Neumatikos

Ten weeks and two days until KB leaves for approximately six months. He will have nine weeks of basic training followed by twelve weeks of officer’s training down in Ft. Benning, GA.

We also have eleven weeks and three days until the expected arrival of our newest addition to the family. Seeing as stress levels are going to continue to mount between now and then (especially since I can have up to twenty children on my case load), I would not be surprised if these two countdowns actually end up being closer together than they are.

Read on, MacDuff!

Since I don’t bother with news from conventional sources, I learned this morning from Doug Wilson that there are folks in Congress actually considering passing a bill that permits open homosexuality in the military, along with his analysis that passing such a law just flips whose activities are illegal. If sodomy is permitted in the military, then Christians who agree with God’s word on sodomy are not. One of us has to be banned to let the other in.

To this I have to add only two thoughts:

1. November.
2. Please pray for me as I’m joining the army, that this sort of evil will not go through. And if it does, pray that I’ll have the courage to say what needs to be said at appropriate times, despite the consequences.

I’ve always been the sort of person who is profoundly affected by fiction. When I hear people talk about the importance of reading, only to discover that every book they ever read falls in the category of non-fiction, I get a little testy. Okay, I get mad. Non-fiction isn’t reading; it’s being lectured at.

Recently, it’s come to mind that there are three stories that have profoundly affected the direction of my life, and under the guise of being brief, I’ll tell you their titles and authors without explaining wherefore:

1. Emma by Jane Austen
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3. The Vorkossigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold

The last one’s a cheat, I know, since it’s a series of some 20 books, instead of a single volume like the others, but you have to read most of them to get the full effect.

Here’s an email conversation between my mom and her aunt Iwanna, regarding my great-grandmother’s famous mince meat pie recipe. To this day, Mamma’s mince meat is my favorite desert, but nobody seems to be willing to make it for me!

From: “mom”
Subject: mince meat
To: “Iwanna”
Date: Wednesday, December 16

I remember you saying once you made Mamma’s mincemeat using pork roast [which is good since I since I don't want to tackle a hogs head]. Would you share that with me, please. And include any necessary information as to how to can things since I’ve never canned anything.

thanks
di

From: “Iwanna”
Date: Wed, Dec 16
Subject: Re: mince meat
To: “mom”

This is the original recipe mother and I used back in the 40’s and 50’s.

In the 40’s we used the huge black cast iron pot and cooked it outside over a fire.

I helped with the stirring. In the 50’s Mother used the pressure cooker to cook the pork and cooked the fruit in a roast pan in the oven. I make half the recipe and cook it in my 18 qt. electric roaster.

Mince Meat

• 2 hog heads I made half the recipe in 2007 and used an 8.5 lb pork roast and 4 pig feet. The feet are needed to make it jell. I found them at Homeland.
• Salt to taste
• 4 lb. raisins
• 2 lb. dried apricots
• 3 lb. dried peaches
• 3 lb. dried apples If you can’t find these, a gallon of applesauce will work
• 2 qt. sorghum
• 1 qt. vinegar
• 15 lb. sugar (may need more)
• 1-3.5 ounce can each of
  • Cinnamon
  • Nutmeg
  • Cloves
  • Allspice
  • Ginger

Cook pork in enough liquid to cover until it is easily pulled apart.
Pull off the bone and grind. Salt to taste.
Save the liquid from cooking pork, skim off excess fat, and use it to cook the fruit.
Grind the fruit and cook in enough of the liquid for it to appear little thicker than applesauce, the dried fruit will absorb a great deal of the liquid. Add all the other ingredients to the cooking fruit.
If it is too thin it needs cook a little longer to evaporate some of the liquid. It needs to be thick.
Taste for salt and sweetness as you go.
If you make the full recipe you will need to mix in a small tub. Bring to a boil and fill jars while hot. You do not have to use the pressure cooker or a hot water bath for the finished product. It has enough vinegar.
Makes 35 or so quarts. My half recipe made 18 qts.

Canning

Wash and sterilize jars, rings and lids in hot water. (I wash mine in the dishwasher, it’s faster). Fill hot jars with hot mince meat, wipe the top of the jar if anything is on it. Screw on the cap and turn upside down and place on the counter free from drafts and cover with a towel or a few dish towels. When you hear the ‘pop’ you know it is sealed. If the lid doesn’t pop check to see if the lid has an indention. Turn right side up when they have cooled. Fill and cap only a couple of jars at a time, so they won’t cool too quickly.
When you hear the ‘pop’ you know it is sealed. If the lid doesn’t pop check to see if the lid has an indention. If not, heat and try again.
One quart makes two pies. If you want to make only 1 pie, can in pint jars.
Bake like any other 2 crust pie.
I cook my roast and feet overnight and start on the other ingredients the next morning. This will take most of the day, so don’t plan too much for the rest of the day.

