A Post, Finally

So what it's ten pm on the night before clinical? I'm gonna write a blog post, since I haven't done that in like a bizillion years.

I actually made a New Year's Resolution this year; after my usual fashion of waiting until two weeks post-New Year's. I thought I'd blogged it, but apparently not.

This year I resolve to learn assertiveness. I've spent too long being passive or passive aggressive and bottling everything all up until I burst out in anger or absorb a bunch of disappointment and hurt over things that I never told anyone I wanted for fear of rejection in the first place. My depressed thoughts have got DYSFUNCTIONAL and MALADAPTIVE written all over them.

I plan to learn to say, "No," when I can't do something, instead of sort of mumbling about it and ending up over-committed.

I plan to learn to tell my loved ones when I would like them to do something, instead of hinting, vaguely hoping that they'll notice, and feeling disappointed and guilty when they don't.

I plan to learn to take responsibility for my own actions, behavior, and feelings, without taking responsibility for others' actions, behavior, and feelings which are beyond my vocation or control.

I plan to learn to appropriately confront people with whom I have a conflict instead of talking about the conflict with everyone but them.

I plan to learn to address problems to the appropriate authority, with proposed solutions, instead of bemoaning the problem, my helplessness and frustration.

I plan to learn to eliminate false, self-injuring, 'automatic thoughts' which tear down my self-image and destroy the joy God has given me in who He has made me to be. I additionally plan to learn to put the best construction on the words and actions of my family, friends, colleagues and supervisors at work and school, rather than allowing myself to become more and more insecure by assuming negative connotations.

I plan to learn to stop making self-deprecation my automatic fall-back when others give me attention, reduce discomfort by other methods, and learn to appropriately respond to compliments.

I plan to learn to prevent myself from becoming tense and anxious whenever I anticipate my parents, teachers, and other authorities observing and evaluating behavior on my part that they have not specifically sanctioned. (E.g. There's no reason I should get a pounding headache, almost burst into tears, and feel extremely guilty and trapped when an authority says they wish to talk to me about something, when a parent hears me singing a new folk song, or a fellow student corrects a minor mistake in a clinical technique.)

And so the list goes on. Some of these non-assertive, pathological thoughts and behaviors have grown with me since childhood. Some have emerged insidiously since the onset of adolescence or the beginning of nursing school. I do not want these dysfunctional processes to control or define me.

I want to be a self-disciplined, self-controlled, self-aware Christian woman who can use her body, mind, and behavior consciously and deliberately in service to her neighbor within her vocation. To this end I make my resolution, petitioning the aide of Almighty God, who does not abandon me even when I feel irrationally alone and excessively guilty, but who strengthens and upholds me and will preserve even my fragile mind to life everlasting, along with my body and soul.

Revelation

I just had a revelation. I have a whole 6 hours until 12 pm. A whole 6 hours I can use to finish a nutrition project! What ho! The wonder o' it.

Let's get 'er done.

My Very First Nursing Patient

Before I ever step foot in the clinical setting, I have identified my very first patient. She's nearer to me than any other, but, strangely, I've been quite indifferent toward many of her critical needs. Ironically, this indifference has grown as my interest and involvement with nursing has increased. That I now hope to remedy.

If I do not take care of myself, how can I hope to help my patients? How can I pledge myself to give my clients the most complete and holistic care I can, if the best my body and mind can offer them at the time of care is not the best which I could provide were I in good health and practicing a healthy lifestyle?

Hence, I must initiate the Nursing Process in regards to myself. Time being limited, I'll not run through all steps of the Nursing Process in this post (Assessment, Diagnosis, Planning, Implementing, Evaluating) but skip to one of my personal self diagnoses and the interventions I plan to address it. (Following info from Nursing Diagnosis Handbook, Mosby)

Nursing Diagnosis:

Sleep Deprivation - Prolonged periods without sleep.

Defining Characteristics (Those applicable): Acute confusion; agitation; anxiety; apathy; daytime drowsiness; decreased ability to function; fatigue; hand tremors; heightened sensitivity to pain; inability to concentrate; irritability; lethargy; listlessness; malaise; restlessness; slowed reactions; transient paranoia

Outcomes:
Patient will awaken refreshed and be less fatigued during the day.
Fall asleep without difficulty.
Verbalize plan that provides adequate time for sleep.
Identify actions that can be taken to improve quality of sleep.


I'm planning that TQ will spend at least a half hour in physical activity each day, sufficiently hydrate herself, and shower and engage in devotions before bed in order to promote quality of sleep and quick commencement of sleep. Also, TQ will provide sufficient time for sleep by reducing the unnecessary waking activity of recreational online communications to a minimum of 30 minutes per day (including during study) on all school days/nights. TQ will complete homework, physical activity, and daily devotions before other unnecessary or recreational activities (excluding special situations which call for care of others and which clearly take priority over hours of sleep). TQ will initiate a 9:45 bedtime curfew to be strictly adhered to unless the next day's homework is still to be completed.

Interventions to be evaluated after a week, reassessment to be performed, and needed interventions implemented.

Now for some sleep!

As if I wasn't scared enough before....

...my Math for Meds professor just sent us students this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL-xR8eGoqY

Aaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuggggggggghhhhhhhhh!

And I Am Seized Once More by the Blogging Urge

Dear Reader,

This is one of those nights wherein I ought to sleep instead of holding tryst with my computer keyboard in the dark hours of the night but in which I find that my mind is o'er brimming with words, though I am exhausted by my day. Hence, I take upon myself to write a short post. Hah! A hopefully short post which I may expand upon later.

I'm going to try to explain why I like the painting The Justice of Emperor Otto III by Dirc Bouts C 1460.

This particular diptych moved me greatly and I've developed a deep admiration for and attachment to it. In fact, I selected it as one of the paintings on which I wrote for my Augustine College Art final exam. Yet, when I mention my appreciation for this painting to family and acquaintances, I'm met at first with curiosity and then with, after I mention the subject of the painting, a sort of aversion and incredulity. You see, the two panels are titled, The Wrongful Execution of a Count and Ordeal by Fire.

What do I see in a work of art with such titles? First, take a look.

Prior to Augustine College, I probably would have barely glanced at these images or simply passed over them in disgust at the subject matter. But, thanks to Dr. Tingley, I was not able to treat this diptych so.

Such pictures, one would suspect, must certainly tell a story. As Dr. Tingley explained to the class, this diptych was painted for the wall of a hall of justice in the Lowlands. Strangely, the first panel depicts a miscarriage of justice - apparently historical.

Otto III, shown with his wife, gazing from the wall, has just sentenced a count, depicted in white below, to death. Otto's wife accused the nobleman of attentions to her after the count refused her overtures. The count walks to his death attended by executioners, priest, and his own wife who listens to him with downcast face. He swears his faithfulness to her and charges her to vindicate him. As the apathetic courtiers watch, the count is beheaded and the countess receives his head from the executioner.

In the second panel, the scene changes as the countess pleads her husband's innocence. To decide the point, she undergoes an ordeal by fire, meant to test in her own body the word of her husband against the Emperor's queen. If she is hurt by the red hot iron bar, her husband has played her false and deserved his death. If she is unharmed, he will be vindicated. The hot iron mars her not, the Emperor is aghast and his court astonished. In the background, the false wife of the Emperor burns at the stake for her slander and unfaithfulness.

At this point, please don't be repulsed by the tragic tale. True, it is tragic. It is sobering. But it is also beautiful in two points. One of these, Dr. Tingley brought out in his lecture: Human Justice ultimately accountable to Divine Justice.

Human Justice may be miscarried. Human Justice may be executed in anger and from false witness. Human Justice is fallible and may be twisted. Human Justice may condemn the innocent instead of aquitting him.

But Divine Justice will not and does not falter. Human Justice is accountable to Divine Justice. It is to Divine Justice and not Otto's Justice that the Countess appeals to as she confidently enters her ordeal. (Not that I'm advocating ordeals to determine guilt or innocence. Though, come to think of it, imagine how many criminals would continue to plead innocent if guilt were determined by ordeal!) Those who administer Human Justice ought to tremble before the Divine Justice to which they will be called to account. For those who such ministers condemn, fully believing them guilty though they were actually innocent, will be vindicated by the One who entrusted the sword to them.

Imagine being the judge who had to hear cases sitting before this diptych! What serious weight would it add to your judgements by its silent reminder of both the frailty of your justice and the Divine Court of appeal.

But there's another beauty to this painting-narrative which Dr. Tingley didn't touch on. This diptych could also be dubbed "A Tale of Two Wives" - one a faithless adulterer, the other a trusting, obedient wife. Both husbands trusted their wives. One betrayed and used his trust while the other upheld him even in his death.

Frankly, I'm quite amazed at the Count's wife. Her acts testify to a marriage of implicit trust between the partners. Honestly, how many women would first of all, believe a husband's assurance of fidelity when he had been condemned to death for unfaithfulness? And after that, how many women would trust such a husband to the extreme of testing his word in their own flesh?

