Two Quotes

Sometimes when you're reading you find a quote that makes you stop and think--the mental equivalent of stepping on the brake--but you merely note it as you pass, assuming that it was an interesting tidbit which shall quickly be forgotten. But you don't forget it. It stays with you and keeps coming back at unexpected times, like a theme in a Wagnerian opera, displaying its depth and strength over and over again until it gains a place in your mental library of leitmotifs. These quotes were like that for me.

The first is from a book about E.M. Bounds, a Civil War chaplain and writer of books on theology:

[E.M. Bounds]...was never overheard to vindicate or defend his own actions or stand. That intensely human need to explain ourselves and make others understand, what St. Augustine called "this lust of always vindicating myself," was overcome by this magnetic preacher of the gospel.

- Lyle Wesley Dorsett, E.M. Bounds: Man of Prayer

The second is a C.S. Lewis quote that the Headmistress used in one of her posts over at the Common Room:

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination. This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it’s hard to remember it all the time.

- The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (20 December 1943)

May I say that I think this a comforting thought? It means that I don't have to worry about my life not turning out the way I think it should, because my idea of What My Life Should Be was never real anyway. The true meaning of my life isn't what it means to me; it has meaning beyond all my thoughts and dreams, grounded forever in Something that is true and unchangeable. As the hymn says:

My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ my Savior and my God.

Found It!

Last year, when Tim was working on his essay for his national merit scholarship, I was looking around for some information and accidentally found a blog with a cartoon that I loved. I tried to find it again, and I retraced my steps, but I never could find the blog again. I spent days trying to find it.

MerryK posted some comics she found and as soon as I saw her post, I knew that the comic I had been looking for was one of these. I started flipping through the site to find that particular one, and Tim saw me, asked what I was looking for, and I described it to him. It turns out that he had bookmarked the exact same comic after flipping through the site after he saw MerryK's blog!

Here's the cartoon; it's home is here:

Six Quirky Things

Kim tagged me with this Six Quirky Things about Yourself meme.

Here are the rules:
1) Link to the person who tagged me.
2) Mention the rules.
3) Tell six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about myself.
4) Tag 6 other blogger's by linking to them.
5) Go to each person's blog and leave a comment that lets them know they've been tagged.

So 6 uninteresting quirky facts about myself are . . .

1. I don't like to talk on the phone. If I have to make a phone call (except for a quick call to a close friend), I have to psyche myself up for it, sometimes with many cups of tea.

2. I don't like drinks either really cold, or really hot. I make tea by the half-cup so I can add cold water to bring it to lukewarm, and I add tap water to cold drinks to make them less cold. When I'm out, I never get drinks with ice, although, if I order hot tea, I'll add ice cubes with a spoon to make it lukewarm. I found out a few years ago out that my sisters do this, too.

3. I never learned to type, so I've become a pretty fast two-finger typist. I always look at the keyboard when I type. I have small fingers, so I use a small keyboard - it's actually made for a PlayStation.

4. I never took a driving test. I learned to drive late and had an out-of-state ID, and I went to to take the driving test to get my license, but the lady behind the counter insisted that my out-of-state ID card was a drivers license and wouldn't listen when I insisted that it was only an ID. So she issued me a drivers license and I never took a test: government incompetence in my favor.

5. I rarely leave home without a jacket no matter how hot it is because I get cold easily, and many places over-compensate with the air conditioning. I never order cold drinks in restaurants for the same reason.

6. I like to sleep with the radio on. My tastes in music have changed over the years, from rock to Christian pop, to classical - but I've always had a radio playing all night.

Here's who I'm tagging:
1. Roxie
2. Mrs. Sensibility
3. Mama Squirrel
4. Dogwood Mama
5. Dawn ;)
6. Phyllis

New Camera

Tim needed a camera to take to college with him, and I wanted a smaller camera that I could carry everywhere in my purse. Since he likes the features on my camera (it lets you set the speed, light, etc), it made more sense for me to get a new, small camera (Sony Cyber-shot), and to give him my older one.

So now I have a new camera, and lots of new pictures!

One interesting feature is the "smile" setting: the camera waits, locking onto the person's face, and, when it senses a smile, it snaps a picture. At first I thought it was a dumb feature, but now that I've had such good results with it, I think I like it:

It also does very well in extremely low-light with no flash:

I tried the "twilight" setting, which is supposed to flash just enough to provide a small bit of light, but every picture I tried was blurred like a double exposure. Oddly enough, low-light pictures came out better with no flash than a "twilight" flash.

And, another neat feature: it takes pictures in vintage sepia:

This was also low-light without a flash, no tripod.

A New Blog!

I've been taking more and more pictures lately, and even with what I post here a lot of them end up sitting on my hard drive. So I finally decided to start a separate blog for them: de Lumine, hosted on Blogger. I spent all last week setting it up and there are still some things to be done, but I'm ready for visitors!

My sister

Book Find: Will o' the Mill

On July 4th we went downtown to see a parade--down in the old section of town, with all the little shops and artisans and restaurants--and afterwards we spent some time poking into the shops. Brother J spotted this book in one of the antique stores and I loved it. It's leatherbound, with ink-and-watercolor illuminations and a beautiful frontspiece. It was made by Elbert Hubbard at the Roycroft Shop in East Aurora NY (which is about a half hour from Buffalo--we came very close to visiting while we were up there).




Unfortunately the binding is broken and several of the pages are coming out. Does anyone know how a book like this could be repaired, or whether it would be wise to try?

Silver

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and a silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

- Walter de la Mare

(John Duke did a lovely job putting this poem to music. I'm learning the song for my voice lessons.)

Book Find: Y Bibl

I like looking at old books. I like looking at books in other languages. So I was curious when I was in the Old and Rare section of our local used books store a couple weeks ago and saw the title of this Bible. Imagine my excitement to find that it's in Welsh, one of my favorite languages, and it was printed in honor of the coronation of an English King. I mean, I say!

Edward VII R & I
Coronwyd
Mehefin 26
1902
Duw gadwo'r Brenhin

("Edward VII R & I, coronated June 26 1902. God save the King." I'm not sure about the R & I.)

Presented to Arianwen Thomas

The Gospel of John

Quote for Pip

In my Twilight review I mentioned a C.S. Lewis quote, and I think this is the one I was thinking of:

"In this sub-species [of bad science fiction] the author leaps forward into an imagined future when planetary, sidereal, or even galactic travel has become common. Against this huge backcloth he then proceeds to develop an ordinary love-story, spy-story, wreck-story, or crime-story. This seems to me tasteless. Whatever in a work of art is not used, is doing harm. The faintly imagined, and sometimes strictly unimaginable, scene and properties, only blur the real theme and distract us from any interest it might have had." (C.S. Lewis, On Science Fiction, in the collection Of Other Worlds)

There's also this one: "I have sometimes wondered whether the 'excitement' may not be an element actually hostile to the deeper imagination." That's taken from On Stories (also in Of Other Worlds), in which Lewis is arguing that there is more that draws us to story than the action and suspense of the plot. It's an excellent essay; if you ever get the chance, read it.