Good Luck!
Merry Christmas
Iwanna

Good Luck is right!

David was up every half hour from around 7:30, when he went to bed, until 2:00 , when he had a seizure. Then we took an ambulance to the hospital, where they took a blood sample and told us about what you’d expect: “Wow, that was awful”, and that we should take him to a neurologist, which we already had scheduled. We got back home at 5:45 and took a nap until about 7:15.

I’m going to be a bit frazzled today, I think.

I have an essay now in my mind about the relationship between sin and sickness, but I doubt I’ll have the time.

It always struck me as something of a mystery when I was reading Mere Christianity, how often C. S. Lewis would prefix his thoughts on a theological subject with the disclaimer that he wasn’t a theologian or a pastor, so he couldn’t be precisely sure if his take on a topic was exactly right. On the one hand, I would think, “how humble.” On the other hand, I would think that there was something slightly disingenuous. Here’s an awfully smart guy, well versed in literature and theology, writing about theology. He has a PHD. What prevents him from going that little extra step and getting that theological certification? The fact that he kept stressing how unqualified he was both inspired me with how important it must be to get that training, and it daunted me to think that, if C.S. Lewis isn’t good enough, who then is qualified to teach?

Well, I think I’ve made a discovery. We’re in our new apartment, and I finally have access to all my old books again. What’s more, for the first time in over two years, I have the opportunity to actually read them. So I decided to go through some of my old stuff from seminary and try to read (or finish reading) all the stuff I didn’t get to while I was in school. And I know now why C.S. Lewis didn’t pursue a PHD in theology: To study theology means that a person must spend the fundamental majority of their time reading books by theologians, and theologians, by and large, are very bad writers. C.S. Lewis took his degrees in classical literature, which means he was forced to spend the majority of his time reading and talking about the best written and most uplifting literature known to man.

When you study the classics, most of the bad stuff has been lost or forgotten. But a pastor or a theologian has to spend his time sifting through the current issues of the day, where the unreadable is still somehow being read. So it’s with joy when you come upon a Augistine or a Luther or a Spurgeon, and you cling to those.

I really wanted to make some connection between bad writing and bad doctrine, but I really can’t. George Orwell talked about the tendency to use passive voice in political writing because it allows you to hide the agent doing the action, and of course there was a whole movement in French philosophy, directly after World War II, to work deliberately to undermine clear and powerful writing because of an express desire to destroy the Logos. But the truth is that we’re dealing with a 100-year plus problem, particularly in academia. So I think it has to do more with incentives.

Academic writing used to be read by everybody, and a bad writer could be sniffed by anybody. There was a definite advantage for writing well, and a definite disadvantage to writing poorly. But for 100 years or more, that’s been disconnected. Popular writers still must write well, even if they don’t bother to say anything worth reading, or even anything of substance at all. But an academic writer, though he may be very concerned with his content, he has no apparent motivation to write in a way that is easy or even pleasant to read. So each one presents his ideas with the clarity and precision of a theridiid.

My best hope for academic theology is that we appear to be at the beginning of something like another Great Awakening. And unlike former Awakenings, which seemed to pass from platinum to gold to silver, this movement seems to be an awakening, not merely of piety and religious feeling, but a general groundswell in theology. It may be only in my little niche, but it looks like the layman, in no little thanks to the Internet, is learning to read. He wants doctrine and systematics, not little topical epigrams. Increasingly our superstars are theologians, rather than televangelists. And if that is the case, then for the first time in a long time, a theologian has an incentive to write well.

Because if he doesn’t, even if what he has to say is good and true and Important, on the basis of his bad rhetoric alone, he’ll be thrashed in public.

In contrast to yesterday’s post, the 2006 New Attitude conference was very good. Especially beneficial has been the breakout sessions. Dave Harvey’s session on The Summons was very good. I found this poem he recited about an hour into the talk to be very… moving.

When God wants to drill a man
And thrill a man
And skill a man,
When God wants to mold a man
To play the noblest part;
When He yearns with all His heart
To create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways!

