Elegy

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow;
I am the sun on ripened grain;
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awake in morning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight;
I am the stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

—Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1932.

Confessions

Oh you sons of men, how long will you be dull at heart? Even now, after the descent of life to you, do you not wish to ascend and live? But how can you ascend when you have set yourselves up on high and have placed your mouth against heaven? Descend, so that you may ascend—so that you may ascend to God. For you have fallen by rising against God.

—St. Augustine, Confessions, Book 4 Chapter 12.

Love Me Irrationally

When we meet again you may be disappointed on finding that I look different from the lovely picture your tender imagination has painted of me. I don't want you to love me for qualities you assume in me, in fact not for any qualities; you must love me as irrationally as other people love, just because I love you, and you don't have to be ashamed of it.

—Sigmund Freud, Letters, 1884, #33, page 89.

Misquoted in Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality, Substantial Healing of Psychological Problems, page 129, as:

When you come to me, little Princess, love me irrationally.

Besides, this was ten years before Freud began studying psychoanalysis.

Boswell's Johnson

Dr. Johnson said of the Turkish Spy that it told nothing but what every body might have known at that time; and that what was good in it, did not pay you for the trouble of reading to find it.

—James Boswell, Life of Johnson, Volume 5, Thursday, 21 October 1773, p341.

Theological Questions

1. How does it appear that something has existed from eternity?
2. How does it appear that this earth and the visible system are not from
eternity?
3. How does it appear that the existence of man is derived and dependent?
4. How do you prove the natural perfections of God, viz. his intelligence,
infinite power, foreknowledge, and immutability?
5. How do you prove his moral perfections, that he is a friend of virtue, or
absolutely holy, true, just, and good?
6. How do you prove that the Scriptures are a revelation from God? And
what are the evidences, internal and external?
7. How do you prove the divine mission of Christ?
8. How do you prove the divinity of Christ?
9. How do you prove the personality and divinity of the Holy Ghost?
10. How do you prove that the persons in the Trinity are one God?
11. Whence arose the Manichean notion of two Gods, and how is it
confuted?
12. Whence arose the polytheism of the pagans, and how confuted?
13. Whence was it that the knowledge of the one true God, in which Noah
was instructed, was not preserved among his posterity in all ages?
14. Why are not mankind in all ages (their internal faculties and external
advantages being sufficient) united in right sentiments of the one true
God?
15. Were the moral character of God and the moral law understood and
loved, would there be any objections against revealed religion?
16. What is the true idea of God’s decrees?
17. How do you prove absolute and particular election?
18. Did God decree the existence of sin?
19. Why did God decree sin?
20. In what sense did he introduce sin into the universe?
21. How do you reconcile this with the holiness and goodness of God?
22. What is necessary to constitute a moral agent?
23. Are men moral and free agents?
24. What is the difference between natural and moral power and inability?
25. How is absolute moral necessity, or inability, consistent with the free
agency of men?
26. How is the doctrine of universal, absolute decrees, consistent with the
free agency of men?
27. How do you prove an universal and special providence?
28. What is the covenant of redemption?
29. If man was created in original righteousness, how is that consistent
with moral agency? It being said that a necessary holiness is no
holiness.
30. What was the constitution under which Adam in innocency was placed?
31. Was Adam under the same necessity of falling that we are of sinning?
32. Are all intelligences bound to love God supremely, sinners and devils?
33. Is the law holy, just, and good, and how is it proved?
34. Are they, who are under its curse, bound to delight in it?
35. How great is the demerit of sin?
36. Are the torments of hell eternal?
37. How do you reconcile them with the justice and infinite goodness of
God?
38. How do you reconcile them with those texts which say Christ died for
all men, that God will not that any should perish?
39. How does it appear that human nature is originally depraved?
40. Whence comes that depravity?
41. How is it proved to be total?
42. What is the covenant of grace?
43. Are the law and gospel inconsistent with each other?
44. Why was an atonement, and one so precious as the blood of Christ,
necessary?
45. In what manner did Christ atone for sin?
46. To whom doth it belong to provide an atonement, God, or the sinner?
47. Did Christ redeem all men alike, elect and non-elect?
48. Can the offer of the gospel be made in sincerity to the non-elect?
49. How is redemption applied?
50. What is the office of the Holy Ghost in the work of redemption?
51. What is regeneration?
52. Whence arises the necessity of it?
53. What is true love to God?
54. What is true benevolence to men?
55. What is true repentance, and how distinguished from legal?
56. What is true faith?
57. What is pardon and justification? What is their foundation, and what is
the influence of faith therein?
58. How are full satisfaction and free pardon consistent?
59. Is the sinner forgiven before he repents?
60. Is sanctifying grace needful at all to any man, unless with respect to
that which is his duty, and in neglect of which he would be without
excuse?
61. What is the sum of man’s duty, and what the effect produced by the
sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit?
62. Can that holy volition in us, which is the effect of divine power, be
wholly our act, or our duty?
63. How is it proved that unbelief is sin, and that all errors in moral matters
are of a criminal nature?
64. Will the wicked heathens, Jews, infidels, and errorists of every kind, be
without excuse at the day of judgment?
65. What is the essence of true virtue, or holiness?
66. Is there no virtue in the exercise of natural conscience, the moral sense,
natural compassion, and generosity?
67. Is not self-love the root of all virtue?
68. Do not the unregenerate desire to be regenerated, and can they not
properly pray for regenerating grace?
69. Do they not desire the heavenly happiness?
70. What is the utmost the unregenerate do in the use of the means of
grace?
71. Is any duly done by them therein?
72. Do they grow better in the use of means?
73. To what are they to be exhorted?
74. What is the real advantage of the assiduous use of means to the
unregenerate?
75. How do you prove that the institution of the Sabbath is of perpetual
obligation?
76. How is it that the Sabbath is changed from the seventh to the first day
of the week?
77. How do you prove that public worship is to be celebrated on the
Sabbath?
78. What is the foundation of the duty of prayer, since God is omniscient
and immutable?
79. How do you prove that family prayer is a duty?
80. To whom are the promises of the gospel made, to the regenerate, or
unregenerate?
81. Are no encouragements given to the unregenerate?
82. How do you prove the saints’ perseverance?
83. What is the nature of a Christian church?
84. Who are fit for communion therein?
85. What is the nature and import of baptism?
86. How do you prove infant baptism?
87. What is the nature of the Lord’s supper?
88. What are the rules and end of church discipline?
89. What is the character of a good minister of Christ?
90. In what does the happiness of heaven consist?

