Book Review: Dune

Finally, I've had the chance to read Dune. I actually have time to read now, and it's amazing. I'll have even more now that hours are being cut since July is slow for hardware store/garden centers.

In reverse of my usual habit, I saw the movie before I read the book. And I'd say that the movie is true enough to the book that I wouldn't have been angered if I had first read the book and then watched the movie. Sure there are scenes that the movie doesn't include, but there's so much going on in this book that there's no way they could have managed to successfully cram it all into a movie. There's also a few things the movie outright changed, but not in the plot-changing way that some movies are in the habit of doing.

And now to speak of the book itself. In short, it was quite excellent. The characters were extremely well-developed through many means. We get to hear their thoughts and view event through their eyes, learn how others interpret their actions from their point of view, and also get the usual third person narrator descriptions. Perhaps one of the book's greatest strengths is its shifting point of view. Herbert seamlessly shifts from the vantage point of one character to another for maximum understanding of the situation and, as was already mentioned, stellar character development.

I must also applaud the success with which he builds a new universe and drops us into it. The societies, politics, and technologies are skillfully and realistically crafted. I could spend a good deal of time admiring it. My paragon example of society creation is Richard Adams' Watership Down, and I consider Dune worthy to sit alongside it. The readers are dropped into this world, given just enough facts to figure the rest out on our own. He doesn't waste time tediously describing his world to us foreign onlookers. Rather, it's as if his book is written to an audience that lives there. The reader is neither patronized nor overwhelmed.

The plot, too, is worthy of praise. But I feel that this is obvious enough without explanation.

One thing I disliked about Herbert's style was the repeated use of a few descriptions and phrases. I don't need to know a million times that Stilgar's eyes are a deep blue sunk into dark pits, or whatever exact phrase he uses over and over. He also has a habit of saying that a glance or gesture "contained an entire conversation." While this is true several times throughout the book, he could come up with different ways of expressing the same idea every once in a while. But I really have no other complaints to make.

In summary, Frank Herbert's Dune is quite an excellent book in all respects. Go read it. It's long, but you'll zoom through it because it's so fantastic.

Reading Nooks

One thing I've finally had time to do again this summer (along with getting adequate amounts of sleep!) is reading for fun. Really I needn't even add "for fun," because I usually don't even do "required" reading during the school year. Almost as important as choosing a book to read is choosing a place to read. I have found several good locations, and it is my aim to briefly glance at all of them here. Some (namely those that are particularly awesome and accessible to the public) will get their very own posts in the future.

The balconies:
I have two: a sunny southeast-facing one and a shady nortwest-facing one. The sunny one has a hammock and is great for mornings or cool days. Sometimes I pretend to tan while I'm reading back there, but I don't think it really works. The shady one is perfect for afternoons, evenings, or warm mornings. On warm afternoons, I don't go outside unless I'm working. It can get pretty brutally humid and gross out there.

The kitchen table:
It's the perfect place for morning Bible-reading. I can eat at the same time, and it's not so comfy that I risk dozing off. The next reading place is the exact opposite.

The circle chair:
My good friend the circle chair has followed me from place to place since my freshman year. Anyone who has ever sat in it knows how amazing it is. I can curl up in a dozen different ways with a book and a drink and spend happy hours on a day off.

The sofa:
The sofa is only a short distance from the circle chair, but it has a few advantages over the dear old chair. It's next to a light for greater evening visibility and allows me to completely sprawl out after a long day of work.

Buy the Book:
I found out about this place by happy accident. I was discussing my plans to read Dune with someone at fighter practice, and she said that I would want to buy it and that a little used book store called Buy the Book would be the best place in the area to get it for cheap. Not only did I find a cheap copy of Dune (permeated by that wonderful old book smell, no less), but I also found a bright, clean little coffee shop within walking distance of my apartment. This place will definitely be getting its own post.


Purdue's HSSE Library:
I haven't tried doing any leisurely reading here yet, but I know it's good for low-key school reading. I go there when it's too cold to be outside and I don't need to be super serious about getting to work. They have lots of comfy chairs and some tables, but it's usually pretty full. Quiet, but full. If you do find an empty chair ring or table, you can count on being joined by a stranger at some point. You can also count of them to be silent and pick a chair at the appropriately courteous distance.

