgotten or ignored, and become nearly impossible to do.

---

[1] Book 1 lines 495-510

[2] Book 4 lines 450-553

[3] Book 4 lines 87-89(approx.)

[4] Book 4 lines 278-296

[5] Book 4 lines 331-333

[6] Book 4 lines 474-475

[7] Book 4 lines 332-333, 393-396

[8] Book 6 lines 450-477

[9] ibid.

[10] Book 4 line 413

The Odyssey

“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns”[1]

So begins Homer’s epic, The Odyssey. As in the Iliad, the character trait described in the first line becomes a major theme throughout the book. Odysseus is a man of twists and turns, using his skill at turning phrases to twist almost every event to his favor. Other characters also are deceptive to achieve their ends.

Athena, for instance, often assumes the shape of a mortal whom every one knows when she is trying to get people to do things[2]. Athena’s bent towards deception may play a large role in why she favors Odysseus so highly. The similarities between Athena and Odysseus may also be why he alone has his appearance changed to aid his deceptions[3].

The theme of deception can also be seen back in Ithaca. Because Penelope is unable to secure peace from the suitors by force, she carefully works to secure peace and time by using deception. She tells the suitors that she will pick a husband when she has finished weaving a funeral shroud for Laertes, Odysseus’s father. Then at night, she unravels all the day’s weaving. When she is found out, she insinuates that she will marry the suitor who gives the best gifts[4].

Telemachus too is learning to be a man of twists and turns as he comes into his manhood. It seems at first that he lacks his father’s ability with words, but as his character grows, he begins to show that he has inherited his father’s excellence with falsehood. However, it is not until he is able to watch his father in action that he truly begins to exercise this gift.

When Odysseus arrives in Ithaca, deception plays a role even in Odysseus’s most intimate relationships. He at first hides his identity from Telemachus[5]. Then, he hides his identity from Penelope until the suitors have been destroyed[6]. When he reveals himself, Penelope tests him to make sure that it truly is him by telling him a falsehood that only he would recognize[7]. When Odysseus goes to Laertes, he again at first conceals his identity[8].

Thus, the Odyssey is laced with deception in much the same way that the Iliad is laced with rage. While in the Odyssey deception seems to be without major consequences, in reality deception often goes hand in hand with fractured souls and lives.

---

[1] Homer, The Odyssey, 1.1

[2] ibid., 1.22-23

[3] ibid., 13.492-500

[4] ibid., 2.94-122

[5] ibid., 16.13-214

[6] ibid., 23.1-110

[7] ibid., 23.110-230

[8] ibid., 24.260-364

oh dear

well, I fully intended to post on wednesday or friday. alas, due to travel and hand surgery, that didn't happen. as soon ans I get the proper computer online (the one that hollds my essays) I shall post...Untill then, my apologies...

The Iliad

This is the first essay out of many that I am gonna post about the books that I read last semester and am reading this semester. I think I will be posting one every Wednesday or Friday.

Iliad Pull Question

On the Proper Response to Homer’s Iliad

Pirous who heaved the rock

Came rushing in and speared him up the navel –

His bowels uncoiled, spilling lose on the ground

And the dark came swirling down across his eyes.[1]

This is just one small example of the violence displayed in the Iliad. In fact, the Iliad is so saturated in violence that there almost seems to be no point in reading it. However, we cannot ignore this book. It is only recent phenomenon that one does not have to read homer to be considered educated. For the past several thousand years, Homer has been a part of the educational curriculum of western civilization. His works did not survive through the ages simply because he was good at describing gore. No, there must be something more to the Iliad than how so and so speared so and so, something beyond the violence.

Homer very carefully guides our emotions as we read the Iliad. There are specific points where our loyalties shift (for instance when Hector is talking with Andromache[2] and the death of Patroclus[3]). This can hardly be accidental or without purpose. These points illustrate what is good and what is evil, what is honorable and what is shameful. Homer seems to be very deliberately training us, shaping our emotional responses to fit his moral standards.

Sometimes Homer’s shaping our emotions can be very uncomfortable because his standards are not our own. This is important to notice, because when someone else is influencing us sometimes what we are being taught is true and good, but sometimes it may go against everything we believe. However, in Homer most of the things that make us uncomfortable are true and good, at least on a surface level. One ought to be wise and discerning concerning the Homeric worldview, but also, one also ought to be careful not to throw out ideas and emotions simply because they make us uncomfortable.

For instance, honor plays a major role in the Iliad. Most of the plot centers around the honor of Agamemnon, Achilles, and Hector. However, in today’s culture, honor is not seen as being very important. People don’t fight duels to defend their honor anymore. The concept of honor being one of the most important things in life seems very foreign. Because of this, when Homer guides our emotions about someone based on their honor or lack thereof, it is very uncomfortable for us. Because this is uncomfortable, it is very easy to try to ignore it, to say that honor is not important and that Homer doesn’t apply anymore. This is not a good response. Whether or not honor is important, whether or not his works apply to our lives today, decisions about rational things ought to be made based on reason, not based on personal preference.