—Jonathan Edwards.

Gargoyles

I really have a notion of why I have collected all the nonsensical things there are here. I have not the patience nor perhaps the constructive intelligence to state the connecting link between all these chaotic posts. But it could be stated. This row of shapeless and ungainly monsters which I now set before the reader does not consist of separate idols cut out capriciously in lonely valleys or various islands. These monsters are meant for the gargoyles of a definite cathedral. I have to carve the gargoyles, because I can carve nothing else; I leave to others the angels and the arches and the spires. But I am very sure of the style of the architecture, and of the consecration of the church.

—G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions.

Oneself

The only thing one can usually change in one's situation is one's self. And yet one can't change that either—only ask our Lord to do so, keeping on meanwhile with the sacraments, prayers, and ordinary rule of state. ... When the need comes God never fails to carry out in us His otherwise impossible instructions. In fact He always has to do all the things—all the prayers, all the virtues. ... Having to depend solely on God is what we all dread most. And of course that just shows how very much, how exclusively, we have been depending on things.

—C.S. Lewis, Letters.

Dum Vivimus Vivamus

Live while you live, the Epicure would say,
And seize the pleasures of the present day!*
Live while you live, the Sacred Preacher cries,
And give to God each moment as it flies.^
Lord in my views let both united be;
I live in pleasure when I live to thee.

—Dr. Doddridge, epigram on his family arms.

*1 Cor 15:32.
^Eccl 9:10.

'Life'

The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man Less than a span,
In his conception wretched, from the womb So to the tomb;
Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years With cares and fears.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns on water, or but writes in dust.

Yet whilst with sorrow here we live opprest, What life is best?
Courts are but only superficial schools To dandle fools:
The rural parts are turn'd into a den Of savage men:
And where's city from foul vice so free,
But may be term'd the worst of all the three?

Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed, Or pains his head:
Those that live single, take it for a curse, Or do things worse:
Some would have children: those that have them moan Or wish them gone:
What is it, then, to have, or have no wife,
But single thraldom, or a double strife?

Our own affections still at home to please Is a disease:
To cross the seas to any foreign soil, Peril and toil:
Wars with their noise affright us; when they cease, We are worse in peace;-
What then remains, but that we still should cry
For being born, or, being born, to die?

—From Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, 1651. This poem was signed “Ignoto” in the first ed. It was first ascribed to Bacon in Farnaby’s Florilegium, 1629, and has elsewhere been ascribed to Raleigh, Donne, and Henry Harrinton. The evidences of Bacon’s authorship are briefly stated in Dr. Hannah’s Courtly Poets, ed. 1870, p. 117. The poem is paraphrased from a Greek epigram variously attributed to Poseidippus, to the comic poet, Plato, and to Crates, the. lyric poet, beginning:

Ποίην τις βιότοιο τάμοι τριβον; ειν ἀγορῆ μεν
Νείκεα καὶ χαλεπταὶ πρηξιες κ.τ.λ.
(Anthol. Græca, ix. 359.)

A literal translation of this epigram reads: “What path in life shall a person cut through! In the forum are quarrels and difficult suits; at home cares; in the fields enough of toils; in the sea fright; in a foreign land fear, if you have anything; but if you are in a difficulty, vexation. Have you a wife? you will not be without anxiety. Are you unmarried? you live still more solitary. Children are troubles. If childless life is a maimed condition. Youth is thoughtless. Gray hairs are strengthless. There is a choice of one of these two things, either never to have been born, or to die as soon as born.” (Bohn.)