Yet, this woman doesn't merely "trust" her husband in thought alone, or "hope" that he was faithful. She hears his promise as he's led out to die for breaking it and believes him. Not only does she believe him, but she quietly receives his final charge to prove his innocence. Her loyalty remains even after her husband's execution, nor does the shame deter her from keeping his trust. She appeals Otto's judgement and, moreover, does not satisfy herself with mere pleading. She offers her very body to test the Count's innocence. She trusts him not with her words alone, but with actively, she still trusts her very flesh to her husband just as she did in his life. The Countess enters the ordeal with a double confidence: a confidence in her husbands truthfulness, and a confidence in God as the just confirmer of the truth and vindicator of the innocent. Without such confidence, she would have reason indeed to tremble for her body. Yet neither of her confidences betray her - the faithful wife, obedient to her husband's last charge, passes the trial scatheless.

It is this unquestioning, undoubting trust and confidence in God and husband which marks the Countess' marriage in this pictoral narrative and so endears the diptych to me.

My brain isn't working well tonight, but I hope that was intelligible. Am not going to review before posting.

A New Blog

Good Morning.



I should have gone to bed. Too late now. I wanted to get this done and once I get a project into my head, if I don't do it right then and there, I'll never get around to it. Hence I am awake with a splitting headache at 1:08am. Blah. (Unfortunately, the internet went out without telling me and I lost the majority of this post. Double Blah. Rewrite. Triple Blah.)

But, I put together a new blog. No, I'm not getting tired of this one. I love this little adiaphoron where I can scribble away at adiaphora and that which concerns it. But I needed a place for serious, heavy academic work not suited to my free and informal little blog.

You see, I put so much work into some of my academic papers that it seems unjust for them to be only read once and that by my professors. In hopes that someone will get some use out of them, I began a blog christened ΓΡΑΦΩ - I WRITE. Unlike The Adiaphoron, which I have purposely left open to all viewers, ΓΡΑΦΩ is viewable by invitation only both to protect the integrity of my academic work and to limit my audience.

Not everything I write will go up there. So far, only one paper from Hope College and five of my Augustine College papers struck me as suitable. But in this way, I can share what may be shared in hopes that it may be useful apart from the academic sphere alone.

So, if you've any bit of interest, just comment or drop me an email and I'll send you an invitation. It's not very exciting, so please, don't feel compelled or anything like that. It's just schoolwork.

Philosophy Exam (in 3 hours)

Ahoy! I'm going to practice my exam on ya'll. If you don't want to know about it, why then, don't read - I won't be offended (not that I am anyway when people don't read this. As I've said before, this blog is mostly for me to have a place to spew random thoughts.)

So, first off, I need to memorize three quotes; 1 assigned quote and two quotes of my choice (from philosophers we've studied this semester).

Thomas Aquinas:
The purpose of the study of philosophy is not to learn what others have thought but to learn how the truth of things stands.

Blaise Pascal:
If man is not made for God, why is he only happy in God? If man is made for God, why is he so opposed to God?

Martin Buber:
Whoever says You does not have something; he has nothing. But he stands in relation.

And after that, I get to try to answer 50 short answer questions over all the "philosophers" we've covered this year.
Augustine
Aquinas
Machiavelli
Luther (with a tad of Erasmus)
Descartes
Pascal
Hume
Kant
Mill (and by extension Bentham)
Buber (with some background Nietsche)
MacIntyre
and various Post-Moderns

Ho boy! Here we go!

And then we've got an Essay Question (worth a measly 40%) introducing a major idea from the term that we consider important. And that's what I'm going to sort of rudimentarily do here and now with Martin Buber's "I-Thou" philosophy.

**************************************************
According to Buber there are two attitudes a person can take toward the world and those in it corresponding to what he calls the "two basic words" which are actually word pairs. These attitudes are "I-You" and "I-It." To say You or It to a thing/person establishes a mode of relation to said thing/person. There is no "I" existence alone. "I" only exists in "I-You" mode or "I-It" mode. ("It" includes "He" and "She.") These words are said with one's being.

"It" is the object of goal directed verbs. I smell a flower; the flower is an "It." I measure a table; the table is an "It." I bandage a person; the person is "He." I test God; God is "He." The realm of Experience belongs to "I-It," because Experience experiences some thing.

Nor can one enter the realm of "I-You" by introspection or inner/spiritual experiences. Whether internal or external, the mode of relating via experience occurs solely in the realm of "I-It."

"Those who experience do not participate in the world. For the experience is "in them" and not between them and the world." In the same way, "the world does not participate in experience" but "allows itself to be experienced." In "I-It" mode, the subject abstracts some information or sensation from the object, but the object contributes nothing and neither does the subject. The act of sniffing the breeze captures information from the breeze but neither I nor the wind give each other anything.

If Experience is the way of functioning in the "I-It" realm, "I-You" establishes Relation. "Whoever says you does not have something for his object." He does not experience a "thing" or even a person. He stands in relation. He does not "have" anything at all. In Relation, "You" is not a conglomerate of qualities, but a Being - timeless, spaceless, unabstracted.

There are three categories of beings to which one can say "You": beings in nature, human beings, and spiritual beings. For each of these three categories, the "You" we say will take a slightly different form. In this post I will stick to "life with men" for "here the relation is manifest and enters language. We can give and receive the You." This relationship is reciprocal: both say "You," (though one can say You, thereby establishing the Relation mode of existence and the other know it not.)

"When I confront a human being as my You and speak the basic word I-You to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things." He's not a bunch of qualities nor is he bound by time and space. He's not merely a 16yr old with yellow hair and big feet in a tree. He's a being to whom I'm in relation. That doesn't mean he is abstracted from his age, hair color, shoe size, and perch, but that all of those things are seen in light of him. These things are seen as part of him, but once you abstract his hair color, shoe size, age or anyother quality from him, you no longer have him as a You but as an It. In relation, I do not experience my You. (There are occasions where I must deal with a person as He rather than You - both are necessary to living as a human - and those are the times when I experience him and his qualities.) Not experiencing does not mean that I do not know anything about my You when I am in relation; rather I know "only everything" for I no longer know particulars.

The "I-You" relation involves a "risk and sacrifice" for the "You" must be said with one's whole being. I in and I-It relationship can relax, removed from the object I experience, but I in the I-You experience puts myself in service to my You. This relation is both passive and active. "The You encounters me by grace - it cannot be found by seeking. But that I speak the basic word to it is a deed of my whole being, is my essential deed. The You encounters me. But I enter into a direct relationship to it. Thus the relationship is election and electing, passive and active at once...The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by men, can never be accomplished without me. I require a You to become; becoming I, I say You."

"I-You" relationships are completely unmediated in that no means comes between I and You. Such means is an obstacle to relation because it is an instrument of the It world. But the real divisive line of reality is not "between experience and non-experience, nor between the given and the not-given, nor between the world of being and the world of value, but across all the regions between You and It: between presence and object." Objects (It, He, She) reside in the past. I experienced a thunderstorm when I was three. I touched a starfish in 2007. The thunderstorm and the starfish are objects. They are past. Presence is being, is You. The "essential is lived in the present."

To bridge the boundary, some turn to the world of ideas. But ideas are not beings and cannot participate in I-You relations. "The It-humanity that some imagine, postulate, and advertise has nothing in common with the bodily humanity to which a human being can truly say You." One cannot love the idea of humanity. One must love persons. Only by saying You to each individual person can one say You to humanity. I-You relation demands action; "the essential act that here establishes directness is usually misunderstood as feeling, and thus misunderstood." Love, says Buber is not a feeling. "Feeling one "has"; love occurs. Fellings dwell in man, but man dwells in his love...Love is responsibility of an I for a You: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling - the equality of all lovers, from the smallest to the greatest and from the blisfully secure whose life is circumscribed by the life of one beloved human being to him that is nailed his life long to the cross of the world, capable of what is immense and bold enough to risk it: to love man." These acts of an I-You relationship are reciprocal - not in that the one for whom they are done necessarily acts back but that "my You acts on me as I act on it. Our students teach us, our works form us."

Hatred, according to Buber, is not possible between and I and a You because hatred cannot be spoken with one's whole being nor can one hate if one truly sees a being in its wholeness." Hatred remains blind by its very nature; one can hate only part of a being. Whoever sees a whole being and must reject it, is no longer in the dominion of hatred but in the human limitation of the capacity to say You."

Though every You must at sometime become an It, be an object, it becomes again a You when an I speaks the basic word pair establishing I-You existence. One cannot at all times relate in the You world; the It world is necessary as well. The It world is firm and can be measured, put into nice little labeled boxes. The world of being, on the other hand, is present but unstable: "measure and comparison have fled." "It [the world of being] is your present; you have a present only insofar as you have it; and you can made it into an object for you and experience and use it - you must do that again and again - and then you have no present any more. Between you and it there is a reciprocity of giving: you say You to it and give yourself to it; it says You to you and gives itself to you. You cannot come to an understanding about it with others."