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[1] Homer, The Iliad, 4.607-609

[2] ibid., 6.482-588

[3] ibid., 16.914-1009

Suddenly it all makes sense....and I am blown away

We were having a lovely discussion in preparation for Don Rags, when I suddenly had the most amazing epiphany. God is so amazingly beautifully merciful. I had been getting inklings of it while I was studying the Pentateuch, and more as I studied Hebrews with Melanie, but I saw a much more full picture of it tonight. I shall try to explain it here, but I'm really not sure that I can do it justice.

We started the semester with Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. These books taught us that the gods are arbitrary, unjust, and chaotic. Ovid in particular portrayed the gods as being immortal and powerful humans, more human than we are.

Then we moved on to Dante, who even in Hell offered us hope. Here was a system that is ordered. Hell is not a random pile of all the humanity that ever offended a God. It is instead a carefully organized and orchestrated system of punishment based on a very detailed moral system. In Purgatory and Paradise, we got a glimpse of a way of escape from the doom that we all seem to deserve.

Spenser's Faerie Queen was next. Here we saw the possibility of redemption displayed in myth. Here was a good human wanting to accomplish his quest, but he is incapacitated by weakness. Then he is healed, and equipped to conquer, redeemed.

Milton then went to the root of everything, the very beginning. He showed how the thing that brought this chaos in the first place was that Satan wanted to be God, and then brought mankind around to his way of thinking as well. Satan is the ultimate Homeric hero. He is in it for the glory. In Paradise Regained, we see the perfect man being the perfect hero: Christ is in it for God's glory, not his own. So here we see the problem begin, and how to defeat it, but we are incapable of being the perfect man. We cannot beat this problem.

Then we move on to the Pentateuch. Here we see God show an insane amount of mercy. Even as he punished mankind for their disobedience, he shows mercy. He saves us from immortality. If the gods are what we would become if we were immortal, than this is a mercy indeed. Humans, in this weakened state cannot stand immortality. Also, from the midst of the horror of the Canaanite and Egyptian gods, we see him rescue a nation. He calls them his own people, and says that he will be their God. He gives them these laws that separate them from the other nations and mark them as his. Some of these laws must have seemed so arbitrary at the time, but with modern technology, they make perfect sense. The laws he gave them protected them from many ills, both physical and societal. He offers them a way to atone for their rebellions so that he can live among them without destroying them. His mercy seen here is exquisite.

But then comes Hebrews, and the world suddenly becomes painfully beautiful. In Hebrews we see that the mercy show in the Pentateuch is nothing compared to the mercy that has been shown us. We thought that the sacrificial system was merciful. Christ accomplished more in one death than the death of all of the animals killed in the history of the world. In the death of the perfect man, the debt owed by sinners was forever paid. In the resurrection of the triumphant sacrifice, death was forever conquered. We may die, but there is no longer any need to fear. The sort of immortality we were created for awaits us on the other side. In the continual perfection of the perfect man sin was destroyed. Suddenly we are no longer trapped in the chaos. The door to heaven has been unlocked, and all that is needed now is to enter it.

How is that we miss this? God is good. infinitely so. He is not safe, but he is good. The beauty of what he has done and who he is is breathtaking and so much more than we can even begin to imagine...I am blown away.

Alas....

My utmost apologies for my lack of new posts...hopefully after finals week I will have time to post....

I have been updating my xanga though, so feel free to stop by there.

The Lady Is Not For Buning

Christopher Fry's play The Lady Is Not For Burning is AMAZING!!! It shows us ourselves in a mirror, and gives hope to the hopeless, rest for the weary, and courage to the faint of heart. God is good.

Elections

It was a very odd feeling to realize that I actually have a say in what is happening in this country. It is also a rather interesting feeling to realize that my vote is not included in the the current election results. Alas for absentee voting. Regardless, I now have the right to complain about the state of this country. I voted.

While I don't claim to know the statistics, the general impression that I get is that there are a whole lot of people out there who weren't willing to vote for some reason or other. I also get the impression that a lot of those people are pretty vocal about their disapproval of the state of our country. To them I say, if you don't like the way this country is being run, do something about it. Vote. If you are not willing to do so, then don't complain. You chose this state of affairs by refusing to make a choice.


To those of you that did vote, I salute you. Whether or not I agree with how you voted is immaterial, I'm just thankful that you care about our country.

To those who serve in our armed forces, and to their families, THANK YOU! With out your courage and sacrifice, this country would probably not exist as we know it. God bless you and keep you from harm and set his angels to protect you.