Recollections

I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed. ... At least record it to yourself before custom has reconciled you to the scenes before you, and the disparity of your discoveries to your hopes has vanished from your mind. It is a rule never to be forgotten, that whatever strikes strongly, should be described while the first impression remains fresh upon the mind.

—Samuel Johnson, letter to James Boswell, in his 'Life' volume 1.

Christians in the World

Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonoured, and yet in their very dishonour are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honour; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life; they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred. To sum up all in one word— what the soul is in the body, that are Christians in the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, yet is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, yet are not of the world.

—Epistle to Diognetus (2nd century Christian apologetic), Chapter 5, translated by James Donaldson & Alexander Roberts, quoted in Tim Dowley, Eerdman's Handbook to the History of Christianity, quoted by Mark Fodale, Pray, Love, Serve (Part 2), 1 Peter 4.7-11, 6/30/2013.

Nihilism

Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have, I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.

Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.

—David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, quoted in C.S. Lewis, Essays.

Oh wearisome Condition of Humanity!

Oh wearisome Condition of Humanity!
Borne under one Law to another bound:
Vainely begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sicke, commanded to be sound.

—Fulke Greville, Mustapha, Chorus Sacerdotum, quoted in C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century.

Welfare State

The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good – anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name 'leaders' for those who were once 'rulers'. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, 'Mind your own business.' Our whole lives are their business.

I write 'they' because it seems childish not to recognise that actual government is and always must be oligarchical. Here, I think, lies our real dilemma. Probably we cannot, certainly we shall not, retrace our steps. We are tamed animals (some with kind, some with cruel, masters) and should probably starve if we got out of our cage.

—C.S. Lewis, Willing Slaves of the Welfare State.

Spenser's World

Spenser inherited the Platonic and Christian dualism: heaven was set over against earth, being against becoming, eternity against time. He knew from the outset that the lower, half-unreal world must always fail to copy its archetype exactly. The worst that experience could do was to show that the degree of failure was greater than one had anticipated. If he had thought that the objects of his desire were merely 'ideals', private, subjective, constructions of his own mind, then the actual world might have thrown doubt on those ideals. But he thought no such thing. An Existentialist feels Angst because he thinks that man's nature (and therefore his relation to all things) has to be created or invented, without guidance, at each moment of decision. Spenser thought that man's nature was given, discoverable, and discovered; he did not feel Angst. He was often sad: but not, at bottom, worried. To many of my readers such a state of mind must appear a total illusion. If they cannot suspend their disbelief, they should leave Spenser alone; there are plenty of other authors to read. They must not, however, suppose that he was under an illusion about the historical world. That is not where he differs from them. He differs from them in thinking that it is not the whole story. His tranquillity is a robust tranquillity that 'tolerates the indignities of time', refusing (if we may put the matter in his terms) to be deceived by them, recognizing them as truths, indeed, but only the truths of 'a foolish world'. He would not have called himself 'the poet of our waking dreams': rather the poet of our waking.

—C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century.

How He Cared

There were no vain regrets in him now; no regret of life, for this he always held in his own hand ready to toss it away for a fancy of an ideal—no regret of the might-have-been because he was a philosopher, and the very moment that love for the unattainable was born in his heart he had already realized that love to him could only mean a memory.

Therefore when he watched the preparations out there in the mist, and heard the heavy blows upon the wooden planks of the gibbet and the murmurs of his sympathizers at their work, he only smiled gently, self-deprecatingly, but always good-humouredly.

If the Lord of Stoutenburg only knew how little he really cared.

—Baroness Orczy, The Laughing Cavalier.

The Reformers' Gospel

The 'gospel', to which everything else we do should point, is easy to misrepresent in summary. It is said that the divine law damns us not for our refusal, but for our inability to obey it, or again that in God's sight the deed is good because of the man and not the man because of the deed. This is in reality the obstinate fact which meets us long before we venture into the realm of theology; the fact that morality or duty (or The Law) never yet made a man happy in himself or dear to others. It is shocking, but it is undeniable. We do not wish either to be, or to live among, people who are clean or honest or kind as a matter of duty: we want to be, and to associate with, people who like being clean and honest and kind. The suspicion that an act of spontaneous friendliness or generosity was really done as a duty can subtly poisons it. In philosophical language, the ethical category is self-destructive; morality is healthy only when it is trying to abolish itself. in theological language, no man can be saved by works. The whole purpose of the gospel is to deliver us from morality. Thus the 'Puritan' of modern imagination—the cold, gloomy heart, doing as duty what happier and richer souls do without thinking of it—is precisely the enemy which historical Protestantism arose and smote. What really matters is not to obey moral rules but to be a creature of a certain kind. The wrong kind of creature is damned (here, as we know; hereafter, as we believe) not for what it does but for what it is. And we cannot change our own nature by any moral efforts.