Man is tempted to live solely in the It world. It's much safer. There are do demands, no sacrifices, only using and experiencing. It is hard and objective. And so man is tempted to say You and mean It. Whoever means It says It with his being even if the form of his words is You; he establishes the I-It existence.
"One cannot live in the pure present: it would consume us if care were not taken that it is overcome quickly and thoroughly. But in pure past one can live; in fact, only there can a life be arranged. One only has to fill every moment with experiencing and using, and it ceases to burn."

I don't have time to explain more 'cause I've got to go take that exam. Hope this makes a little bit of sense! Bye, bye! :D

"And in all seriousness of truth, listen; without It a human being cannot live. But whoever lives only with that is not human."

MacDonald's Lilith: A Matter of Life and Death.

I sense another long night approaching; once again I'm seized by the blogging urge at an unearthly hour. Here goes:

Introducing George MacDonald on procreation, children, and submission in his novel Lilith. As I have not (to my loss which I hope to soon remedy) read anything else by MacDonald, I won't presume to add much interpretation to the passages: they speak for themselves.

Setting the Stage:
Lilith is a highly figurative work. Every detail hints at something else - both within the narrative and outside the narrative. Hence it is difficult to properly understand without it's fictional context or a sense of what the author is driving at. Yet the point of some passages could hardly speak clearer.
In this book, Lilith - the mythic first (angelic) wife of Adam (take it figuratively where you will) - is the great Antagonist (herself decieved by the Satanic Shadow). She hates living things, especially children and particularly her own daughter Lona, seeking their destruction, (sustaining and perpetuating her beauty and youth by feeding upon blood.) It is foretold that her child will be her undoing.
The primary recalcitrant protagonist, Mr. Vane, is a man of our world (or rather "dimension") who is slowly learning both who he is, his name, how to live, and how to die (the four themes intertwine quite closely) among other things. At the moment of this conversation, Mr. Vane discourses with Mara (Woman of Sorrow - hint, hint) about the land of Bulika where (though he does not know it) Lilith rules. Mara speaks:

There is a city in that grassy land," she replied, "where a woman is princess. The city is called Bulika. But certainly the princess is not a girl! She is older than this world, and came to it from yours -- with a terrible history, which is not over yet. She is an evil person, and prevails much with the Prince of the Power of the Air. The people of Bulika were formerly simple folk, tilling the ground and pasturing sheep. She came among them, and they received her hospitably. She taught them to dig for diamonds and opals and sell them to strangers, and made them give up tillage and pasturage and build a city. One day they found a huge snake and killed it; which so enraged her that she declared herself their princess, and became terrible to them. The name of the country at that time was The Land of Waters...But the wicked princess gathered up in her lap what she could of the water over the whold country, closed it in an egg, and carried it away. Her lap, however, would not hold more than half of it; and the instant she was gone, what she had not taken fled away underground, leaving the country as dry and dusty as her own heart. Were it not for the waters under it, every living thing would long ago have perished from it. For where no water is, o rain falls; and where no rain falls, no springs rise. Ever since then, the princess has lived in Bulika, holding the inhabitants in constant terror, and doing what she can to keep them from multipying. Yet they boast and believe themselves a prosperous, and certainly are a self-satisfied people -- good at bargaining and buying, good at selling and cheeting; holding well together for a common interest, and uterly treacherious where interests clas; proud of their princess and her power, and despising every one they get the better of; never doubting themselves the most honourable of all the nations, and each man counting himself better than any other. The depth of their worthlessness and height of their vain-glory no one can understand who has not been there to see, who has not learned to know the miserable misgoverned and self-deceived creatures.

Introducing Lilith's pride:
Mr. Vane, in his lonely journey toward Bulika, stumbled across a woman - or rather, what remained of a woman - lying uncovered, cold, and 'skeletonic' [word coined here] in the woods. Unwilling to leave a woman exposed, yet unwilling to bury her if life could by any means be brought back, Vane devotes over a month to her care in the merest hope of revival from the death which seems to hold her in its grip. He bathes her daily in a warm stream, squeezes juice into her lips, and focuses his whole attention, his very desire and hope, on the remote chance of recovering this once dazzlingly beautiful woman as a companion. Toward the latter weeks of his watch, however, a leech-like creature begins to suck his blood every night, but he pays it little mind for the flesh begins to fill out on his charge. One morning he is woken by the woman. This rather strange exchange fires from her lips (reminiscent of Lewis' Jadis [whom Lewis casts as a descendent of Lilith]):

I stopped: a strange smile had flickered over her beautiful face.
"Did you find me there?" she asked, pointing to the cave.
"No; I brought you there," I replied.
"You brought me ?"
"Yes."
"From where?"
"From the forest."
"What have you done with my clothes - and my jewels?"
"You had none when I found you."
"Then why did you not leave me?"
"Because I hoped you were not dead."
"Why should you have cared?"
"Because I was very lonely, and wanted you to live."
"You would have kept me enchanted for my beauty!" she said, with proud scorn.
Her words and her look aroused my indignation.
"There was no beauty in you," I said.
"Why, then, again, did you not led me alone?"
"Because you were of my own kind."
"Of your kind?" she cried, in a tone of utter contempt.
"I thought so, but I find I was mistaken!"
"Doubtless you pitied me!"
"Never had woman more claim on pity, or less on any other feeling!"
With an expression of pain, mortification, and anger un-utterable, she turned from me and stood silent. Starless night lay profound in the gulfs of her eyes: hate of him who brought it back had slain their splendour. The light of life was gone from them...

"Ha! How long do you pretend I have lain unconscious? -- Answer me at once."
"I cannot tell how long you had lain when I found you, but there was nothing left of you save skin and bone: that is more than three months ago. --Your hair was beautiful, nothing else! I have done for it what I could."...
...She gave a shudder of disgust, and stood for a while with her gaze fixed on the hurrying water. Then she turned to me:
"We must understand each other!" she said. "--You have done me the two worst of wrongs -- compelled me to live, and put me to shame: neither of them can I pardon!"
She raised her left hand, and flung it out as if repelling me. Something ice-cold struck me on the forehead....

Hang on a minute, Lilith! I'm starting to get a very vague idea of your value system and it looks a tad skewed from the get go: to compel you to live and to shame you by helping you are the greatest wrongs one could do to you?

Lilith's appetite for children, mothers, and hatred of procreation:
Vane has begun to have horrible doubts as to Lilith's identity (he doesn't yet know her name) after seeing her transform? into a spotted leopardess and charge toward Bulika. He sees a mother pursued by the leopardess, hears a scream of anguish, and rushes to the scene to find that the mother has crushed the leopardess' left paw with a stone, prompting the beast's bloody flight. He converses with the mother (who is herself not native to Bulika):

"There, my darling is asleep! The foul beast has not hurt her! -- Yes; it was my baby she was after!" she went on, caressing the child. "and then she would have torn her mother to pieces for carrying her off! -- Some say the princess has two white leopardesses," she continued: "I know only one -- with spots. Everybody knows her! If the princess hear of a baby, she sends her immediately to suck its blood, and then it either dies or grows up and idiot. I would have gone away with my baby, but the princess was from home, and I thought I might wait..."
"Why is the princess so cruel?"
"There is an old prophecy that a child will be the death of her. That is why she will listen to no offer of marriage, they say."
"But what will become of her country if she kills all the babies?"
"She does not care about her country. She sends witches around to teach the women spells that keep babies away, and give them horrible things to eat. Some say she is in league with the Shadows to put an end to the race. At night we hear the questing beast, and lie awake and shiver. She can tell at once the house where a baby is coming, and lies down at the door, watching to get in. There are words that have power to shoo her away, only they do not always work..."

Of Bulikian materialism and strangers:
Vane cowering in an alley when the spotted leopardess passes is joined by a Bulikian woman who condescends to speak to him, though strangers and poor are to be shunned.

"[The spotted leopardess] is kept in a cage, her mouth muzzled, and her feet in gloves of crocodile leather. Chained she is too; but she gets out often, and sucks the blood of any child she can lay hold of. Happily there are not many mothers in Bulika!"...
...I asked her many questions. She told me the people never did anything except dig for precious stones in their cellars. They were rich, and had everything made for them in other towns.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because it is a disgrace to work," she answered. "Everybody in Bulika knows that!"
I asked how they were rich if none of them earned money. She replied that their ancestors had saved for them, and they never spent. When they wanted money they sold a few of their gems.
"But there must be some poor!" I said.
"I suppose there must be, but we never think of such people. When one goes poor, we forget him. That is how we keep rich. We mean to be rich always."
"But when you have dug up all your precious stones and sold them, you will have to spend your money, and one day you will have none left!"
"We have so many, and there are so many still in the ground, that that day will never come," she replied.
"Suppose a strange people were to fall upon you, and take everything you have!"
"No strange people will dare; they are all horribly afraid of our princess. She it is who keeps us safe and free and rich!"
Every now and then as she spoke, she would stop and look behind her.
I asked why her people had such a hatred of strangers. She answered that the presence of a stranger defiled the city.
"How is that?" I said.
"Because we are more ancient and noble than any other nation. --Therefore," she added, "we always turn strangers out before night."...
..."Is there no place in the city for the taking in of strangers?"
"Such a place would be pulled down, and its owner burned. How is purity to be preserved except by keeping low people at a proper distance? Dignity is such a delicate thing!"

