I saw the Passion tonight. It is a very good movie.

I don't know how to describe the feelings the movie creates in me, nor do I know how to accurately comment on it. I think that its best quality is that it creates a means of experiencing the sacrifice of Christ. This kind of knowledge has been revered through the history of the Church as an edifying way of non-analytical knowledge of God. A lot of people seem to have come out of it joyful, I felt subdued.

One interesting goal of Gibson's was to create opposing emotions in his audience. Often he would try and portray an evil character, such as Satan, as beautiful, so that you are drawn to it, and then reveal its wickedness. I think that he does this with the Roman soldiers as well. I think that's why the scourging scene was hard for me, the Roman soldiers seemed like real people. They were doing a job that to them was an athletic event of types. They had enough good to not repulse you entirely but at the same time, you were angry at them for the amazingly wicked work they were doing on the body of Christ. It was interesting.

Anyway, I'm pretty drained, so I won't try and write anything intelligent. Good night all.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/02/23/offbeat.maggots.antibiotics.reut/index.htm

Somehow I think this trend won't quite catch on. Most people just won't want to have bugs in their skin. I know I don't want bugs in my skin, but I might do it if my doctor prescribed it.

Perhaps there will be a new wave of prescription drug commercials for maggots. Maggotex is recommended by doctors everywhere and is known to be extremely affective as a method of helping to heal wounds, while cutting down on antibiotic use! It'll have pictures of smiling people all happily doing death defying stunts, because they're not afraid of being wounded. They'll just use their maggotex, and it'll get all better!

Also: Lem is an uncle! You can see pictures of his new nephew using the link to his pictures, and then clicking on his link to his brother's main site. Once there it won't be too hard to find, they're pretty proud of the new addition to their family, no surprise there.

And also: My brother got married this weekend in Colorado Springs! So good for him. The church he got married in was beautiful, and so was the ceremony. Nobody fainted and I think they even got the fingers right for the rings. By now he should be flying home or driving north to Santa Barbara for the rest of his honeymoon. The wedding itself was beautiful, and the reception was fancy fun. If you want to see pictures, Dan Peckham took a bunch and may post them, so you can check that out if you'd like.

Here's where he and Becca stayed the first two nights of their honeymoon: http://home.navigators.org/us/gleneyrie/index.cfm They had the best room in the whole castle. Very nice!

Here's a link to the church where he got married. It has some links to "Sights of Grace" and you can see the actual building. Not great pictures, but you can get a good idea of how beautiful the buliding is. And the inside is amazing, too. It has a high vaulted ceiling made of wood resting upon stone pillars that go up two stories or so and run down the length of the building. Very nice as well!

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/7968114.htm

I really should make this a hyperlink, but I'm just that lazy that I'm not going to. I haven't done that with any of my posts, and by golly, I'm not planning on starting all over again now.

This is cool, though. Although I think the achievement is somewhat empty because it doesn't sound like any one person can claim to have read the entire corpus of Shakespeare's works in that one night. But perhaps that's my horrible individualism showing. Perhaps the community's achievement is really something special. I suppose it would be impossible to read all of Shakespeare in one night if you were going to have every person hear every piece of work that he wrote.

I wonder if they read them really quickly, too. Did they slur their words? Did they enunciate? The world will never know.

In conclusion: Shut up, kid!

"Where have you gone, Joe Demaggio?
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson?
"Joltin' Joe has left and gone away"

http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Music/02/12/people.garfunkel.ap/index.html

Not at all surprising, but you'd think age would make people more sensible.

Not for the faint of heart:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000519.html

This is an article on the Candiru Fish. It frightens me greatly. I think we should call our Congressional representatives regarding this problem, and see if it can be removed from existence.

Not much to say, just felt like saying something.