Purdue's Hicks Library:
The undergrad library is underground. It opens earlier than the rest of the libraries, so if I need to get work done before a 7:30 or 8:30 class, that's where I go. Like HSSE, it's quiet, but it has more space and therefore less crowding. It's also a bit more dreary and less comfortable which somehow makes me more productive. It is worth noting that this may be the absolute worst place to study during dead week and finals week. It becomes packed and noisy.

The Union at Purdue:
The Union is much like HSSE, but better for rainy days. It also doesn't have books and computers like HSSE, but I usually have everything I need. It does have the advantage of being above campus' non-dorm food central. When it's lousy outside, it's nice to stop by the Starbucks in the basement and pick a comfy old chair next to one of the tall old windows. It's particularly quiet since approximately half of the sofas and chairs are occupied by sleeping students between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm.

The Krannert Lobby at Purdue:
If you want to get down to business and defeat the Huns, you go to the Krannert lobby. With an abundance of comfy but not too comfy chairs with moveable tabletops and tables perfect for group meetings, I can always count on being more productive here than most other places. Maybe it's the business-like atmosphere of the school of management, or maybe it's just the well picked and placed furniture.

The Hort Gardens:
I can't really count on getting anything at all done once I sit down out there, but for a relaxing afternoon of reading and nature-watching, it can't be beat. The surrounding beautiful plants and intriguing wildlife, the periodical passing of a friend or professor, and the quaint view of the old glass and brick headhouse make the hort gardens glorious at any time of year.

Tippecanoe County Public Library:
So far I've only walked in to look for a periodical (which they didn't have, as I expected), but it had the air of a place I'd like to be. I'll have to give it a more thorough review after I've actually spent some time there. It has sort of an aged feel, but not ancient or anything. Just well-loved and well-worn.

West Lafayette Public Library:
Like the Tippecanoe County Public Library, I've only been inside once looking for the same periodical. But I've seen it many times, and have always liked the look of it. If you saw it, I'm sure you would agree. It's a newer building that makes no efforts to fake age and venerability, but there are subtle hints that show its respect for the past. The decorative tiling looks to be inspired by historically significant tiling on an old bank a few black away (on a fuller review of the place I'll give more detail) and the font used on the website and elsewhere has ties to Frank Lloyd Wright's Samara House a few miles away. I'm sure there are even more little nuances like this that I'm missing, and I'd love to be privy to them.


I look forward to continuing to discover books to read and places to read them for the remainder of the summer. I've still got four or five weeks left, and what's to stop me from continuing to explore once school starts back up? Spending the summer here has helped me learn what the Lafayette-West Lafayette area is about: community. Especially downtown Lafayette and the West Lafayette neighborhoods north of campus. I'm sort of looking forward to being a local for the next handful of years, and I no longer wonder what on earth I'll do with myself between graduation and leaving this area. It feels more and more home-like all the time. Having multiple home places is a mixed blessing, but that's another post for another time.


Also note the background change corresponding to book-reading season. Here's a picture for future reference:

Book Review: Life Is Too Important to Be Taken Seriously

This short book by Mandy Smith matches its curious title with an even more unusual subtitle: Kite-Flying Lessons from Ecclesiastes. Emily McClure picked this book out to study with the ladies at the college group at home, and after working through one chapter with them I decided to read the entire thing on my own.

The goal of the book is to teach you to re-prioritize your life to find true meaning and in the process truly enjoy the things under the sun that aren't meant to give you meaning. Whether it's health, money, job, education, relationships, or just about anything else that you find yourself putting ahead of God, Solomon touches on it in Ecclesiastes and Smith expands on it in her book. When we learn to loosen our death grips on the less important things and put them under God, our lives will be more peaceful and focused through the good and the bad, and we may even re-learn to have fun. She also includes a list of carefree little things to do in the back.

While I've never lost the ability to enjoy the trivial joys in life, I do tend to run the risk of trying to focus on a dozen morally-neutral pursuits to the point that God becomes my fall-back when I've been run to the ground by the stress of chasing everything else. To use Smith's analogy, I tend to chase the wind and try to catch it rather than harnessing it to fly a kite. I highly recommend this book. It's a short, refreshing read with welcome reminders and a redirected look at what I once considered a depressing book of the Bible.