How He ruthlessly perfects
Whom He royally elects!
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts him
Into trial shapes of clay which
Only God understands;
While his tortured heart is crying
And he lifts beseeching hands!

How He bends but never breaks
When his good He undertakes;
How He uses whom He chooses
And with every purpose fuses him;
By every act induces him
To try His splendour out –
God knows what He’s about!

Author Unknown

I contacted his church and was told that the poem came from the book, Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders, p. 184

I’ve been listening the past few days to the Sovereign Grace Leadership Interview series with Josh Harris, CJ Mahaney, and Jeff Purswell. Frankly, I’m having a hard time of it. CJ keeps strongly asserting things that I just don’t believe with.

We’ll slide over the first interview, on The Pastor and His reading, where I had to stop and shout “What planet are you on?” over the general agreement everybody had that it takes careful scheduling to make sure that you get enough time in for reading. Seriously? Next they’ll remind me to make space for food.

The one that’s really getting to me now is The Pastor and His Soul, in which CJ Mahaney insists that I am directly, morally, responsible for the way I feel. I’ve always been of the opinion that feelings sometime present me with useful information, but that they’re just as likely to lie to me about the way things are. CJ tells pastors that if, over a period of time, they detect that their passion, their devotion to Christ is flagging, they need to take immediate and sometimes drastic action. Clear away hours in your schedule, study books and bible verses that have the appropriate effect on the way you feel. Find some way to adjust the way you feel about Jesus, immediately.

Two thoughts, off the top of my head –

1. What about the “Dark night of the soul?” What about dry times? What about people who aren’t so blessed with strong happy emotions. Sometimes you’re just not feeling it. Some people are just preternaturally depressed. Am I guilty because I don’t feel devoted enough?
2. Secondly, I know that this series is devoted to pastors, and there’s an imperative to pastors to make space in their schedule for devotions. That’s a privilege that pastors have. But if there’s a moral imperative to feel a certain way the predominant amount of the time, and if I can get that feeling right if I just spend enough time in prayer and reading the right kind of books, what does that say to the layman? “My pastor gets to feel a certain way because he gets to spend enough time in his prayer closet. Me, I don’t have that time at my disposal. I guess I’m just a second class Christian”?

Below is the essay I was required to write as part of the application process for the Army Officer Candidate school. The title isn’t mine – it’s part of the guidelines for the essay. Of course I left out certain motivations, such as “to lift up and encourage the saints who are there,” and “we need the money.”

The first time I considered joining the Army was shortly after September 11, 2001. That was the first time it became spotlessly clear to me that every individual and every organization is responsible to God, not on the basis of their capacity, but their potential. Only America could be the “world’s policeman,” so America, by Providence, is – whether we want it or not. And therefore the role of defending civilization planted itself on our doorstep. Applied to myself as a Christian man, I have a responsibility to provide leadership and protection for my family, for my church, and for my country.

Read on, MacDuff!

Since we have a little boy in the house, we are currently overrun with alphabet books of the usual kind: “As is for apple” with the appropriate picture attached. All very short and concrete. Well there’s only so much that a logophile can take, and I’ve had enough. We need more abstraction and obfuscation in our alphabet lists. So I’m declaring a little series of contests. First up: adjectives. Give me your best list.

Here are the rules:

1. English only.
2. All the words in your list must be valid adjectives.
3. Three syllables, minimum.
4. No neologisms.
5. No dictionary use (on your honor!)
6. Beg, borrow, or steal your entry from anyone, and anyone else’s list.
7. Multiple submissions accepted.

Post your list in the comments section, or on your own site with a trackback here. The list with the most obscure entries (as judged by me) wins. I’ll announce a winner in a separate post.

To get the ball rolling, here’s my list below:

1. is for abstemeous.
2. is for beautific.
3. is for cephalous.
4. is for deleterious.
5. is for egregious.
6. is for fatuous.
7. is for garrulous.
8. is for hephestian.
9. is for isotonic.
10. is for jungian.
11. is for keretinous.
12. is for laconic.
13. is for munificent.
14. is for nefarious.
15. is for onerous.
16. is for pusillanimous.
17. is for querulous.
18. is for restitutionary.
19. is for sardonic.
20. is for typological.
21. is for ubiquitous.
22. is for vascular.
23. is for wesleyan.
24. is for xenological.
25. is for Yugoslovian.
26. is for zephyrous.

This is fun for everyone, but the following are officially tagged:
My mom, Valerie’s uncle John, Josh Jones, and Mark at pseudopolymath.com The rest of you… tag at will.