Wow, Bulikite! You live in constant fear of your princess, yet you speak of her as the one who keeps us "safe and free and rich." Wealth takes priority. Yours is a society where work is shameful - we spend our fathers' riches - and racism coexists with infanticide. Interesting connection with the latter two, but perhaps I shouldn't make much of it, Eh?

Lilith on aging:
Vane is foolishly (against Mr. Raven/Adam's advice) listening to Lilith who is attempting to seduce him to bend to her deceitful, selfish machinations:

"Our natures, however, are so different, that this may not be easy. Men and women live but to die; we, that is such as I --we are but a few -- live to live on. Old age is to you a horror; to me it is a dear desire: the older we grow, the nearer we are to our perfection. Your perfection is a poor thing, comes soon, and lasts but a little while; ours is a ceaseless ripening. I am not yet ripe, and have lived thousands of your years --how many, I never cared to note. The everlasting will not be measured."

Sooo, Lilith sees man's life as a horror, her own as everlasting exercise in perfection. Hmm. Let's see if we can expand on this.

Lilith's Drive for Personal Autonomy:
Deceived into performing service for Lilith, Vane accidentally leads her back into his world -- from which she may be able to reach her innocent daughter! Mr. Raven, the mysterious Crow/ Sexton/ Librarian, revealed in his true nature as Adam, exposes Lilith in the guise of a cat and gently but masterfully exercises his capacity to stay her for the moment and exhort her to repentence. She will have none of it:

...returning to the cat, stood over her and said, in a still, solemn voice: --
"Lilith, when you came here on the way to your evil will, you little thought into whose hands you were delivering yourself! -- Mr. Vane, when God created me...He brought me an angelic splendour to be my wife: there she lies! For her first thought was power; she counted it slavery to be one with me, and bear children for Him who gave her being. Once child, indeed, she bore; then, puffed with the fancy that she had created her, would have me fall down and worship her! Finding, however, that I would but love and honour, never obey and worship her, she poured out her blood to escape me, fled... How it is with her now, she best knows, but I know also. The one child of her body she fears and hates, and would kill, asserting a right which is a lie, over what God sent through her into His new world. Of creating, she knows no more than the crystal that takes its allotted shape, or the worm that makes two worms when it is cloven asunder. Vilest of God's creatures, she lives by the blood and lives and souls of men. She consumes and slays, but is powerless to destroy as to create.....

....It is but her jealousy that speaks, " he said, "jealousy self-kindled, foiled and fruitless; for here I am, her master now whom she would not have for her husband! while my beautiful Eve yet lives, hoping immortally! Her hated daughter lives also, but beyond her evil ken, one day to be what she counts her destruction -- for even Lilith shall be saved by her childbearing. Meanwhile she exults that my human wife plunged herself and me in despair, and has borne me a countless race of miserables; but my Eve repented, and is now beautiful as never was woman or angel, while her groaning, travailing world is the nursery of our Father's children. I to have repented, and am blessed. --Thou, Lilith, hast not yet repented; but thou must. --Tell me, is the great Shadow beautiful? Knowest thou how long thou wilt thyself remain beautiful? --Answer me, if thou knowest."
Then at last I understood that Mr. Raven was indeed Adam, the old and the new man; and that his wife, ministering in the house of the dead, was Eve, the mother of us all, the lady of the New Jerusalem.
The leopardess reared; the flickering and fleeing of her spots began; the princess at length stood radiant in her perfect shape.
"I am beautiful -- and immortal!" she said -- and she looked the goddess she would be.
"As a bush that burns, and is consumed," answered he who had been her husband. "--What is that under they right hand?"
For her arm lay across her bosom, and her hand was pressed to her side.
A swift pang contorted her beautiful face, and passed.
"It is but a leopard-spot that lingers! it will quickly follow those I have dismissed," she answered.
"Thou art beautiful because God created thee, but thou art the slave of sin: take they hand from thy side."
Her hand sank away, and as it dropt she looked him in the eyes with a quailing fierceness that had in it no surrender.
He gazed a moment at the spot.
"It is not on the leopard; it is in the woman!" he said. "Nor will it leave thee until it hath eaten to they heart, and they beauty hath flowed from thee through the open wound!"
She gave a glance downward, and shivered.
"Lilith," said Adam, and his tone had changed to a tender beseeching, "hear me, and repent, and He who made thee will cleanse thee!"
Her hand returned quivering to her side. Her face grew dark. She gave the cry of one from whom hope is vanishing. The cry passed into a howl. She lay writhing on the floor, a leopardess covered with spots.
"The evil thou meditatest," Adam resumed, "thou shalt never compass, Lilith...how will it fare with thee when Time hath vanished in the dawn of the eternal morn? Repent, I beseech thee; repent, and be again an angel of God!"
She rose, she stood upright, a woman once more, and said,
"I will not repent. I will drink the blood of thy child."

If you want to know what happens next, read the book: I haven't time to give the entire plot, and even this extended passage is perhaps a bit superfluous, but I couldn't resist including it. It's such a fascinating exchange.
The cat of Lilith shut up in a closet, Mr. Vane and Adam prepare to return to the other world to rescue Lona and the little ones she cares for. Adam comments on Lilith:

"We must be on our guard," he said, "or she will again outwit us. She would befool the very elect!"
How are we to be on our guard?" I asked.
"Every way," he answered." She fears, therefore hates her child, and is in this house on her way to destroy her. The birth of children is in her eyes the death of their parents, and every new generation the enemy of the last. Her daughter appears to her and open channel throuh which her immortality -- which yet she counts self-inherent -- is flowing fast away: to fill it up, almost from her birth she has pursued her with an utter enmity. But the result of her machinations hitherto is, that in the region she claims as her own, has appeared a colony of children, to which my daughter is heart and head and sheltering wings...

It appears that to Lilith, children challenge and steal the parent's life; they constitute a huge drain. Her own "immortality" must be preserved at all costs. Even mother love falls before the drive for self-deification.

Mr. Vane's refusal to die to live:
Once before, Mr. Vane refused Adam and Eve's admonition to sleep the death that dies into life. Now, Adam tells him that he will be no help to the children until he die and wake again. Vane had promised to listen to and obey Adam, but, atop Adam's steed, he changes his mind (Lilithesque). He deceives himself that, by virtue of his love for the Little Ones (Lona and her charges), his rebellion is justified:

"I long so much to ride after the leopardess," I answered, "that I can scarce restrain myself!"
"You have promised!"
"My debt to the Little Ones appears, I confess, a greater thing than my bond to you."
"Yield to temptation and you will bring mischief upon them -- and on yourself also."
"What matters it for me? I love them; and love works no evil. I will go."
But the truth was, I forgot the children, infatuate with the horse.
Eyes flashed through the darkness, and I knew that Adam stood in his own shape beside me. I knew also by his voice that eh repressed an indignation almost too strong for him.
"Mr. Vane," he said, "do you not know why you have not yet done anything worth doing?"
"Because I have been a fool," I answered.
"Wherein?"
"In everything."
"Which do you count your most indiscreet action?"
"Bringing the princess to life: I ought to have left her to her just fate."
"Nay, now you talk foolishly! You could not have done otherwise than you did, not knowing she was evil! --But you never brought any one to life! How could you, yourself dead?"
"I dead?" I cried.
"Yes," he answered; "and you will be dead, so long as you refused to die."...
..."Mr. Vane," croaked the raven, "think what you are doing! Twice already has evil befallen you --once from fear, and once from heedlessness: breach of word is far wose; it is a crime."
"The Little Ones are in frightful peril, and I brought it upon them!" I cried. "--But indeed I will not break my word to you. I will return, and spend in your house what nights --what days -- what years you please."
"I tell you once more you will do them other than good if you go to-night," he insisted.
But a false sense of power, a sense which had no root and was merely vibrated into me from the strength of the horse, had, alas, rendered me too stupid to listen to anything he said!

The end does not justify the means. Love is not a trump card which we can play to do what we really want. Though we are excellent at building up a huge castle of excuses for ourselves, rebellion is not the proper product of love. And the dead cannot make themselves or anyone else alive.