Audiobook Review: Lilth

Thanks to Librivox I can now listen to books instead of not having the time to read them. I started re-reading George McDonald's Lilith this summer on the plane ride back from Colombia, but unfortunately I left the book on the plane when I was just a few chapters in. I mentioned this to a friend a few months ago, and he introduced me to the wonderful world of Librivox. Visit their site for more information. I finished listening to Lilth not too long ago after driving to Purdue, back home, and back to Purdue again plus some lab time.

I remembered Lilith being dark but good, but I didn't remember how dark and good it was. Some of the images evoked could have made Poe shudder, so beautifully written but fantastically grotesque they were. Death, decay, and disfigurement both physical and spiritual were woven liberally into this tale of the redemption of things twisted by evil. But along with the horror was beauty, compassion, and wonder. The 

Mr. Vane is the protagonist of the story. He is a young man who has just come into inheritance of the family estate after graduating from college where he invested far more time in books and knowledge than in people. Through a series of odd events, he finds himself in another world (sort of) where he is befriended by Mr. Raven, a man of paradox and mystery. In this other world he learns that he is dead, though he believes himself alive, and that the only way to be alive is to go to sleep in the cold house of Mr. Raven. He fears sleeping there, however, and the adventures that ensue are what it takes to get him to realize that he really does need to sleep and really can trust Mr. Raven. This is a rather incomplete synopsis, but to go into too much more detail would require more explanation and the book might be spoiled.

MacDonald is clearly using sleeping and waking as a symbol for death to self and rebirth into the kingdom of God. Some people take more convincing of their need of sleep than others, but they all wind up there in the end. If all MacDonald meant to say with the book is that anyone can be redeemed through Christ no matter how long and painful the process is, I would agree wholeheartedly with him. However, he takes things a step too far. MacDonald asserts that everyone, even the shadowy representation of Satan, will be redeemed in the end. To be fair, he doesn't say that God will just decide to forgive everyone and be all nice and lovey dovey. He still thinks everyone has to arrive at the point of brokenness and surrender necessary for God to work. He just thinks everyone will get there. If you ignore several hints and outright statements in the last few chapters, the theology is excellent. Again, I can't elaborate without spoilers. I definitely recommend that you read/listen to this book.

Book Review: Out of the Silent Planet

Oh, how I've missed C.S. Lewis. I read The Last Battle out loud with Lizzy over the summer when we, Josh, and Chad took a trip to Mammoth Caves, but reading a book out loud isn't quite the same. And there's a difference between reading Lewis for children (although I would never ever suggest that adult's shouldn't enjoy the Chronicles of Narnia) and Lewis for adults. So maybe my next project will be The Screwtape Letters. It's been sitting on my desk at home for a year or two now.

But that's enough jibber jabber. I haven't said anything at all of the book itself yet. It was an excellent read full of food for thought and imagination. Malacandra, the beautiful world he crafted, had such a charming culture and a stunning landscape that I can't wait to read the next book in the trilogy so I can visit again. It's a world that operates as it ought to. A foolish reader might read unintended political statements into Lewis' portrayal of Malacandra, but to get caught up in that would be to miss the point entirely. As one might suspect from Lewis, the intended point was a theological one.


Spoilers ahead. I've left out the bulk of the plot, but it you wanted to read it and find the message for yourself skip ahead.

[spoilers]
The direct message of the book is to communicate that Earth and its sentient creatures have been corrupted - bent, to use the Malacandran term - by its governing eldil (someone from a Christian background would read the eldil as some sort of angelic authorities, Earth's being Satan). Malacandra was wounded by Earth's corrupt eldil, but saved by its own governing eldil (Oyarsa) at a great price and has managed to continue operating in its ideal state. Because of his corruption, earth's governing eldil has been cast from the heavens to the earth thereby limiting his influence to the sentient creatures of Earth. But Maleldil (the God-figure) has a plan to redeem Earth. Sounding familiar at all?
[/spoilers]

Out of the Silent Planet sets the stage for further metaphorical exploration of the gospel. We'll see where the other books take us. Lewis doesn't tend to bluntly present his ideology to his readers (he cleverly cut out of the recorded story the implied full word-for-word telling of the gospel), so I'm interested to see what happens next. Maybe I'll get a chance to read the others over break.