Another way of putting it would be to say that the Reformers, as regards the natural condition of humanity, are psychological determinists. Action necessarily obeys the strongest impulse—the greatest appetite overcomes the less. That the profit should be located in another world makes, as Tyndale clearly sees, no difference. Whether the man is seeking heaven of a hundred pounds he can still but seek himself. Of freedom in the true sense—of spontaneity or disinterestedness—Nature knows nothing. And yet, by a terrible paradox, such disinterestedness is precisely what the moral law demands. The law requires not only that we should do thus and so but that we should do it with a free, a willing, a lusty, and a loving heart. Its beginning and end is that we should love God and our neighbors. it demands of us not only acts but new motives. This is what merely moral men never understand. The first step is to see the law as it really is, and despair.

After the thunder of the law comes the rain of the gospel. Though Nature knows nothing of disinterestedness, Supernature does. There is one Will in existence which is really good of itself, and that Will can join us to itself so that we share its goodness. The transition comes by the gift of faith which immediately and almost by definition passes into love—by the redemption which God performed to win his enemy, to overcome him with love, that he might see Love and love anew. The essence of the change is that we now have power to love that which before we could not but hate. The fretting voice of the law is not the Will of the Beloved, already in principle (if not at every moment) our own will. Deeds are not the cause of salvation, but they are its inseparable symptom. We are 'loosed from the law'—by fulfilling it. Deeds are the fruits of love and love is the fruit of faith. So we utterly deny the medieval distinction between religion and secular life. God's literal sense is spiritual. Wiping shoes, washing dishes, nay, our humblest natural functions are all equally 'good works', and the ascetic life wins no higher room in heaven than a whore of the stews if she repent. Pain and hardship sent by God or self-inflicted may be needed to tame the flesh. They have no other value.

—C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, summarized from pp 187–191.

Why shephanim?

Why shephanim? The NASB refers to the shaphan or shephanim in Leviticus 11:5, Deuteronomy 14:7, Psalm 104:18, and Proverbs 30:26, directly transliterating the Hebrew word שָּׁפָן. In these references the KJV and NIV use coney and the ESV uses rock badger. In all cases they are talking about the species Procavia capensis, now known as Rock Hyraxes. The Bible describes them as simple yet exceedingly wise, making their houses in the cliffs. They are still common throughout the Holy Land and most of Africa. Unable to dig tunnels with their soft feet, they have to live in abandoned burrows or clefts in the rock. Since they appear to chew the cud, they were unclean under the old covenant. Actually, they have long incisor teeth which they can use to defend themselves. They live for their entire lives (about 10 years) in small herds made up of multiple family units. They probably will still be around when Jesus returns.

I want to be like the shephanim.

The title image is of a Cape Hyrax, species Procavia capensis, taken at Hardap Dam, Namibia. The copyright holder, Hans Hillewaert, releases it under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license.

O minutes great as years!

O minutes great as years!

—J.R.R. Tolkien, essay on Smith of Wootton Major, quoting John Keats, Hyperion, line 64: "O aching time! O moments big as years!"

Now someone please tell me what "Welco To þe Wode" means.

A Boy is Born to Us

Rorate coeli desuper!
   Heavens, distil your balmy showers;
For now is risen the bright Daystar,
   From the rose Mary, flower of flowers:
   The clear Son, whom no cloud devours,
Surmounting Phoebus in the East,
   Is coming from His heav’nly towers,
Et nobis puer natus est.

Archangels, angels, and dominations,
   Thrones, potentates, and martyrs here,
And all ye heav'nly operations,
   Star, planet, firmament, and sphere,
   Fire, earth, air, and water clear,
To Him give loving, great and least,
   That comes in such a meek manner;
Et nobis puer natus est.

Sinners be glad, and penance do,
   And thank your Maker heartily;
For He that ye might not come to,
   To you is coming, fully humbly,
   Your souls with His own blood to buy,
And loose you from the fiend’s arrest—
   And only from His own mercy;
Pro nobis puer natus est.

All clergy do to him incline,
   And bow unto that babe benign,
And do your observance divine
   To him that is the King of kings:
   Incense his altar, read and sing
In holy church, with mind digest,
   Him honouring above all things
Qui nobis puer natus est. 

Celestial fowls in the air,
   Sing with your notes upon the height,
In firths and in the forests fair
   Be mirthful now with all your might;
   For passèd is your dully night;
Aurora has the clouds all pierced,
   The Son is risen with gladsome light,
Et nobis puer natus est.

Now spring up flowers from the root,
   Revert you upward naturally,
In honour of the blessed fruit
   That rose up from the rose Mary;
   Lay out your long leaves lustily,
From death take life at His behest
   In worship of that Prince worthy
Qui nobis puer natus est. 

Sing, heaven imperial's greatest height,
   Regions of air make harmony,
All fish in flood and fowl in flight,
   Be mirthful and make melody!
   All Gloria in excelsis cry!
Heaven, earth, sea, man, bird, and beast,—
   He that is crowned above the sky
Pro nobis puer natus est.

—Isaiah 45:8, translated from William Dunbar (Scotland, 1460-1520).

