the glory and the horror

All links courtesy of Kristen Knox (how do you find all these cool things?).

Which Founding Father Are You?

The sixth book written, you’re nevertheless the first chronologically. You not only describe the creation of Narnia and tell where the White Witch, the lampost and the wardrobe came from, you get to bounce between worlds with the help of Uncle Andrew’s weird magic rings.

Find out which Chronicles of Narnia book you are.

Just thoughts.

When I disagree with something, usually of a spiritual nature, sometimes I wonder if it’s just me being or a dork, or if it’s a real and true disagreement, one where the Spirit is leading me in a different direction than the status quo/stated situation. I wonder if it’s just me being critical, and looking to improve things into the way I think that it should be just because I would rather have it that way, or if it comes from a true and honest belief, for God’s glory, that something should be changed, or not be a certain way. This applies especially to matters of the Church and the Body of Christ as a whole. I think I feel that the Church is called to more than it is doing, or at least to be more thoughtful in the things that it does. I think it stems from a high view of the Body – we are the redeemed, we are empowered by the Spirit to do things that we would not even dream of before we were adopted into the Family. Yet we seem to settle. Or at least to not have much direction, so we just sorta go along and do the stuff that we think Christians should be doing, without asking why we allow, or not allow, certain things. We also rarely think about how things affect the larger body. Usually, the thought is that if it doesn’t hurt someone in our immediate surroundings, there aren’t other, more far-reaching repercussions.

There is more to come, but I’m a little behind on school stuff, so I’ve got to get to that. I doubt I will have much time for school stuff over Thanksgiving. I pray that I will have good time with my family, especially my grandmother.

Just thoughts.

Steinbrenner threatens to cut 150 dental plans

Completely and totally unacceptable. If he does this, I beg all New Yorkers to storm his office and pull out his nose hairs, one by one, with the largest monkeywrench they can find.

Just thoughts.

Written Tuesday evening:

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I just saw the ER from two weeks ago (the one before Halloween) where Gallant has that one lady (the “frequent flier”) die because he didn’t stand up strongly enough to the cardiologist during the consult. Gallant had the diagnosis nailed, but the cardiologist overruled him. The cardiologist was portrayed as particularly unfeeling, even after the woman had passed away, saying something to the effect of “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, this sort of patient goes home and we never hear from them again. You play the statistics” At that, Gallant basically loses it, and yells at the cardiologist, saying “That doesn’t matter to the woman who just died on the table.” The cardiologist also says something to the effect about patient care being all about calculated risks. Abby, the nurse, pipes up and says, “I thought it was about patient care.”

This scene was so loaded with issues, it’s incredible. Yeah, ER can get a little crazy with everything going wrong at once, but man, it’s definitely making me wonder about what my life will be in a couple years. If I am to be respectful and obedient of the authority above me, yet I feel that the authority is not treating a patient as they deserve to be treated, as a human being made in the image of God, what am I to do? How do I live out a life that shows my respect, honor, and love for an image-bearer if I am told to either ignore certain symptoms, or “use” a person as practice for some procedure, even if it’s not medically indicated?

Reese and I had a couple guys over for dinner tonight, and I must say that I really enjoy having people over. I’m not the biggest into big dinner parties, but having a couple people over, eating, hanging out, talking, for about an hour – I think it goes a long way in just getting to know someone. One of the guys is Muslim, and was just saying how Ramadan starts tomorrow. That is an interesting holiday.
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We had a battle of the sexes Trivial Pursuit game tonight, and us guys lost, 6 to 5, because we couldn’t roll the right number to get the last piece of the pie. We danced around it for at least 10 rolls of the dice.

I’m taking this pass/fail elective called Philosophical Bioethics that has turned out to be less bioethics than I thought, and really a survey of western philosophy from Aristotle to the present-day, an hour a week, for about 12 weeks. I’m learning a lot of random stuff, and the discussions are challenging. This past week, for some reason, we were booted out of our classroom, but we stood and sat around talking about whether or not reason/rationality can exist as a thing without motivation/purpose, i.e. can you be considered a reasonable person if you’re not trying to make some sort of decision to some end? Or put another way, can rationality exist without a goal?