Book Review: Crazy Love

Two summers ago at CIY I picked up Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I sort of suspected I was missing a little something in my Christian life. And by a little something I mean a big something, that something being a desire for God. I had an interest in intellectually pursuing apologetics and theology and the like, but it was no different than my desire to learn about things like cells and architecture.

It wasn't until this fall that I actually got around to starting the book, and it wasn't until this winter that I finally finished it, but I'm glad I did. This book has been a huge help to me this semester as I've begun to overhaul my Christianity to build an actual faith in and relationship with God.

Chan's book talks about God's extravagant love and our inappropriate response to it. Every word I read resonated with the struggle I had been dealing with since January. Yes, I know in my brain that God loves us an awful lot and that we should love him and obey him in return. But that's the same line a three-year-old can parrot and not actually mean. I could even say it with emotion from time to time, put it in all sorts of words and metaphors, and provide logical arguments in support. Heck, I'd even been emotionally moved to some degree by thinking about it before. But Chan's book took everything I'd been reading and half-glossing over for my entire life like a toddler and spelled it out plain and simple saying "here is the truth; it is beautiful, painful, and challenging."

First came the beautiful part, the stuff we all know and love. God is immense and powerful and majestic, but he still chooses to love us. He chose to live and die as a man so that we could be purified and stand in his presence for all eternity. I don't at all want to downplay the beauty of the truth, but I do want to say that we can't stop there. Even telling God we're sorry for messing up and trying to be nicer doesn't cut it. It's only once you start to work through the pain and challenge of the truth that the beauty of it really starts to dawn on you brighter than ever before.

Next came the painful part: there is no such thing as a lukewarm Christian. Depending on your definition of a Christian. If a Christian is merely someone who goes to church, reads the Bible, and has a list of prayer requests, then sure you can have lukewarm Christians. But if a Christian is a follower of Christ with the assurance of salvation, there's no room for half-heartedness. Jesus says to follow him with all that we are. To do anything less is hypocrisy that fools only us, if even that much. This idea is firmly supported by scripture over and over again. Yes, true followers of Christ will have times where they mess up to varying degrees, but a life characterized by complacency and comfort is not the life of a person who has been changed by God. There's a lot more I could say here (I will quickly add that he addressed our inability to change by our own willpower), but you've really got to read the book and pray and talk through it.

Before I continue I must add that after the painful part I put the book down for a couple months. I "didn't have time to read." Really, I think I needed to process what I had read, and I needed to be broken more before I could rise to the challenge. This book alone is not responsible for the change I'm going through. Don't barrel through the book in a day because it's a quick read. Take the time to wrestle with it, whether that means a few days, a few weeks, or a few months. I had to do a lot of talking to and hearing from God before I was ready to move on.

Finally came the challenging part. So what are we going to do now? God is handing us this incomprehensible love, and we've largely ignored it, choosing instead to be comfortable and sing songs and say church words. Well, before we can take another step we have to realize that we need the help of the Holy Spirit every step of the way (this sort of blends into the painful section). That done, what we need to do is follow God with everything we have. What will it look like for you to be sold out to God? The specifics are only known to you and God, but there are three main inter-connected points brought out by Chan. One: a life characterized by trust. We should take risks that we cannot possibly expect to end well without the power of God (now, this should be well-seasoned with wisdom, but that's a conversation that could be had at length at some other time). Two: a life that doesn't seek comfort. You're going to have to sacrifice sleep, money, dreams, friendships, and who knows what else. Three: a dedication to meeting the needs of others. A key component of this is meeting physical needs. While you don't have to start a homeless shelter, it's undeniable that God has compassion for the poor and the helpless, and we need to share that. To sum it all up, the true Christian life shouldn't make sense to outsiders, but it should line up with the will of God. In the end, it will be worth it to stand in the presence of God surrounded by those you've been able to bring with you by the power of God.

I've got a lot to work on, but I am working on it. I've got some plans laid out and some ideas I'm tinkering with. My biggest next step is taking everything I've learned, laying aside my cowardice, taking on God's courage, and talking to people. There are all sorts of people I need to talk to about all sorts of things. What's next for you?

Book Review: The Call of Cthulhu

This afternoon I finally took the time to read Lovecraft's most famous short stories: The Call of Cthulhu. I'd been meaning to read it for a while. A few weeks ago I borrowed a collection of his stories from Austin with that intent. Playing a boardgame based on his work last Friday encouraged me even more. So when I had a little time between studying and church today I decided to use part of if to read this story.