Lilith's Painful Repentence and the hand she cannot open:
Mr. Vane (disobeying Adam) has sought out the Little Ones - the children in the care of Lona whom he loves - and has organized them into a miniature army to take over Bulika, find their mothers and defeat the princess. When they reach the palace, Lona in affectionate childlike confidence makes a beeline for the arms of her mother--who dashes her to the marble pavement with demonic triumph. She breathes her last, the words, "Mother, Mother," on her lips. Vane is crushed, and repentent.The children bind Lilith whose strength has dwindled, though she's bloodthirsty enough still, and set out to bear the physically dead and the spiritually dead to Adam. Their first halt is the desert house of Mara ('catwoman,' the white leopardess). Vane tries to correct the children's misconceptions of Mara:

"Will the cat-woman --I mean the woman that istn't the cat-woman, and has no claws on her toes -- give her [Lilith] grapes?"
"She is more likely to give her scratches!"
"Why? --You say she is her friend!"
"That is just why. --A friend is one who gives us what we need, and the princess is sorely in need of a terrible scratching."...

Mara speaks:
"Mr. Vane," she said, "and you, Little Ones, I thank you! This woman would not yield to gentler measures; harder must have their turn. I must do what I can to make her repent!"
The pitiful-hearted Little Ones began to sob sorely.
"Will you hurt her very much, lady Mara?" said the girl I have just mentioned, putting her warm little hand in mine.
"Yes; I am afraid I must; I fear she will make me!" answered Mara. "It would be cruel to hurt her too little. It would have all to be done again, only worse."
"May I stop with her?"
"No, my child. She loves no one, therefore she cannot be with any one. There is One who will be with her, but she will not be with Him."
"Will the shadow that came down the hill be with her?"
"The great Shadow will be in her, I fear, but he cannot be with her, or with any one. She will know that I am beside her, but that will not comfort her...."

The Children are put to bed. Vane and Mara wait in her hearth room, Lilith recumbent and seemingly unconscious upon the settle, as the shadows congeal around them. Midnight comes, Mara rises and unwraps her previously muffled face:

Then I saw her face. It was lovely beyond speech --white and sad, heart-and-soul sad, but not unhappy, and I knew it never could be unhappy. Great tears were running down her cheeks; she wiped them away with her robe; her countenance grew very still, and she wept no more. But for the pity in every line of her expression, she would have seemed severe. She laid her hand on the head of the princess -- on the hair that grew low on the forehead, and stooping, breathed on the sallow brow. The body shuddered.
"Will you turn away from the wicked things you have been doing so long?" said Mara gently.
The princess did not answer. Mara put the question again, in the same soft, inviting tone.
Still there was no sign of hearing. She spoke the words a third time.
Then the seeming corpse opened its mouth and answered, its words appearing to frame themselves of something else than sound. --I cannot shape the thing further: sounds they were not, yet they were words to me.
"I will not," she said. "I will be myself and not another!"
"Alas, you are another now, not yourself! Will you not be your real self?"
"I will be what I mean myself now."
"If you were restored, would you not make what amends you could for the misery you have caused?"
"I would do after my nature."
"You do not know it: your nature is good, and you do evil!"
"I will do as my Self pleases --as my Self desires."
"You will do as the Shadow, overshadowing your Self inclines you?"
"I will do what I will do."
"You have killed your daugher, Lilith!"
"I have killed thousands. She is my own!"
"She was never yours as you are another's."
"I am not another's; I am my own, and my daughter is mine."
"Then, alas, your hour is come!"
"I care not. I am what I am; no one can take from me myself!"
"You are not the Self you imagine."
"So long as I feel myself what it pleases me to think myself, I care not. I am content to be to myself what I would be. What I choose to seem to myself makes me what I am. My own thought makes me me; my own thought of myself is me. Another shall not make me!"
"But another has made you, and can compel you to see what you have made yourself. You will not be able much longer to look to yourself anything but what he sees you! You will not much longer have satisfaction in the thought of yourself. At this moment you are aware of the coming change!"
"No one ever made me. I defy that Power to unmake me from a free woman! You are his slave, and I defy you! You may be able to torture me --I do not know, but you shall not compel me to anything against my will!"
"Such a compulsion would be without value. But there is a light that goes deeper than the will, a light that lights up the darkness behind it: that light can change your will, can make it truly yours and not another's --not the Shadow's. Into the created can pour itself the creating will, and so redeem it!"
"That light shall not enter me: I hate it! --Begone, slave!"
"I am no slave, for I love that light, and will with the deeper will which created mine. There is no slave but the creature that wills against its creator...
"You speak foolishness from a cowering heart! You imagine me given over to you: I defy you! I hold myself against you! What I choose to be, you cannot change. I will not be what you think me --what you say I am!"
"I am sorry: you must suffer!"
"But be free!"
"She alone is free who would make free; she loves not freedom who would enslave: she is herself a slave. Every life, every will, every heart that came within your ken, you have sought to subdue: you are the slave of every slave you have made --such a slave that you do not know it! See your own self!"

If you've made it this far, dear reader, I certainly hope you did not just skim that last passage: there's a lot there. Basically, Lilith thinks she is her own master and defies any one who would hold her accountable to aught but herself. She claims to control her very being - she is what she chooses to see herself. She claims to own her daughter.
The worm/leech which is Lilith, creeps into Lilith through the dark spot in her side. She begins to see herself in her horror. Mara speaks to Vane:

"...She sees at last the good she is not, the evil she is. She knows that she is herself the fire in which she is burning, but she does not know that the Light of Life is the heart of that fire. Her torment is that she is what she is. Do not fear for her; she is not forsaken. No gentler way to help her was left..." Large tears fell from her eyes on the woman who had never wept, and would not weep.
"Will you change your way?"she said at length.
"Why did he make me such?" gasped Lilith. "I would have made myself --oh, so different! I am glad it was he that made me and not I myself! He alone is to blame for what I am! Never would I have made such a worthless thing! He meant me such that I might know it and be miserable! I will not be made any longer!"
"Unmake yourself, then," said Mara.
"Alas, I cannot! You know it, and mock me! How often have I not agonised to cease, but the tyrant keeps me being! curse him! Now let him kill me!"
The words came in jets as from a dying fountain.
"Had he not made you," said Mara, gently and slowly, "you could not even hate him. But he did not make you such. You have made yourself what you are. --Be of better cheer: he can remake you."
"I will not be remade!"
"He will not change you; he will only restore you to what you were."
"I will not be aught of his making."

...."Those, alas, are not the tears of repentance!" she said. "The true tears gather in the eyes. Those are far more bitter, and not so good. Self-loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in the father's arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates. Once with his father, he is to himself of no more account. It will be so with her."
She went nearer and said,
"Will you restore that which you have wrongfully taken?"
"I have taken nothing," answered the princess, forcing out the words in spite of pain, "that I had not the right to take. My power to take manifested my right."

....I looked, and saw: before her, cast from unseen heavenly mirror, stood the freflection of herself, and beside it a form of splendent beauty. She trembed, and sank again on the floor helpless. She knew the one what God had intended her to be, the other what she had made herself...
..."You have conquered. Let me go into the wilderness and bewail myself."
Mara saw that her submission was not feigned, neither was it real. She looked at her a moment, and returned...
"Open thy hand, and let that which is in it go."
A fierce refusal seemed to struggle for passage, but she kept it prisoned.
"I cannot," she said. "I have no longer the power. Open it for me."
She held out the offending hand. It was more a paw than a hand. It seemed to me plain that she could not open it.
Mara did not even look at it.
"You must open it yourself," she said quietly.
"I have told you I cannot!"
"You can if you will --not indeed at once, but by persistent effort. What you have done, you do not yet wish undone --do not yet intend to undo!"
"You think so, I dare say, " rejoined the princes with a flash of insolence, "but I know that I cannot open my hand!"
"I know you better than you know yourself, and I know you can. You have oten opened it a little way. Without trouble and pain you cannot open it quite, but you can openit. At worst you could beat it open! i pray you, gather your strength, and open it wide."
"I will not try what I know impossible. It would be the part of a fool!"
"Which you have been playing all your life! Oh, you are hard to teach!"
Defiance reappeared on the face of the princess. She turned her back on Mara, saying,
"I know what you have been tormenting me for! You have not succeeded, nor shall you succeed! You shall yet find me stronger than you think! I will yet be mistress of myself! I am still what I have always know myself --queen of Hell, and mistress of the worlds!"

Then came the most fearful thing of all. I did not know what it was; I knew myself unable to imagine it; I knew only that it came near me I should die of terror! I now know that it was Life in Death --life dead, yet existent; and I knew that Lilith had had glimpses, but only glimpses of it before: it had never been with her until now....with my eyes I saw the face of a live death! She knew life only to know that it was dead, and that, in her, death lived. It was not merely that life had ceasedin her, but that she was consciously a dead thing. She had killed her life, and was dead --and knew it. She must death it for ever and ever! She had tried her hardest to unmake herself, and could not! She was a dead life! she could not cease! she must be! ...Her bodily eyes stood wide open, as if gazing into the heart of horror essential -- her own indestructible evil. Her right hand also was now clenched --upon existent Nothing --her inheritance!

But with God all things are possible: He can save even the rich!...

"I yield," said the princess. "I cannot hold out. I am defeated. --Not the less, I cannot open my hand."

"Have you tried?"

"I am trying now with all my might."

"I will take you to my father. You have wronged him worst of the created, therefore he best of the created can help you."