Planes

We have in fact reached the point of intersection of two different planes: of a real and permanent, and an unreal and passing world of values: morals on the one hand, and on the other a code of honour, or a game with rules. The personal code of most people was, and of many still is, like that of Sir Gawain made up of a close blend of the two; and breaches at any point in that personal code have a very similar emotional flavour. Only a crisis, or serious thought without a crisis (which is rare) will serve to disentangle the elements; and the process may be painful, as Gawain discovered.

—J.R.R. Tolkien, Gawain and the Green Knight.

Tips on Avoiding God

The avoiding, in many times and places, has proved so difficult that a very large part of the human race failed to achieve it. But in our own time and place it is extremely easy. Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health, and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you'd be safer to stick to the papers. You'll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.

—C.S. Lewis, The Seeing Eye.

But they said, 'We will not walk in it.'

Thus says the LORD,
“Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths,
Where the good way is, and walk in it;
And you will find rest for your souls.

—Jeremiah 6:16.

Holiness

People do not drift towards holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate towards godliness or prayer, or obedience to scripture, or faith and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and we call it tolerance. We drift toward disobedience and we call it freedom. We drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and we call it relaxation. We slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we've escaped legalism. We slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves that we have been liberated.

—D.A. Carson, quoted by Mark Fodale, 3/17/2013.

Turn the Page

In our first grade we were—at different times—almost every creature imaginable, learning of them and how they fitted into the world and how they touched onto our segment of the world, until we saw fellow creatures wherever we looked. We were birds! We fluttered and sang and flitted from chair to chair all around the room. We prinked and preened and smoothed our heads along the brightness of feathers and learned in those moments the fierce throbbing restlessness of birds, the feathery hushing quietness of sleeping wings. And Mary beat endlessly at the closed windows, scattering feathers, shaking the glass, straining for the open sky. But Zach set himself against the lessons and ground his heel viciously down on the iridescence of a green June-bug that blundered into our room one afternoon. The rest of us looked at our teacher, hoping in our horror for some sort of cosmic blast from her. Her eyes were big and knowing—and a little sad. We turned back to our work, tasting for the first time a little of the sorrow for those who stubbornly shut their eyes against the sun and still curse the darkness.

And soon the stories started. Other children heard about Red Riding Hood and the Wolf and maybe played the parts, but we took turns at being Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. Individually we tasted the terror of the pursued—the sometimes delightfully delicious terror of the pursued—and we knew the blood lust and endless drive of the pursuer—the hot pulses leaping in our veins, the irresistible compulsion of hunger-never-satiated that pulled us along the shadowy forest trails.

And when we were Red Riding Hood, we knew under our terror and despair that help would come—had to come when we turned the page, because it was written that way. If we were the Wolf, we knew that death waited at the end of our hunger; we leaped as compulsively to that death as we did to our feeding. As the mother and grandmother, we knew the sorrow of letting our children go, and the helpless waiting for them to find the dangers and die of them or live through them, but always, always, whether we were the pursuer or the pursued, the waiter or the active one, we knew we had only to turn the page and discover who lived happily ever after, because it was written that way! And we found out that after you have once been the pursuer, the pursued, and the watcher, you can never again be only the pursuer or the pursued or the watcher. Ever after you are a little of each of them.

As Cinderella, we labored in the ashes of the fireplace and of lonely isolation and of labor without love. We wept tears of hopeless longing as we watched the semblance of joy and happiness leave us behind, weeping for it even though we knew too well the ugliness straining under it —the sharp bones of hatefulness jabbing at scarlet satin and misty tulle. Cinderella's miracle came to us and we made our loveliness from commonplace things, and learned that happiness often has a midnight chiming, so that it won't leak bleakly into a watery dawn; and finally, that no matter how fast we run, we must leave a part of us behind, and by that part of us, joy comes when we turn the page and finally live happily ever after, because it is written that way.

With Chicken Little, we cowered under the falling of our sky. We believed implicitly in our own little eye and our own little ear and the aching of our own little tail where the sky had bruised us. Not content with panicking ourselves with the small falling, we told the whole world repeatedly and at great length that the sky was falling for everyone because it fell for us. And because the Fox promised help and hope and strength, we followed him and let our bones be splintered in the noisome darkness of fear and ignorance. And, as the Fox, we crunched with unholy glee the bones of little fools who shut themselves in their own tiny prisons and followed fear into death rather than take a larger look at the sky. And we found them delicious and insidious.

And Jackie started having nightmares—he just wouldn't come out of the Fox's den even after his bones were scrunched to powder. He was afraid of a wide sky and always would be. So the next day we all went into the darkness of caves and were little blind fish. We were bats that used their ears for eyes. We were small shining things that seemed to have no life, but which grew into beauty, and had the wisdom to stop when they reached the angles of perfection. So Jackie chose to be one of those and didn't learn with us any more, but grew to limited perfection in his darkness.

And Steve longed to follow the Fox forever. Every day his eyes would hesitate on our teacher's face, but every day the quietness of her mouth told him that the Fox should not come back into our learning. And his eyes would drop and his fingers would pluck anxiously at one another.