It was a well-written enjoyable story. Not enjoyable in the sense that it was a pleasant and lighthearted afternoon frolic, but enjoyable in the way that Poe and Bradbury are enjoyable. It was sort of brooding and fascinating and pulled me in. He did well in parting from the conventional story-telling method and having it instead structured as an individual piecing together the stories of others until a horrifying big picture was formed.

One thing that particularly interested me was the concept that the geometry on R'lyeh was "wrong." Was the appearance of things merely deceiving in an optical illusion sort of way, or was it truly somehow composed of shapes and angles and curves that are not possible in this world?

I definitely intend to read more Lovecraft in bits and pieces. That's the lovely thing about short stories: you can pick one up for just twenty minutes and get all the way through. With my hectic schedule, bite-sized literature is quite a blessing.

This is one for the good days. I have it all here in red, blue, green...

It's time for another happy list! This one, too, came from Sara, Courtney, and me during AP Calculus our senior year. The title came from a fantastic song ("Videotape" by Radiohead) and refers to the pleasant memories from Rahn's class and the fact that we used three different colors of pens (they were red, blue, and green, unfortunately). Courtney's additions are in courier, Sara's are in georgia, and mine are in trebuchet.

• creating a new world (after watching Lord of the Rings: Return of the King with magical creatures and wars and magic and somehow create a best-selling book out of all of it :D)
• picnics at Winton Woods
• swinging (especially at nighttime)
• finding random words in Japanese
• watching the sun rise or set
• odd but pretty names
• doodling
• the color combination of these pens [1]
• untrodden snow
• delays [2]
• the sound of a waterfall (or any other body of water)
• birdsongs
• soft thunder storms at night
• coral reefs
• fall colors
• taking pictures
• splatter-painting
• June 4, 2009 (only 17 weeks from today!) [3]
• books that suck you in
• knowing 3 of 17 weeks we aren't here! [4]
• multiples of 3
• budding flowers
• fresh-baked cookies
• the wind
• color guard
• JESUS!
• tea (it's kind of hard to follow yours Sara - it kind of wins)
• music (any kind - it's all great)
• dancing down hallways (Shantytown...haha)
• working with charcoal (or any other messy art medium)
• all cello bands (Apocalyptica, Breaking of Reality...)
• acoustic guitar music
• reading beside a fire while watching snow fall

[1] Courtney had lime green, Sara had teal, and I had purple.
[2] Snow delays, that is. We had gotten one that morning if I remember correctly.
[3] Graduation Day
[4] She was referring to the trips and breaks before graduation.

Book Review: The Thousand and Second Arabian Night and The Mystery of Marie Roget

I've finally caught back up to events after my fast, but not quite to the present. Expect real-time posts starting next week when I'm back at school.

Through a chain of events, I found myself at Josh's house with nothing to do. I availed myself of his Poe collection and proceeded to pick out some stories I hadn't read yet. The two I chose were, as the post title indicates, "The Thousand and Second Arabian Night" and "The Mystery of Marie Roget."

I was in the mood for some stereotypical Poe: dark and fantastic with a hint of depression and/or madness. The first story I picked, "The Thousand and Second Arabian Night,"  didn't fit that category, but it was still an interesting read. I learned a lot of new facts, which I've probably mostly forgotten already. The premise was this: after the thousand and first Arabian night, Scheherazade continued to tell stories of Sinbad's travels. On the thousand and second night, all the sights and wonders from her story were based on real things (Mammoth Caves was one, but I forget the rest) described in unusual but truthful ways. In the end, the king decided her story was far too ridiculous and had her executed.

I picked the next story because I recognized it as one in my collection of Poe stories, but I had somehow not read it yet. "The Mystery of Marie Roget" was Poe's second mystery story and was based on details and news articles from real events in New York City surrounding Mary Rogers' apparent murder. According to Josh's anthology, Poe solved the mystery correctly based solely on these newspaper excerpts. According to every other account I've found on the internet, he was wrong. He even released an edited version of the story in which the detective reasoned that Marie died as Mary actually did. It wasn't exactly the sort of story I was in the mood for either, but I enjoyed it more than I did the first I read. I do love a mystery story every so often.