"How can he help me?"

"He will forgive you."

"Ah, if he would but help me to cease! Not even that I am capable of! I have no power over myself; I am a slave! I acknowledge it. Let me die."

"A slave thou art that shall one day be a child!" answered Mara. --"Verily, thou shalt die, but not as thou thinkest. Thou shalt die out of death into life. Now is the Life for, that never was against thee!"

Did you follow all that? Watch the unfolding drama of the hand when Lilith reaches the house of Adam where all sleep and die to live:

"Beautiful Eve, pursuade your husband to kill me: to you he will listen! Indeed I would but cannot open my hand."

"You cannot die without opening it. To kill you would not serve you," answered Eve. "But indeed he cannot! no one can kill you but the Shadow; and whom he kills never knows she is dead, but lives to do his will, and thinks she is doing her own."

"Show me then to my grave; I am so weary I can live no longer. I must go to the Shadow --yet I would not!"

She did not, could not understand!

..."You shall not go to the Shadow," I heard Eve say, as we passed them. "Even now is his head under my heel!"

..."Lilith," said Mara, you will not sleep, if you lie there a thousand years, until you have opened your hand, and yielded that which is not yours to give or to withhold."

"I cannot," she answered. "I would if I could, and gladly, for I am weary, and the shadows of death are gathering about me."

"They will gather and gather, but they cannot infold you while yet your hand remains unopened...Open your hand, and you will sleep indeed --then wake indeed."

"I am trying hard, but the fingers have grown together and into the palm."

"I pray you put forth the strength of your will. For the love of life, draw together your forces and break its bonds!"

"I have struggled in vain; I can do no more. I am very weary, and sleep lies heavy upon my lids."

"The moment you open you hand, you will sleep. Open it, and make an end."

A tinge of colour arose in teh parchment-like face; the contorted hand trembled with agonised effort, Mara took it, and sought to aid her.

"Hold, Mara!" cried her father. "There is danger!"

The princess turned her eyes upon Eve, beseechingly.

"There was a sword I once saw in your husband's hands," she murmured. "I fled when I saw it. I heard him who bore it say it would divide whatever was not one and indivisible!"

..."Bring it, Adam," pleaded Lilith, "and cut me off this hand that I may sleep."

"I will," he answered.

...She saw the sword, shuddered, and held out her hand. Adam took it. The sword gleamed once, there was one little gush of blood, and he laid the severed hand in Mara's lap. Lilith had given one moan, and was already fast asleep. ..."Where the dead deformity clung," replied Mara, "the true, lovely hand is already growing."

All right. Now to try to sum up why in the world I spent all this time typing out passages from a Victorian era fantasy about a bloodthirsty woman who won't die and happens to have a deformed hand.

Children are critical in George MacDonald's Lilith --in more ways than I have quoted here. The faith of the childlike makes them the wise ones in all their foolishness. They are the ones who, though living have already died and are thereby truly alive. (Which is why Lilith couldn't actually destroy Lona; she had already died into life.) Children are the gifts of the Father, hope for creation. They center the entire narrative which circles around Vane and Lilith becoming children. For Vane, the children seem to be the first people he ever loves (other than himself and his horses), while for Lilith, the first sign of permanent character change to good emerges when she expresses concern over the safety of the children. The children themselves, like the water, are hidden away, and their very lack of fear, protects them. (If you've read the book, think crossing the monster basin.) The very act of growing up (precipitated by increasing selfishness) renders them "bad giants" for it is as children that they receive and joy in good gifts.

Lilith, in her unregenerate state, abhores children and seeks their destruction because they threaten her power over her own existence and supremacy. She will not even allow other mothers their infants, but while teaching "her" people pride, greed, and cruelty, she enforces infanticide, and contraception. This stance against babies is described as a league with the Shadow to put an end to the human race and a malice toward the repentant Eve whose children are blessed and redeemed.

Is there an applicable lesson here? For one, MacDonald demonstrates the immeasurable blessing of children to their mothers and to the world. Evil seeks to prevent this blessing and murders it whenever possible. He also holds up children as the model of the wisdom of God in foolishness and as those who are ready to simply receive, trust, and love unquestioningly. The children even love Lilith when she bites them as they feed their captive; Lona loves her mother even when she slays her body. Because they love and trust, they sleep easiest and wake earliest.

I'm continually fascinated by MacDonald's descriptions of the people of Bulika as facets of their culture and society so nearly resemble our own. Can a culture like this be restored? For Bulika, one gets a sense that the waters unleashed by the burial of Lilith's hand in a deep spring will bring healing to the country and the city. Where are the waters of our day hid? What words repel the witches who prevent the birth of babies with horrible food? MacDonald's answer seems to indicate that only regeneration through repentence, forgiveness, and dying to one's own will and flesh, works the transformation of individuals and the culture. Yet repentence and surrender cannot come by an act of one's own strength - the eyes will not see until shown a true reflection; the hand will not open of one's own accord. For this, we need Mara - the "Lady of Sorrows," the "voice that called in the wilderness before ever the Baptist came," the one who calls to repentence. MacDonald seems purposely not to make her directly symbolic of any one individual. But she is the preacher who calls out, like wisdom in the streets, she holds up the mirror of the Law and offers bread and water to the hungry and thirsty. And until her work is done, she will not cease to beckon.

The end. I hope it's coherent.

I and Thou - my bed, shower, etc

I have just finished a very confusing, but fascinating assignment on Martin Buber.

And I am planning on treating my bed as an It. I have no desire at all to enter into relation with Bed tonight - you see, I plan to experience the bed, feel the warmth, sense the softness, smell, the freshness. I have absolutely no desire to contemplate the bed, saying "You" to it with all my being while it reciprocates saying "You" to me with all its being. Bed will likely always reside in Thinghood for me. Sorry, Bed.

Now a shower, that's another matter. I could almost say "You" with my whole being as I contemplate a Shower as it is in its being. Perhaps after a long, cold camping trip in the backwoods...

Forget about people right now. I'm too tired to say "You" to them. My 'being' needs to be recharged by experiencing some "It"s through snoozing.

Perhaps more on Buber later - some serious instead of frivolous thoughts.
To all my readers, I say "You" to You! :P

That probably made no sense at all, but that is all right. After all, if You are really a You, there can be no mediation between us...

Who Said It? Or: In What Does Personhood Consist?

"Beings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature's, have nevertheless, if they are irrational beings, only a relative value as means, and are therefore called things; rational beings on the contrary are called persons, because their very nature points them out as ends in themselves, that is as something which must not be used merely as means, and so far therefore restricts freedom of action (and is an object of respect). "

Who penned these words? Guess, if you can. A modern Harvard professor of ethics? An advocate of abortion and euthanasia? A forward thinking philosopher seeking to distribute the right to life based on sentience?

None of the above. If you can believe it, this incredible sentence came from an 18th century Christian philosopher whose ideas would affect all moral thought which followed him.

Meet Immanuel Kant.
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals

Now I realize that what Kant herein stated may have meant something radically different to the author than how it struck me. The philosopher was probably simply referring to the traditional distinction between man and beasts on the basis of "a reasonable soul" or some such faculty. However, in light of current ethical philosophy, it is perturbing to consider this statement.

Neat Excerpt from Luther's Genesis Lectures

"But now the Gospel has brought about the restoration of that image. Intellect and will indeed have remained, but both very much impaired. And so the Gospel brings it about that we are formed once more according to that familiar and indeed better image, because we are born again into eternal life or rather into the hope of eternal life by faith, that we may live in God and with God and be one with Him, as Christ says (John 17:21).
"And indeed, we are reborn not only for this life but also for righteousness, because faith acquires Christ’s merit and knows that through Christ’s death we have been set free. From this source our other righteousness has its origin, namely that newness of life through which we are zealous to obey God as we are taught by the Word and aided by the Holy Spirit. But this righteousness has merely its beginning in this life and it cannot attain perfection in this flesh. Nevertheless, it pleases God, not as though it were a perfect righteousness or a payment for sin but because it comes from the heart and depends on its trust in the mercy of God through Christ. Moreover, this also is brought about by the Gospel, that the Holy Spirit is given to us, who offers resistance in us to unbelief, envy, and other vices that we may earnestly strive to glorify the name of the Lord and His Word, etc.
"In this manner this image of the new creature begins to be restored by the Gospel inn this life, but it will not be finished in this life. But when it is finished in the kingdom of the Father, then the will will be truly free and good, the mind truly enlightened, and the memory persistent....Just as in the beginning the heaven and the earth were unfinished masses, so to speak, before the light had been added, so the godly have within themselves that unfinished image which God will on the Last Day bring to perfection in those who have believed His Word.
"Therefore that image of God was something most excellent, in which were included eternal life, everlasting freedom from fear, and everything that is good."