Here's a project to work on: look for people's functions. Why did God make them? Why do they exist? How will they be at the end of their life, or perfected in heaven? The Way of Affirmation doesn't focus on looking at people merely as we perceive them at first glance, but attempting to peer into their sinful souls to find the potentiality they possess. Williams says that we exist for our function, not our function for us: but this is Dante's idea. This explains how Dante says amazing things about Beatrice and believes them to be true. Because she will be perfect, and if you look at her in perspective of her telos, then she is right now.

And I wonder what love is other than this conception of Dante's: if love is a desire for the good. If this is the case, then Dante's Way of Affirmation works by following functions further up and in to their ultimate source, the End of all things, the Final Cause of the world, who is God everlasting.

And then apply Dante's worldview to Christology. I don't know how to describe it, but it looks heart-stopping from here.

The Way of Affirmation

Charles Williams, in his famous work The Figure of Beatrice distinguishes between two ways for Christians to approach the world. Is the entire world an image of the Father? Or is the world a distracting sea of false images distracting from our conception and sight of the sole source of our pleasure: God? The Way of Affirmation, the latter view, sees the entire world as pointing to God. The pleasure we find in "things" is Godly pleasure, when experienced correctly. Dante takes this view to its furtherst conclusion, following the image of God in the eyes of Beatrice whilst spiralling upward through the nine celestial spheres. Ascetics take the other opinion. Williams includes a poetic account of renunciation by Dionysius the Aereopogite

Both are pious ways of seeing the world. Both center on God as the center of the universe, and both are difficult for man to live out well. However, the Way of Affirmation appears neglected in modern day Evangelical protestantism. This is disturbing, because I think that the way of Affirmation is a powerful tool in creating beautiful art, which will aid in spreading the kingdom of God on earth. Dante's Comedia is the most powerful testimonial to this, and is, in itself, a full catalog of the Way.

Something I'll be wondering about from now on is how the two ways relate to different theologies. Is any theology adaptable to either one? I'm not sure.

This Monday I thought like a Medieval, which was thrilling.

Statement by NFL Executive Vice President Joe Browne regarding the Super Bowl halftime show:

"We were extremely disappointed by elements of the MTV-produced Halftime show. They were totally inconsistent with assurances our office was given about the show. It's unlikely that MTV will produce another Super Bowl halftime."

Now this is good news. Although the Super Bowl itself was entertaining, the half-time show was not. In fact, I don't think I was entertained at all for the entire 12 rushed minutes of horrendous music and hideous dancing and costumes. Please, please, please, don't subject us to this again, halftime people! The finale, the disgusting disrobing of Janet Jackson, truly fit the show's degenerate feel. Kid Rock's performance that desecrated the flag (although I suspect that was not his intention), the feminine male dancers, the ugly hip-hop music performed by P-Diddy and Nelly, all of it was a summation of our culture's widest spread evils. Bah humbug!

Football, on the other hand, is hardly evil or dark and twisted. It's a wonderful intelligent game. It reminds me of chess. Brilliant minds think out complicated strategies consisting of different plays and emphasis that result in actions on the field. The players train to fulfill their part as best they can, and then implement the strategies, hopefully with the guts to rise above the limitations of their humanity through gigantic efforts of soul. It really wants me to study it now, because watching the different defensive formations and movements and how the offense responds to and causes them is very interesting. And the fundamental question is so basic: how do you get the ball to the other end of the field while staying within the parameters of how to play set out by the rule book? But there's a lot of humanity involved in fulfilling that role, a lot of minds and bodies and hard work, both on and off the field. I think that our ability to work on hard on accomplishing goals like this is one of America's strengths, if we can persevere, and so I see good reasons to hope on, I guess, and maybe, like the game, the wickedness and depravity of our nation is just the half-time show in our game of success.

*yawn*

Just "got back" from a retreat that wasn't too far away to begin from. I suffered from dehydration! I vomited and had a fever everything. Oh, so much fun!

But the retreat served well to refresh the mindset that I'd like to live in. Now it's time to get back to living in a community. Right now we're trying to find times to meet. :-)