Story Information
Titles: The Thousand and Second Arabian Night, The Mystery of Marie Roget
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Years Published: 1845, 1842

Book Review: Frankenstein

This book followed The Man Who Was Thursday in my Colombia leisure reading. It started off strong, but by the end I was thoroughly disappointed. This book may have been whinier than even Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I really don’t care how anguished Frankenstein was over creating the monster, or how emotionally devastated the monster was about being rejected by humankind. A sentence or two – maybe even a full paragraph, to be generous – would have sufficed to communicate that they weren’t very happy people. Furthermore, I did not find many of the characters very interesting. Clerval was a good fellow, the monster was somewhat interesting, the poor French peasants in the cottage had a touching story, but that was about it. I suppose Frankenstein was alright before he went emo, and I do support his decision not to make a second monster based on his Scotland reasoning (his initial reasons on the ice field did not satisfy me). I never really connected to any of the other characters, particularly Elizabeth. I really didn’t care very much about her at all.

I did like how the story was set inside a collection of letters. That was a neat idea. And I also approved of the fact that the guy writing the letters (I forget his name) decided not to drag his crew on a hopeless adventure. I’m sure I could find other nice things to say about the book, but I’m not sure what they are. Given my liking for efficiency, wasting over a hundred pages on whining was enough to completely estrange me from this book.

Book Information
Title: Frankenstein
Author: Mary Shelley
Year Published: 1818

Book Review: The Man Who Was Thursday

This was a thoroughly delightful read. I’ve read some short stories over the past few years, but I haven’t picked up a full-length book for any purpose other than school or personal study since the summer of 2008. For many reasons, I couldn’t have picked anything better as my first just-for-fun book in years.

First, I was happy to return to the writing style of Chesterton. He is much better at keeping a line through a plot than through theology. I didn’t feel like I was running around in circles. But even in the more circuitous Orthodoxy, there was something about his use of language that I found wonderful. I don’t exactly know how to describe it.

(Warning! Spoilers below!)
As far as the plot goes, this book wins again. I was a little concerned at first. I feared I had figured everything out too early on. I guessed that Symes would become Thursday rather than Gregory. I knew right away that Sunday was the man in the dark room who started the whole philosophical police force. Once I learned that Monday was an officer, I predicted that the rest would also be undercover cops. I could not read the ensuing chapters seriously. None of their run-ins in the village bothered me in the least, because I was pretty sure I knew how everything would end. It was well-written enough that I enjoyed reading it even though I wasn’t surprised.

And then came the last few chapters. What on earth? While I was right about my predictions, I had no way at all of guessing the final ending to this book. I’m still not entirely sure what happened and what it meant. I’ll probably re-read the end again at some point to more thoroughly digest it. It’s short enough that I could probably even find the time to read the whole thing over again on Thanksgiving break or something.

Book Information
Title: The Man Who Was Thursday
Author: G.K. Chesterton
Year Published: 1908

Book Review: In Search of the Soul

I picked up this book from the CCU bookstore in hopes of finding some sort of answer to a question I’ve asked for quite some time now: how can the immaterial soul interact with the material body? The book did not answer my question. Later I’ll deal with my current view on the question. For now I’ll do a brief introduction of each of the four views represented and the challenges and triumphs of each. I will skip all the nonsense about various people being introspectively aware of themselves as essentially material or immaterial because, in the words of Clark Gable, frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.

Substance Dualism (Stewart Goetz)
All forms of dualism assert that humans have both an immaterial soul/mind and a physical body. In substance dualism, the mind is created separately from the body and can exist apart from it. Some substance dualisms assert that the mind is what makes the body human; others say that both are required for full human-ness.

Strengths:

• Dualism is implied in scripture.
• The doctrine of physical resurrection is easily dealt with.
• It’s completely compatible with free will.
• Fetuses, mentally deficient people, and people in vegetative states still count as humans.

Weaknesses:

• It may be possible to account for all psychological phenomena without assuming the existence of a soul.
• Subconscious thought is eschewed if all thought happens in the substantively simple soul.
• If the person is considered just a soul and not a soul-body composite, then we can’t truly be said to do physical things (to use Hasker's illustration, “you” can’t kiss anyone, since “you” are merely a soul inhabiting a body).