Luther's Lectures on Galations, Chapters 1-5

Luther Marathon: The Tally Begins

Beginning at 4:15pm

On the Freedom of a Christian
Admonition to Peace
Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved
(and skimmed the other stuff in between Admonition and Soldiers - Something about Murderous Hordes of Peasants.... :D )

I love Luther's sense of humor. And his comment about princes and, I quote, "handsome, blond hair."

Little Help, Anyone?

So, I've made a diagram. But I think it needs help. I'm contrasting the teleological ethics of Aquinas with Luther's ethics. (But I really need some clarifications with the latter.) Any suggestions?



I'm sorry if it's too small. I can't make it any larger, or at least, Blogger won't let it be.

Two Painters; One Subject

Today during Art lecture I found myself again enthralled and piqued with curiosity by a few specific painters and pictures.

First, Caravaggio. Something about the way he employs deep darkness and light to illumine and illustrate his subjects strongly draws me. The realism catches in a special way. His figures are not prototypes or ideals but real people. One can almost touch them, smell them, breath the air of their painted atmosphere, feel the pain, wonder, surprise, courage of their countenances. They have personality and individuality.
Yet because they have personality, they are, in a sense, ideals. Caravaggio's figures are ideals of human personality. They stand at moments where we have been, they react to experiences as we would. They look like us in all our reality of both beauty and ugliness.

I had seen this image before, but it had not really spoken until I had been buried in Byzantine, Renaissance, and Mannerist paintings first.

St. Thomas (like many of us today) is incredulous, doubting, but amazed as, Jesus hand drawing his arm, he sticks his finger into Christ's wound. His eyes open wide and his forehead crinkles as if he find it hard to believe his senses. The other disciples sho just as much astonishment.

Consider the calling of St. Matthew (one of the original set of paintings which caused such a stir in Rome)...

...and the startled, incredulous look on the tax collector's face when the Lord points him out with singleness of purpose.
Or his inspiration as he writes the Holy Gospel (though I prefer Caravaggio's original, but rejected, painting of this subject where the angel guides the Evangelist's hand.)

...followed by the Evangelist's martyrdom...One can see the frightened horror in the face of the servant who flees, the contorted malice on the face of the executioner, the calm on Matthew's countenance as his uplifted hand receives the palm of martyrdom. Even the bystanders' unconcern is felt.

Consider the "Sickly Bacchus"... What viewer cannot tell that he is feeling the sickening, twisting pangs of his own over-indulgence?

Look at this depiction of the Taking of Christ...

What is Judas thinking as he gives his kiss? And Christ's expression? Is he feeling already the torment of the road He will walk that night? The right-hand onlooker wonders and the left-hand figure reaches out, opened mouthed in grief, terror, or flight.

Dare I even comment on this painting? It speaks for itself.

Just one more before I make my point.... The Crucifixion of St. Peter.

He is calm, unafraid, though his hands and feet have been pierced and even at the moment he is being lifted to die. He looks both at his cloak and at you. He seems to be saying, "When I was young like you, I dressed myself and went where I pleased. But now I am old I have stretched out my hands and someone else has dressed me and carried me where I did not wish to go. Yet I am glad for my Savior is at hand."

But I did not bring you, dear reader, through a brief sample of Caravaggio for the sake of these paintings. I wanted to introduce a bit of his style for the sake of comparison. For among all his paintings, this one grabbed my attention and held it. And when I was shown a painting by the daughter of one of his students treating the same subject, I must confess, I was more than a little intrigued.
If you know your Apocrypha, you could probably guess that this is indeed "Judith Decapitating Holofernes." The young, beautiful Judith divinely assisted to slay the pagan king who attacks Jerusalem.

I find this image fascinating not because of the gore but because of the expressions. Take a good look at the faces. Judith draws back, she seems to dislike what she must do in spite of Holofernes' evil. She seems to have set her mind to her task - a task impossible were she not helped by God. There is a strain to her eyes and face which indicates both a consciousness of her own danger, an awed resolve and confidence. Nothing about her face or her posture suggests revenge or anger on her part. Her whole attitude is that of an instrument. She is dealing Divine sentence, not her own. Her maid stands beside her, somber, ready, equally braced for whatever may come next. Holofernes face is a mask of terror and astonishment. His powerful figure seems strangely paralyzed as if he cannot defend himself, though no visible bonds constrain him. The strong has been defeated, the king brought low; the shock emanates from his visage.

Look at the painting again and contrast it with this image by Artemisia Gentileschi, the daughter of Orazio Gentileschi, a student of Caravaggio's.

The first thought which popped into my head when shown this painting, "Judith Slaying Holofernes," was, "Wow! that looks gory and painful!" The second thought riding on the heels of the first was, "Oh, my! Judith looks like she's enjoying this, like she's taking revenge on the man."

This Judith is so very different from Caravaggio's Judith. Perhaps her posture and expression are not so clear in these web-photos as in the paintings themselves, but I hope the reader can detect (at least partially) what I am getting at. This Judith is not shy of her task but almost seems to take a strange pleasure in it. This Judith is the one in control of the scene, along with her maid servant who holds Holofernes down. So very different from the Caravaggio depiction where it is clear that Judith is not taking control of the scene but that the mighty king is delivered into her hands.

The distinction struck me so hard, along with other reflections, that I resolved to look at these depictions again in more detail. However, when I had "googled" the topic, I stumbled upon an essay so well elucidating my own vague thoughts that I need not add my disorganized two cents but simply encourage the reader to peruse this essay; Portraying Judith and Holofernes: A Gendered Perspective.To give credit where credit is due, the previous two paragraphs borrowed in verbal concept from this essay, though the reflections arose beforehand of their own accord.

I'm not certain I completely buy into the whole "gender roles" theory, but the distinctions between the two paintings definitely seem to hold. (I'm more inclined to attribute the revenge to Artemisia's own painful youth and the reverberations from that incident. At least, several of her other paintings seem to reflect a sort of inward struggle with these sort of situations.)

Now what can we learn from this difference? Hmm. I'm not totally sure, except that I'd sooner hang the Caravaggio "Decapitation" on my bedroom wall than the Gentileschi "Slaying" any day. Caravaggio's Judith seems to trust - relying not on her own strength to stay Holofernes, nor on her maid, but on God. She does not turn from her task though it be dangerous and distasteful, but does even this deed in the strength and will of God. She seems to recognize that vengeance is not hers, that a death sentence is not hers to meet out, but God's. All young women would do well to keep these things in mind.

(And if I am totally off track, someone please let me know. :D )

An Attempt.

So, I tried. It's not really the best I've ever written, nor am I totally happy with it, but this is the closest I can come at this point according to my limited understanding in discussing the difference between Augustine and Luther's concept of the Will in "about 1 page." It doesn't necessarily help that I have to reason from limited excerpts, though it does narrow the reading considerably.

Both read the same Scripture; both came to different conclusions. Augustine claimed Freewill; Luther asserted an Enslaved Will (On Grace and Free Will, Chapter 2 and following; On the Enslaved Will, Section IX).

Augustine argues that man must have free will because God commands him to choose between certain things, which choice is a function proper to the will (On Grace and Free Will, Chapter 3, 4, 5). To keep God’s law, free will must be assisted by grace and thus the achievement of the command is also due to grace (Chapters 6,7, 8, 9). God gives a man whose merit is evil a “good will” as grace. This “good will” is free and does good works with the help of more gratuitous grace (Chapters 12, 13) . These good works done with the help of grace by the good will (which was given by grace) are for a man “good merit” which God recompenses with Eternal Life (Chapter 14). Eternal life is by grace because God renders it according to works which proceed from God’s gift of faith; it is grace because it rewards the good life possible by God’s grace (Chapters 16, 17, 18, 19, 20). Free will is not taken away but works out its salvation aided by grace which is not remission of sin only, but fulfills the law, liberates the nature, removes the mastery of sin, and allows faith and endurance (Chapters 21, 27, 28). In this life a man receives “good for evil,” that is grace not according to merit, but “let us do good that in the future world we may receive good for good,” that is the crown of life in return for the merit of works performed by grace (Chapter 44). God is able to turn the will of man whithersoever he pleases, and men who are turned to believe in God had no previous entitlement to be turned (Chapters 41, 29, 43). God chose and loved us first and can we help but choose him afterward of our free will? Yet that choice has no merit unless God choose first (Chapter 38). God’s secret counsel is always righteous; when he hardens a man’s heart and turns him to doing evil it is in judgment of his own evil deeds (Chapters 42, 43, 44). To be sure, man hardens his own heart as well (Chapter 45). God turns him, but the man wills the hardening (Chapter 42). God for knows who will be ungodly and forsakes them in judgment on their deeds, withholding his grace (Chapter 45).