The school year went on and we were princesses leaning from towers drawing love to us on shining extensions of ourselves, feeling the weight and pain of love along with its shiningness as the prince climbed Rapunzel's golden hair. We, as Rapunzel, betrayed ourselves to evil. We were cast into the wilderness, and we bought our way back into happiness by our tears of mingled joy and sorrow. And—as the witch—we were evil, hoarding treasures to ourselves, trying to hold unchanged things that had to change. We were the one who destroyed loveliness when it had to be shared, who blinded maliciously, only to find that all loveliness, all delight, went with the sight we destroyed.

We were the greedy woman. We wanted a house, a castle, a palace—power beyond power, beyond power, until we wanted to meddle with the workings of the universe. And then we had to huddle back on the dilapidated steps of the old shack with nothing again, nothing in our lax hands, because we reached for too much. But then we were her husband, too, who gave in and gave in against his better judgment, against his desires, but always backing away from a no until he sat there, too, with empty hands, staring at the nothing he must share. And he had never had anything at all because he had never asked for it. It was a strange, hard lesson and we studied it again and again until Benny was stranded in greed and Dorcas in apathy.

But childhood can't last. That was our final, and my hardest, bitterest, lesson. One day our teacher wasn't there. She'd gone away, they said. She wouldn't be back. I remember how my heart tightened and burned coldly inside me when I heard. And day followed day and I watched, terrified, the memory of her dying out of the other kids' eyes.



Oh, I know that no one believes in fairy tales any more. They're for children. Well, who better to teach than children the fact that good must ultimately triumph? Fairy tale ending—they lived happily ever after! But when it is written that way! The marriage of bravery and beauty—tasks accomplished, peril surmounted, evil put down, captives freed, enchantments broken, humanity rejecting the pleasures of beasts, giants slain, wrongs righted, joy coming in the morning after the night of weeping. The lessons are all there. They're told over and over and over, but we let them slip, and we sigh for our childhood days, not seeing that we shed the truth as we shed our deciduous teeth.

I never saw our teacher again, but I saw my first grade again, those who survived to our twenty-fifth anniversary. At first I thought I wouldn't go, but most sorrow can be set aside for an evening, even the sorrow attendant on finding how easily happiness is lost when it depends on a single factor. I looked around at those who had come, but I saw in them only the tattered remnants of our teachings.

Here was the girl who so delighted in the terror of being pursued that she still fled along dark paths, though no danger followed. Here was our winged one still beating her wings against the invisible glass. Here was our pursuer, the blood lust in his eyes altered to a lust for power that was just as compulsive, just as inevitably fatal as the old pursuing evil. Here was our terror-stricken Chicken Little, his drawn face, his restless, bitten nails, betraying his eternal running away from the terror he sowed behind himself, looking for the Fox, any Fox, with glib, comforting promises. I looked for Jackie. I asked for Jackie. He was hidden away in some protected place, eternally being his dark shining things, afraid—too afraid—of even shallowness ever to walk in the light again.

There were speeches. There was laughter. There was clowning. But always the underlying strain, the rebellion, the silent crying out, the fear and mistrust. They asked me to speak. I stood, leaning against the teacher's desk, and looked down into the carefully empty faces.

"If you have forgotten," I said, "it's a long time ago. If you remember, it was only yesterday. But even if you have forgotten, I can see that you haven't forgotten the lessons. Only you have remembered the wrong part. You only half-learned the lessons. You've eaten the husks and thrown the grain away. She tried to tell you. She tried to teach you. But you've all forgotten. Not a one of you remembers that if you turn the page you can happily ever after, because it was written that way. You're all stranded in the introduction to the story. You work yourselves all up to the climax of terror or fear or imminent disaster, but you never turn the page. You go back and live it again and again and again.

"Turn the page! Believe again! You have forgotten how to believe in anything beyond your chosen treadmill. You have grown out of the fairy tale age, you say. But what have you grown into? Do you like it?" I leaned forward and tried to catch evasive eyes. "With your hopeless, scalding tears at night and your dry-eyed misery when you waken. Do you like it?

"What would you give to be able to walk once more into a morning that is tiptoe with expectancy, magical with possibilities, bright with a sure delight? Our teacher taught us how. She gave us the promise and hope. She taught us that we can all finally live happily ever after because it is written that way. All we have to do is believe and turn the page. Why don't you?"

—Zenna Henderson, Turn the Page, abridged.

Two-One

Jar one chord, the harp is silent; move one stone, the arch is shattered;
One small clarion-cry of sorrow bids an armed host awake;
One dark cloud can hide the sunlight; loose one string, the pearls are scattered;
Think one thought, a soul may perish; say one word, a heart may break!

Life went on, the two lives running side by side; the outward seeming,
And the truer and diviner hidden in the heart and brain;
Dreams grow holy, put in action; work grows fair through starry dreaming;
But where each flows on unmingling, both are fruitless and in vain.

—Adelaide Anne Procter, Legends and Lyrics II.

No Letter

Dear, I tried to write you such a letter
As would tell you all my heart to-day.
Written Love is poor; one word were better;
Easier, too, a thousand times, to say.