Emergent Dualism (William Hasker)
Emergent dualism is like substance dualism in that it claims that humans have distinct bodies and souls, but it differs in its explanation of their origin. According to emergent dualism, the proper combination of brain structures gives rise to a distinct new substance – the mind/soul.

Strengths:

• Dualism is implied in scripture.
• It’s completely compatible with free will.
• Souls don’t need to be individually created by God.
• Other kinds of emergence are evident in nature (ex: water and its properties emerge from the combination of two atoms of hydrogen and an atom of oxygen).
• Animals can have less fully-endowed souls.

Weaknesses:

• At the resurrection, you either end up with a new soul or the old soul re-established…like it would have been established in the first place in substance dualism.
• If a person’s brain isn’t fully-functioning, they aren’t considered fully human.
• It’s a large (and possibly unmerited) step from the kind of emergence we see in nature and math to this emergent dualism.

Nonreductive Physicalism (Nancey Murphy)
Physicalists don’t believe in souls. Nonreductive physicalists believe that you can avoid reduction to micro-physical determinism even without a soul. They believe that consciousness and all other psychological phenomena can be explained by a combination of neurobiology, social relations, culture, and (for Christians) God’s interaction with people (although the author never addresses this dimension of humans in her essay in the book). On this view, a meta-network of neurons gives rise to consciousness and allows downward causation, thus escaping determinism.

Strengths

• It’s a material explanation, and, when more plausible, those are preferred.
• Explains without the shadow of a doubt why higher functions and brain functions are so integrally tied together.

Weaknesses

• Dualism is strongly implied in scripture.
• It doesn’t escape determinism, despite its claim.
• Conservation of identity at the resurrection is a problem unless the resurrected body is numerically identical to the one that died.
• Unity of consciousness is somewhat of a challenge if the brain is all you have to work with.

Constitutional View of Persons (Kevin Corcoran)
This is another view that denies a soul, but it is not nonreductive physicalism. It falls somewhere between nonreductive physicalism and emergent dualism. For the defender of this view, a person is not identical to their body in the same way that a statue is not identical to the material that forms it. It’s a sort of emergentism, but instead of a new substance emerging, it’s just the identity that emerges. Causal connection is cited as what allows identity to persist.

Strengths

• It can account for the doctrine of resurrection better than the nonreductive physicalist view.
• It’s a material explanation, and, when more plausible, those are preferred.

Weaknesses

• It has the same problems with qualifications for personhood that emergent dualism and nonreductive physicalism have.
• It does not satisfactorily fulfill the doctrine of resurrection.
• His causes are "spooky": they can do an awful lot that they shouldn't be able to do (I don't know how to concisely explain it any better).
• (He didn’t address much of anything aside from resurrection, so I can’t criticize any other points of this view.)

Here are a few additional questions I would like to see each view answer before I can reach my personal conclusion:

• When does a person become a person?
• How did the incarnation of Jesus work?
• How does the Holy Spirit dwell within us?

I currently lean the most toward some sort of substance dualism. All others have problems with the doctrine of resurrection as well as giving a good definition of when a person becomes a person. However, I have not yet looked into different types of substance dualism enough to decide which of those I think is most right. That will be my next task in my quest to build up a sound doctrine of the soul. I will also take the time to go through all the Bible passages that teach on human nature and constitution to make sure that my view of the soul is not only philosophically coherent but also biblically accurate.

Now I return to my original question of interaction between the material and immaterial. I’ve come to realize that I will probably never in this life get a good answer to that question. However, as I was told by a friend some time ago when I asked him this question, the fact that I can’t describe how the body and soul interact doesn’t mean that they don’t interact. If we are to believe Christian doctrine, interaction between the material and immaterial happens all over the place, not just within humans. The resurrection of Jesus is a prime example. This miracle (and, of course, all others) requires that the immaterial and omnipotent God intervene with the material world. How did this happen? We can’t answer that apart from saying that it was an act of God. Does this discredit belief that this event took place? Not at all. Looking at the arguments for the historical reliability of the resurrection accounts leaves no other sensible option than that Jesus did in fact die and return to life thanks to the immaterial acting on the material in some way. We see a similar sort of thing happening in science all the time. For centuries (perhaps even millennia), we knew that plants somehow used energy from the sun to grow. Just because the workings of this process were not known until relatively recently in human history didn’t mean that people before that point had any reason to doubt the apparent truth that the plants were somehow using the energy to grow. With that, I lay to rest my question of interaction for the time being. If anything comes to light on the subject, I will be ready to take it up again, but it seems to me like this is the sort of thing that we won’t really understand on this earth, if it is something we will ever understand.

