Why theological study is necessary
A recent discussion with a friend gave me an interesting perspective on theology — that for Christians, theology is arguably dangerous and subversive. Scholarly study of the Bible undermines the mandate that the Good Book was divinely inspired and divinely authored.
You learn something new.: Passion
“What’s your passion in life? What drives you?”
I can name several things that I am passionate for, but… even at this point in my life, I haven’t thought hard about what drives me to do what I do. What causes me to push my limits, to work even harder.
I supposeI admire those who show that…
I think a mistake a lot of people make when dealing with questions of passion (or, in a sort of derivative-integral sense, general meaning to life or life’s actions) is that they attach meaning to things that don’t have any meaning. For some people, myself included, personal ambition doesn’t really have any intrinsic end result. A lot of us work simply for the joy of working — the occupation of time with something vaguely fulfilling for some reason. I can’t nail down why I particularly enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment after I banged out my first Fourier transform, and it’s useless to try to divine deep meaning out of having drive for something like that. I think, in the academic and career world, people are either driven by an internal sense of reward — the expansion of one’s knowledge, or other’s knowledge, or what have you — or an external sense — the promotion, respect of coworkers/colleagues, etc.
Not to get too philosophical here, but it’s a huge part of the human condition to seek change. When Kitsu takes about rebelling against her old self, well, that’s a serious form of change. In our youth, especially, changing and trying on different hats is deeply important. Through a liberal arts education propped up by most private universities these days, an important lesson to be gleaned is to keep questioning and continue learning throughout life — this fulfills the human spirit. Why? Probably because the quest for knowledge is important, valuable, and deeply satisfying for intellectually minded people. But in the end, I don’t know if that pursuit has any real drive behind it for most people. The ultimate answer to the question of “why do I learn?” or “why do I work?” will simply be “I want to” or “I enjoy it.” I think this almost sounds nihilistic but in the end, you’re not going to get much out of people other than that. To take Kitsu’s example, why rebel against oneself? What keeps one going in that rebellion? When you boil it down, I think you’d realize it’s the enjoyment of watching oneself change and grow, the shining example of human endeavor as a person comes out of the shell that they once thought was all there was to life.
Enduring Memory
Original Short Story
Comments: I wish I could add more to it, expand and edit - but I got real close to the largest word limit and I don’t wanna get in trouble for going over. I’d love to know what you guys think of it.
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Hey! Cathy linked me to this so I figured I’d toss in a few of my comments (especially if the assignment’s not due just yet). In general I think your language is very mature and your descriptions are kept short and simple — nothing is too bulky, as it should be in a short story, with no rookie mistakes like spending a paragraph on your characters’ hair. Your authorial voice has developed enough to lend you a cohesive narrative tone as well.
I do have to question opening such a short (almost a vignette, I’d say) work on a description of grass, though. Your goal should be to get your readers interested from the get-go; you don’t have a lot of time to get across any themes, characterization, etc. If the readers aren’t interested right away, they’re not going to buy into the short. To that point, all the heavy exposition and reminiscence isn’t really working here. You seem to be trying to double up on telling Durante’s family history with whatever action is going on in the present (I was honestly unclear on that present action by the time I got done).
However, you do seem to have something developing here. Although I think you would serve better writing a much longer piece if you wanted to keep the same ideas intact, there are clear fragments of good, engaging character sketches here. Right now, you have too much sitting in the past and too little working to keep the action rolling in the present, but with a little work, I think this can definitely be written on more solid ground.
One of the difficult things about writing short stories is balancing the development of your character with the brevity of the piece. This seems more like a snippet of a novel than a self-contained story, and so it keeps begging for expansion. You might be better off to separate into two ideas the experiences Durante has. Either write a story about an episode from his childhood life (one, not as many as you detail here) or expand on the current scene, only revealing what’s necessary to understand what’s going on in the present. Although Durante’s family history might be important to his development as a character, all that is past and we’re concerned about who he is now. We don’t need to know so much about him to get a good read.
If you split this up into smaller, more developed pieces, you could actually produce a larger number of better short stories (or expand on it for a much longer piece). With a lot of editing and a little polish, you definitely have something here. Keep working and you should have quite the finished product.
A logical argument against gay marriage
As written by a gay man.
“If gay couples are considered equally eligible for marriage, even though gay relationships do not tend towards child-raising and cannot by definition give a child a mother and a father, the crucial understanding of what marriage is actually mainly for has been discarded.
“What that amounts to is the kind of marriage that puts adults before children. That, in my opinion, is ultimately selfish, and far too high a price to pay simply for the token gesture of treating opposite-sex relationships and same-sex relationships identically. And it is a token gesture. Isn’t it common sense, after all, to treat different situations differently? To put it personally, I do not feel in the least bit discriminated against by the fact that I cannot marry someone of the same-sex. I understand and accept that there are good reasons for this.”
This is a very interesting argument and a very interesting read. Although this man has pointed out some very critical facts, I also come to think of heterosexual couples who are also, in this case, “selfish” when they close off their options in making a family (in both birthing children and adopting them). Of course this is not the case for all children-lacking couples out there but then again, I never looked into how many married couples are there that choose to say “no” to having kids for no reason other than to dodge the responsibility, attention and hard work that children come with all throughout their married life.