Luther disagrees. God does not for know by contingency (and so does not with hold grace from one because he forsees that he will do evil) but according to His unchangeable will (On the Enslaved Will, Section IX). God’s will belongs to His nature and as God’s nature is immutable, so is His Will. God forsees as He wills and wills as He forsees (OEW, Section IX). Man’s will is mutable, impotent and depraved (OEW, Section X). Salvation is the working of God alone - without co-operation of man’s will. Without the spirit of God, man does evil “spontaneously, and with a desirous willingness...which he cannot, by his own power, leave off, restrain, or change; but it goes on still desiring and craving (OEW, Section XXV).” Though human will cannot change its inclination – as it could were it free – God can change it; not at all by compulsion but so that it “desires and acts...responsively, from pure willingness, inclination and accord; so that it cannot be turned another way by anything contrary, nor be compelled or overcome even by the gates of hell; but it still goes on to desire, crave after, and love that which is good; even as before, it desired, craved after, and loved that which was evil (OEW, Section XXV).” The will is compared to a mount which cannot run to a particular rider. Satan and God contend for the saddle and the winner directs the beast. Rather than salvation being given to man by works, however instigated, supported, and fueled by ‘grace,’ God “promised to save me, not according to my working or manner of life, but according to His own grace and mercy” which is due solely to His own will. “In this way we please God not from the merit of our works but from the favour of his mercy promised unto us; and that, if we work less, or work badly, He does not impute it unto us, but as a Father, pardons and makes us better (OEW, Section CLXIV).”

Luther and Augustine’s disagreement goes beyond the “simple” question of whether a man has free will to the core question of how a man is justified. Both Augustine and Luther maintain that man is saved by God’s grace, but by that they mean two very different things. Augustine’s salvation by Grace consists in God giving man a good will, and helping that will by grace to do good works, and at last rewarding those good works with everlasting life, even though the man himself did not originate the good works (On Grace and Free Will, Chapter 20, etc). Luther’s salvation by grace casts works entirely aside asserting that faith in the word of God alone justifies. Salvation is entirely vicarious: the merit of Christ applied to man by faith, thus fulfilling the law (On the Freedom of a Christian, Part III). “For the word of God cannot be received and honoured by any works, but by faith alone” “and since it alone justifies, it is evident that by no outward work or labour can the inward man be at all justified, made free, and saved; and that no works whatever have any relation to him. And so, on the other hand, it is solely by impiety and incredulity of heart that he becomes guilty and a slave of sin, deserving condemnation, not by any outward sin or work (On the Freedom of a Christian, Part III).” Since salvation “depends on the working of God alone” who acts “according to his immutable, eternal, and infallible will,” human free will is “knocked flat and utterly shattered” and “those...who would assert ‘Free Will’ must either deny this thunderbolt, or pretend not to see it, or find some other way of dodging it (On the Enslaved Will, Section XXV, Section IX).” Luther would likely say that Augustine has done the latter.

I'd welcome feedback on whether I've got this correct or not. Or any other commentary. I felt like I was chasing Augustine around in circles for a while. And while I loved Luther's writing - it was so beautifully worded I wanted to either laugh or cry - I'm not sure I was able to nail him down in my writing. Partly due to the fact that I was working from excerpts and had to reference those excerpts.

"Good" Art

http://www.goodart.org/faq.htm

This is really neat! It's the best discussion of "good" art that I've ever run across. Usually, discussions of art are relativistic and subjectivistic. It's refreshing to see someone taking it from a different angle.

A Very Brief Critique of Machiavelli

This is a very brief criticism of excerpts from Machiavelli's The Prince which I did as part of Philosophy homework for this week. We were told to identify "the problem with Machiavelli...in 1/2 to 1 page." I barely made it. No surprise there. I guess I could have left it with the first paragraph, but I figured I need to expand the idea more.

The major problem with Machiavelli is that his advice does not center around a question of hypothetical or philosophical “Good” or “Evil” but rather focuses on how to successfully gain and maintain the position of “The Prince (The Prince, Chapter 15).” Machiavelli recognizes that virtue does not necessarily secure a prince in his princedom nor gain for him political power. But the next step in his reasoning is fatal: to pursue a secure princedom above the law of God (Chapter 15). Once this break with virtue is made, the rest of his conclusions follow quite naturally and logically. Indeed, Machiavelli seems to explain with great accuracy and wisdom actions critical to retaining power, well illustrating the historical precedent of these with pertinent examples (e.g. Cesare Borgia, Chapter 17; Julius II, Chapter 25; etc).

At the crux of this handbook of power lies Machiavelli’s misunderstanding of God’s action in history. He seems to see Divinity solely as a power which sometimes directs Fortune on man’s behalf; in no sense does God direct the actions of men to his purpose, nor does he requite the breaking of His law with man’s downfall (Chapter 25,26). When the prince is thrust from his high seat, the tumble was obviously precipitated by failure to perform the balancing act of political stratagem. The Prince cites figures who have risen from obscurity to fame, wealth, and power, but attributes the elevation not to God but to the personal achievement of the individuals (Chapter 6) despite the fact that Moses didn’t ‘do diddly’ without God’s prodding and Cyrus’ rise to power was prophesied long before his birth. Even oppressed suffering Machiavelli interprets not as a chastening of God or as a means to show forth His deliverance, but only to accentuate the greatness of the leaders who arose out of it (Chapter 26). Machiavelli appeals to God’s miraculous provision (Chapter 26) but fails to understand that God does not answer to man’s demand, nor is He an instrument of war, but acts in lawful retribution or in mercy. Machiavelli commands God’s limited assistance on the grounds that “war is just which is necessary, and arms are hallowed when there is no other hope but in them.” In this way, God is reduced to an impotent spectator, “not willing to do everything and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us (Chapter 26).”

With God restricted to mouldering in the armoury until needed, the prince is left to ride the tides of fortune guided by the “spirit of the times” (Chapter 25). To determine whether to act virtuously or not he sniffs the Zeitgeist breeze. After all, vice is not punished but rewarded when prescribed prudently in pharmaceutical doses (Chapter 8, 15). Meanness, cruelty, and faithlessness become essential political tools for “it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it...according to necessity (Chapter 16, 17, 18, 15).” When “of evil it is lawful to speak well” it becomes clear that, to Machiavelli, the measure of right and wrong is no longer set by God but by whatever a prince thinks appropriate in to stabilize his carefully accumulated house of power cards. This is Machiavelli's most serious error: the abandoning of the objective moral standard which is God.

What I Am Of:

My dear reader,

For my First Year Seminar, we are required to write this brief explanation of ourselves and our background. The example (and most of my fellow student's work) begins with the form, "I am from..." I have modified that to, "I am of..." for a variety of different reasons, non of which I can fully articulate at this hour.

Christ's Peace to all of you!

I am of Eve, mother of all living, deceived and misleading her husband.
I am of Adam who shirked his God-given vocation to shelter and care for his wife.
I am of Christ who bore their penalty and mine.
I am of paternal Pilgrim Holiness and maternal Roman Catholicism.
I am of water, blood, flesh and words.
I am of analogy, symbols, ceremonies, and rituals.
I am of Joan of Arc, my first heroine.
I am of Henty, Hugo, Tolkien, Alcott, Lewis, Augustine, Luther, Orczy and other authors.
I am of my ancestors – those whose stories I know and they of whom I know not.
I am of William Wallace, whose name is my heritage, and Robert the Bruce whose tale fires my heart.
I am of the blood, sweat, tears, sacrifices and prayers of the unknown many.
I am of lonely years of longing for friendship and years of self-righteous pride.
I am of the Triune God who crushes to the dust and heals body and spirit.
I am of a broken confession and a soul-healing absolution.
I am of nannies, teachers, parents, and professors who strive to engender wholesome knowledge and train a mind to think critically.
I am of a little goat who taught me to care for a creature other than myself.
I am of a 4H community that took me knowing nothing, and transformed me into a leader, a president, a secretary, and a County Council representative.
I am of a caprine herd that forced me to learn responsibility: to rise in the night to feed premature infants, to break my back shoveling manure, to milk in freezing temperatures, to diagnose and medicate, to throw myself into a cause, to be an advocate, to face wrenching decisions, to grieve.
I am of a young brother’s death in faith.
I am of an Ecuadorean tutor who broadened my world.
I am of Medicine, History, Logic, and Theology.
I am of friends who still care for me even though I wound them.
I am of hours of painful struggling with truth and how to find it.
I am of pastors who gently showed me truth, true peace, and rest; my shepherds and fathers in the faith.
I am of a mother’s struggle to submit to a God-given vocation.
I am of an extensive home-schooling community composed of all types of students.
I am of misunderstood stereotypes.
I am of physicians who live in soil: academicians who work with their hands as well as their minds.
I am of world-changers who keep to the background: those who fight for the life of the unborn in obscurity.
I am of poetry and drama.
I am of hymnody and song.
I am of “A Man for All Seasons” and the story of Thomas Moore who hid himself behind the Law.
I am of the forests and lakes, the pastures and gardens, the orchards and back roads.
I am of siblings who have loved, hurt, forgiven, teased, challenged, and demanded, with whom I have laughed and cried, argued and pondered.
I am of all those things which I cannot here put into words.
I am of things which have yet to be.
I am of perfection amidst impotence, holiness within impurity, faith through unbelief.
I am “simul iustus et peccator” – God’s own child.