I can tell you all: fears, doubts unheeding,
While I can be near you, hold your hand,
Looking right into your eyes, and reading
Reassurance that you understand.

Yet I wrote it through, then lingered, thinking
Of its reaching you,—what hour, what day;
Till I felt my heart and courage sinking
With a strange, new, wondering dismay.

"Will my letter fall," I wondered sadly,
"On her mood like some discordant tone,
Or be welcomed tenderly and gladly?
Will she be with others, or alone?

"It may find her too absorbed to read it,
Save with hurried glance and careless air:
Sad and weary, she may scarcely heed it;
Gay and happy, she may hardly care.

"Shall I—dare I—risk the chances?" slowly
Something,—was it shyness, love, or pride?—
Chilled my heart, and checked my courage wholly;
So I laid it wistfully aside.

Then I leant against the casement, turning
Tearful eyes towards the far-off west,
Where the golden evening light was burning,
Till my heart throbbed back again to rest.

And I thought: "Love's soul is not in fetters,
Neither space nor time keep souls apart;
Since I cannot—dare not—send my letters,
Through the silence I will send my heart.

"If, perhaps now, while my tears are falling,
She is dreaming quietly alone,
She will hear my Love's far echo calling,
Feel my spirit drawing near her own.
...
"Wondering at the strange mysterious power
That has touched her heart, then she will say:-
'Some one whom I love, this very hour,
Thinks of me, and loves me, far away.'

"If, as well may be, to-night has found her
Full of other thoughts, with others by,
Through the words and claims that gather round her
She will hear just one, half-smothered sigh;

"Or will marvel why, without her seeking,
Suddenly the thought of me recurs;
Or, while listening to another speaking,
Fancy that my hand is holding hers."

So I dreamed, and watched the stars' far splendour
Glimmering on the azure darkness, start,—
While the star of trust rose bright and tender,
Through the twilight shadows of my heart.

—Adelaide Anne Procter, A Letter.

Holiness

Beware of looking upon Christianity as a substitute for rather than a cause of personal holiness.

—I.W. Charlton, Missionary to India, quoted in Amy Carmichael, Things As They Are.

The Moonlight Sonata

She sat down again and played Beethoven's Sonata in cis-moll, which was not on the programme. There is, I believe, no composition in the whole world that shows with the same distinctness the soul torn by tragic conflict; especially in the third movement of the Sonata, the Presto-agitato. I am not a musician, but I suppose even musicians do not know how much there is in that Sonata. I cannot find another word than "oppressiveness" to describe the sensation wrought upon the audience. One had a feeling as if mystical rites were being performed; there rose before me a vast desert, not of this world, weird and unutterably sad, without shape, half lit up by a ghostly moon, in the midst of which hopeless despair waited and sobbed and tore its hair. It was terrible and impressive because so unearthly; and yet irresistibly attractive,—never had my spirit come in such close proximity to the infinite. I imagined that in the shapeless desert, in the dusk of a world of shadows, I was searching for somebody dearer to me than the whole world, one without whom I could not and would not live, and I searched with the conviction that I should have to search forever and never find what I was looking for. My heart was so oppressed that at times I could scarcely breathe.

When she left off playing there was a great hush in that crowd, as if they expected something, or were benumbed by sorrow, or tried to catch the last echo of sobbing despair, carried away by a wind from the other world.

I went with the others to press her hands. From the first moment of our acquaintance Clara had always addressed me in French; now for the first time, returning the pressure of my hand, she said in German:

"Haben Sie mich verstanden?" [Do you understand me?]

"Ja," I replied, "und ich war sehr unglücklich!" [Yes, and I was very unhappy.] And it was true.

—Henryk Sienkiewicz, Without Dogma.

Poetry

Mr. Shaw is (I suspect) the only man on earth who has never written any poetry.

—G.K. Chesterton, Heretics.

A Chance

They took what came with a general determination to measure up to what was expected of them. It was their good fortune, or else their misery, to belong to a generation in which every individual would be given a chance to discover and expose his worth, down to the final ounce of strength and nerve.

—Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 1 Ch. 3.

Maximus

Many, if God should make them kings,
  Might not disgrace the throne He gave;
How few who could as well fulfil
  The holier office of a slave!

I hold him great who, for Love's sake,
  Can give with generous, earnest will;
Yet he who takes for Love's sweet sake
  I think I hold more generous still.

I bow before the noble mind
  That freely some great wrong forgives;
Yet nobler is the one forgiven,
  Who bears that burden well and lives.

It may be hard to gain, and still
  To keep a lowly, steadfast heart;
Yet he who loses has to fill
  A harder and a truer part.

Glorious it is to wear the crown
  Of a deserved and pure success;
He who knows how to fail has won
  A crown whose luster is not less.

Great may he be who can command
  And rule with just and tender sway;
Yet is Diviner wisdom taught
  Better by him who can obey.

Blessed are those who die for God,
  And earn the martyr's crown of light;
Yet he who lives for God may be
  A greater conqueror in his sight.

—Adelaide Anne Procter, Maximus.