But who knows? I’m not one to judge for anyone else’s reasoning either. I never thought about any of this until I read this article. But yes, I think the man does have a point.
Food for thought, imo.
This is less “logical” than it is stereotypical — there are plenty of gay couples who would love to adopt but are incapable of doing so because of social stigma like the one outlined above, or just plain bigotry. Gay marriage can hardly be considered selfish.
The Resurrection
As we draw closer to Holy Week, thoughts inevitably turn to the death and resurrection of Christ. Resurrection has been understood as Christ returning, body and soul, from the dead to fulfill the Scripture. But, as always is with the Bible, there’s a ton of important symbolism behind the bodily return of Christ that often gets missed in the priest’s attempt to capture the beauty of the Easter miracle and Christ’s sacrifice to the will of God.
Going back to the very first moment after Christ’s death, we see evidence of the other, arguably more important aspect of his Resurrection. Once Christ has died, the centurion keeping watch over Golgotha “praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man’” (Lk 23:47). Two things of note here — first, a Roman, who was a filthy heathen in the eyes of the Hebrews, converts to Christ’s faith. Second, Christ has just established his first post-death follower.
The Passion, the Cross, and Sin
So I’ve been working my way through the Synoptic Gospels in conjunction with a few texts on Church history! April’s a boatload of fun.
On the whole, the notion of sin has been played very loudly when in reference to Christ’s death and resurrection. In Protestant circles, Christ’s death has been so individualized that certain denominations argue that our sins are Christ’s wounds.
Look, a Ladder!: ooc; because mayo-mun picked a great time to miss a chem lesson and she's getting the wrong answers for all of these...
If 10.05 g of copper metal is heated strongly in air, the sample gains 2.53 g of oxygen in forming an oxide. Determine the empirical formula for this oxide. (Type your answer using the format CO2 for CO2.)
Give the empirical formula that corresponds to each of the following molecular formulas….
ALRIGHT MYSTIC MAYA I’M GOING TO TAKE A BREAK FROM JESUS FOR A MINUTE ON BEHEST OF MY GIRLFRIEND
Keeping in mind that empirical formulas represent the smallest whole number ratio of moles in a molecule,
1.) mass Cu = 10.05 g
molecular weight = 63.54
moles of Cu = 0.158 mol
mass of O = 2.53 g
molecular weight O = 16
moles of O = 0.158
Mole ratio of Cu:O = 1:1
Empirical formula is CuO. (copper II oxide)
2a.) C4H6Cl2 reduces to C2H3Cl (divide by 2)
2b) C4H10 reduces to C2H5 (divide by 2)
2c) C12H10O does not reduce (only 1 mol O present), so its empirical formula is C12H10O
2d) C6H6 reduces to CH (divide by 6)
3) mass Al = 1.245 g
molecular weight Al = 26.982 g/mol
mols Al = 1.245/26.982 = 0.046 mol
mass Cl = 6.152 - 1.245 = 4.907 g
molecular weight Cl = 34.45 g/mol
mols Cl = 4.907/35.45 = 0.138 mol
mole ratio Cl:Al = 0.138/0.046 = 3:1
empirical formula = AlCl3
CHEMISTRY
Genesis and the Catholic theology of the body
So I had the urge last night to go find a copy of John Paul II’s seminal Theology of the Body, which despite its importance for the philosophical and theological world, seems to have gone largely overlooked because of its absolutely difficult writing. And believe me, it’s tough. I’ve since downloaded a handful of commentaries to help me out in my reading. John Paul wrote layers and layers of tradition and meaning into his work, and even just starting out, it’s a difficult read.
But before I drove off into the wild with JPII, I found myself reflecting on how much our understanding of body and soul has evolved over the centuries. Imagine the writer of Genesis and how different he must have seen our bodies!
The Character of the Divine in Exodus
So, it’s been a long time and a handful of reading since the last time I posted anything not about vegetables. Since then, I’ve worked my way up through the Pentateuch, except for Numbers (which I started last night!). One of the things I found unusual in Exodus, though, was how much the character of God swings between Genesis and the story of Moses.
We’ve established through the reading of Genesis that God is respectful of human free will. Rather than act as a punisher, He lets the consequences of mankind’s actions carry themselves out to their ends. Well, once we climb out way into Moses’ interactions with Pharaoh in Exodus, things change a bit. In every one of the ten plagues, God tells Moses He will make the Pharaoh “obstinate” —God intends to harden the Pharaoh’s heart in order to glorify Himself through the plagues and the eventual freedom of the Israelites.
[c)athy w/a (c]: OMG i missed adventure time last night!! D':
Yeah, so… I’m not even, like, finished catching up on Gressenheller from my outing this past weekend. X’D I’ve got a mad amount of tabs open for stuff I need to reblog.
In other news… fruits are essentially the ‘meat’ or ripened ‘body’ part of a seed plant, right? meaning that tomatoes,…
Dear girlfriend,
Cucumbers are, in the botanical sense, fruits. Therefore pickles are just pickled fruits.
But they’re prepared as vegetables.