Just thoughts.

October 31 is Reformation Day. Martin Luther changed the face of the Western world, and possibly the world, more than he could have ever imagined by posting the 95 Theses on that church in Germany. Little did he know.

Stolen from Kristen Knox’s blog, taken from Doug Wilson, a fairly well-known reformed writer:

As another Halloween approaches, and as many of us are working on building alternatives, I wanted to take the opportunity to offer a few thoughts and pastoral suggestions.

Background: First, November 1 is All Saints Day. The All Saints festival was first established during the times of persecution in the early church when the number of martyrs accumulated to the point where it was no longer possible to commemorate them all. In the time of John Chrysostom, all the martyrs were remembered on the first Sunday after Pentecost. In 608 A.D., the Pantheon, a former pagan temple to all the gods, was dedicated in Rome as a Christian church. The date of that dedication (May 13) became the day of “all saints.” The day was moved to November 1 in 741 A.D. with the dedication of the Chapel of All Saints.

Second, in the British Isles, the day was known as All Hallows Day. The “eve” of that day, the night before, was known as Hallowe’en. In the minds of simple people, the night before the day of the holy ones was thought to be a last ditch party on the part of unholy ones — devils, witches, fairies, imps and so forth. With this kind of superstition, of course, we have nothing to do. Obviously, the custom of kids dressing up in order to play trick or treat did descend from this view, but the thing that is objectionable here is not the dressing up in itself, but rather the dressing up as wicked creatures.

Third, Reformation Day is on October 31 and commemorates the posting of Luther’s famous theses, which is usually regarded as the inauguration of the Reformation. It is frequently honored by churches on the last Sunday of October. As it happens, Reformation Day is Halloween. Fourth, and the bottom line, is that these two days belong to the Christian church, and not to the pagans. And the days have been ours for many centuries, despite certain pagan encroachments. We should keep the days, and fight off the encroachments. And so . . .

To Do: We are encouraging parishes to hold Reformation Day/All Saints Day parties and gatherings. The mood should be festive and filled with rejoicing — an exhibition of our gratitude for the faithfulness of the martyrs of the early church and the martyrs of the Reformation. This obviously can (and should) include kids dressing up and getting loads of candy, but I would strongly urge that no one have their kids dress up as members of the other team — witches, ghosts, devils, imps, or congressmen. We do want to urge a high level of celebration, but we don’t want to take our cues from the surrounding culture. So if you take your kid around to grandma’s house dressed up like an M & M, or like Theodore Beza, don’t have them say “trick or treat” like some ghost or witch. Of course, “repent or perish” or “sola fide” probably wouldn’t work either. Let’s do this differently, and intelligently, and still have fun.

To Avoid: We want parish parties, not pious parties. So when neighborhood trick or treaters come to your door, I would encourage you to give them more candy than unbelievers give, as opposed to a glare and/or a tract. We want to behave during this time in such a way that their celebrations are revealed as far more anemic than ours (not to mention twisted and gross). We do not want our parish parties to be a cheesy alternative, a sort of faux-Halloween. It should be a true All Hallow’s Eve, a true Reformation Day blow-out.

On a related note, there is no way to do this without kirkers differing among themselves about what is appropriate. This is reasonable — up to a point. We know the direction we want to go, and we want to get there together with unity of spirit. This means learning to lighten up on details. So don’t freak out and rebuke someone if their kid goes over to their aunt’s house dressed like John Knox, but he says “trick or treat” instead of soli Deo gloria. But feel free to be concerned if someone from the Night of the Living Dead shows up at the parish party.

I’m not quite sure what I think of that exactly, although it’s interesting. I don’t think I’ll be teaching my kid to say “sola fide” when asking for candy, that’s for sure

The parents came, and went, much too quickly. They were in town for about 36 hours, I think, or something like that. They arrived 5 pm on Friday, and left at 8 am on Sunday morning. Closer to 40 hours, I guess. It was a lot of fun to have them here for the white coat ceremony, to meet Reese’s parents and sister, and to just see school, and hear about what medical school life is and so on. I’m really glad they decided to come. Now if only I could get Andrew and Lydia to come on down

Just thoughts.