HTML and RegEx

You can't parse [X]HTML with regex. Because HTML can't be parsed by regex. Regex is not a tool that can be used to correctly parse HTML. As I have answered in HTML-and-regex questions here so many times before, the use of regex will not allow you to consume HTML. Regular expressions are a tool that is insufficiently sophisticated to understand the constructs employed by HTML. HTML is not a regular language and hence cannot be parsed by regular expressions. Regex queries are not equipped to break down HTML into its meaningful parts. so many times but it is not getting to me. Even enhanced irregular regular expressions as used by Perl are not up to the task of parsing HTML. You will never make me crack. HTML is a language of sufficient complexity that it cannot be parsed by regular expressions. Even Jon Skeet cannot parse HTML using regular expressions. Every time you attempt to parse HTML with regular expressions, the unholy child weeps the blood of virgins, and Russian hackers pwn your webapp. Parsing HTML with regex summons tainted souls into the realm of the living. HTML and regex go together like love, marriage, and ritual infanticide. The <center> cannot hold it is too late. The force of regex and HTML together in the same conceptual space will destroy your mind like so much watery putty. If you parse HTML with regex you are giving in to Them and their blasphemous ways which doom us all to inhuman toil for the One whose Name cannot be expressed in the Basic Multilingual Plane, he comes. HTML-plus-regexp will liquify the n​erves of the sentient whilst you observe, your psyche withering in the onslaught of horror. Rege̿̔̉x-based HTML parsers are the cancer that is killing StackOverflow it is too late it is too late we cannot be saved the trangession of a chi͡ld ensures regex will consume all living tissue (except for HTML which it cannot, as previously prophesied) dear lord help us how can anyone survive this scourge using regex to parse HTML has doomed humanity to an eternity of dread torture and security holes using regex as a tool to process HTML establishes a breach between this world and the dread realm of c͒ͪo͛ͫrrupt entities (like SGML entities, but more corrupt) a mere glimpse of the world of reg​ex parsers for HTML will ins​tantly transport a programmer's consciousness into a world of ceaseless screaming, he comes, the pestilent slithy regex-infection wil​l devour your HT​ML parser, application and existence for all time like Visual Basic only worse he comes he comes do not fi​ght he com̡e̶s, ̕h̵i​s un̨ho͞ly radiańcé destro҉ying all enli̍̈́̂̈́ghtenment, HTML tags lea͠ki̧n͘g fr̶ǫm ̡yo​͟ur eye͢s̸ ̛l̕ik͏e liq​uid pain, the song of re̸gular exp​ression parsing will exti​nguish the voices of mor​tal man from the sp​here I can see it can you see ̲͚̖͔̙î̩́t̲͎̩̱͔́̋̀ it is beautiful t​he final snuffing of the lie​s of Man ALL IS LOŚ͖̩͇̗̪̏̈́T ALL I​S LOST the pon̷y he comes he c̶̮omes he comes the ich​or permeates all MY FACE MY FACE ᵒh god no NO NOO̼O​O NΘ stop the an​*̶͑̾̾​̅ͫ͏̙̤g͇̫͛͆̾ͫ̑͆l͖͉̗̩̳̟̍ͫͥͨe̠̅s ͎a̧͈͖r̽̾̈́͒͑e n​ot rè̑ͧ̌aͨl̘̝̙̃ͤ͂̾̆ ZA̡͊͠͝LGΌ ISͮ̂҉̯͈͕̹̘̱ TO͇̹̺ͅƝ̴ȳ̳ TH̘Ë͖́̉ ͠P̯͍̭O̚​N̐Y̡ H̸̡̪̯ͨ͊̽̅̾̎Ȩ̬̩̾͛ͪ̈́̀́͘ ̶̧̨̱̹̭̯ͧ̾ͬC̷̙̲̝͖ͭ̏ͥͮ͟Oͮ͏̮̪̝͍M̲̖͊̒ͪͩͬ̚̚͜Ȇ̴̟̟͙̞ͩ͌͝S̨̥̫͎̭ͯ̿̔̀ͅ

—Marc Gravell, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454

What To Worship?

Worship Jesus. Every other object of worship in your life demands that you sacrifice. Everything that you worship apart from Jesus demands that you pay, sweat, and labor, whether it be romance, financial success, reputation, achievement, or a controlled, peaceful world—all of those demand that you pay, and the returns are pretty poor. But not Jesus. Friends, Jesus is the only treasure, who rather than demanding that you pay, paid it for you. That's the gospel. He suffered and he died so that you could be deeply and intimately loved by God. Talk about romance. Jesus suffered and died so that you could know, no matter what happens, that you are a beloved child. Talk about reputation. Jesus suffered and died so that you would know that all things are working together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. Talk about a peaceful, controlled world. He sacrificed himself to get you; he became poor so that you could be rich; he said, "take my yoke upon you and find rest for your soul." In all of our worship and in all of our searching, the one we've been searching for is actually Jesus. He paid it all; that's the good news. Everything you long for is found in him.

—Rev. Mark Fodale, The Gospel in Advent: The Worship of Christmas, Matthew 2.1-12, 12/16/2012.