Improbable Quote of the Week

"Go ye into all the world and write systematic theologies, making scholars among all nations."
- The Gospel According to Philosulfur the Git

Art of Impermanence

“If you can let go of who you think you are, you will become free - ready to love others. If you learn to see your impermanence, you will be able to live for the moment and not miss opportunities to love by pushing things into the future.” —Thich Nhat Hanh

Taking Re-requisites part deux

My books for the re-requisites have arrived, and I've begun reading them and working exercises. I see now that the committee that didn't accept me into the graduate program did me a huge favor. After ~20 years out of school, I've forgotten enough of this that it really isn't so far off to say that I've completely forgotten this stuff. Now that I'm studying at the right level, the stuff goes into my head much more readily and I can work the problems with an encouraging level of ease. No more vacillating between, "Yes, I can do this!" and "Oh, skata!" No more mixed feelings, either. I am now wholeheartedly looking forward to the new semester.

Haiku

Yellow butterfly
flutters about the garden.
Untethered blossom.

Perhaps It Would Have Been Better...

It seems that every blogger out there has to give his opinion of the war in Israel-Lebanon. But only a few of those bloggers have any understanding of the history involved. The rest merely regurgitate whatever their favorite media (propaganda) outlet feeds them. To begin to get an understanding of the recent history of the area I recommend A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time by Howard Sachar. It is a thorough and very nearly unbiased history of part of the region.

Perhaps it would have been better if the UN wouldn't have granted the Jews their ancestral homeland. But that decision didn't happen in a vacuum. Perhaps it would have been better if the Germans wouldn't have accepted Hitler's murderous rise to power, and his scapegoating and extermination of the Jews. Perhaps it would have been better if the Czar's wouldn't have hounded and killed the Jews. Perhaps it would have been better if every nation in Europe hadn't persecuted and killed Jews back through antiquity. Perhaps it would have been better if Christians wouldn't have defied their Lord by returning evil to those who had brought Him forth. And on and on back through history to that pesky original sin. Perhaps it would be better if all of us would realize our own small part in how messed up this world is and begin to make it right.

Praying for Peace in a Time of War

I've been struggling for some time to write an article about the situation in the Middle East. So much of what I find in other blogs is either insanely anti-Jewish or ignorantly anti-Muslim. Who can see the real problem amidst all this emotionally charged diatribe?

It is easy for those who haven't done much study of history, or had much exposure to other cultures to view every culture through the matrix of their own paltry experience. To those of us raised in America in the late 20th century, it seems inconceivable that there are those who prefer war to peace. Yet in our own culture, less than a century ago there were celebrations in the streets at the start of WWI. Well, the realities of that war and the bigger one that followed killed any notions of the romance and glory of war. And that is the milieu in which we were all raised.

But not everybody in the world was raised in that same peace-and-prosperity-loving environment. Wishful thinking on the part of peaceniks won't make the war-lovers change their minds. It was only war on a colossal scale that changed the mind of the West. I fear the only thing that will change the minds of the Islamic fascists is to wreak death and carnage on them. That is my fear. I hope that I am wrong about this. Let us pray for peace. But let us not be blind to the lessons of history.

My challenge to my readers is to find an example of a regime determined to wage war that was
dissuaded by diplomacy.