Book Information:
Title: In Search of the Soul: Four Views of the Mind-Body Problem
Editors: Joel B. Green, Stuart L. Palmer
Contributors: Kevin Corcoran, Stewart Goetz, William Hasker, Nancey Murphy
Year Published: 2005

Book Review: The Practice of the Presence of God

Over the course of CIY and the following weekend, I reread The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. I agreed with the good Brother on most of what he said, but there are a few items we disagreed on. I will share the latter first in order to create a bifid that properly conveys my meaning.

My disagreements with Brother Lawrence are few: he is too ascetic and he is too uninvolved with the world for my liking. His asceticism borders on the Gnostic concept that the body is evil. He would probably put it in the more mild terms that the body is incapable of good, or the ultimate good. In his view of human nature, he tends to err on the side of total depravity. While I would agree that with our flesh nature alone we can’t become all that we are meant to be, I will by no means assert that neutral natural desires should be squashed. I’m not going to stop enjoying hugs and kisses, mud between my toes and the wind in my hair, coffee and Blue Ash Chili even though they are tied to my physical body. I will also not live as though God and myself were the only people in the universe. That simply is not true, nor should it be. Being personally invested in the lives of others is the best way to impact them.

Now I will move on to the things the good brother and I agree on. They are many, but I won’t need to take as much time to explain them all. (One thing must be noted before I continue: I can’t verify much of what he says from personal experience, given that I’m not nearly as mature as he was in these matters, but I can say that they are doctrinally sound as far as I know.) Living in the presence of God is a practice. It’s a virtue. You have to work at it and gradually cultivate the lifestyle. An integral part of this practice is doing every little thing as if you were doing it for God. This helps you constantly remember him and turn your thoughts in his direction. When you live in the presence of God, you experience peace no matter what your circumstances are. I think that’s all I have for now. It’s a quick and easy read, so I highly recommend it to all. He gives a much more thorough explanation for each of these things I’ve touched on, and he has the benefit of speaking from experience.

Book Information:
Title: The Practice of the Presence of God (and Spiritual Maxims)
Author: Brother Lawrence (Nicolas Herman)
Year Published: late 1600's

Book Review: Rediscovering Paul

Because I’m a nerd, I sometimes enjoy reading textbooks. This book review is a product of that. Every CCU student has to take an Introduction to Paul class. Jenny highly recommended their textbook, so I borrowed Emily Isaacs’ copy. A lot of the material specific to each epistle was familiar to me from hearing Ben, Todd, and Ken teach, but there was plenty of new knowledge gained. I will focus on life in the Ancient Near East.

The first few chapters gave background on the world Paul lived in, the Ancient Near East (ANE). I learned a wide range of useful tidbits that apply not only to Paul’s life and letters, but also to the other writings in the New Testament (NT). Any question asked in public was a challenge to a man’s honor. If you had a friendly question, you asked it in private. Every man fought to defend his honor and, if he was a client, the honor of his patron. The patron-client system was an integral part of society. Wealthier men (and sometimes women) were considered patrons. Their clients were the people they protected and trusted to represent them honorably. If a person sought the patronage of someone of high standing, they would offer a gift to the high-ranking person. If the gift was accepted, so was their client-hood. This leads to the idea that almost every gift came with strings attached.

On a different note, I also learned a good deal about letter-writing in the ANE. It was quite an expensive venture, so most letters were short. The book of Philemon would have been a letter of average length that most could afford. The book of Romans, however, is a different story. Paul’s letter-writing style cost him a pretty penny or two. Letters of the day often followed certain formulae and conventions about greetings, body content, and conclusion. Paul’s letters definitely show these greetings and conclusions, although the other pieces may be harder to trace in his massive letters. The process of composing a letter was very different than it is now. First off, as my readers may already know, a scribe wrote the letter. The author might add a final word or signature of sorts in his own hand, but a scribe did all the rest. Different authors gave their scribes different degrees of freedom in the phrasing of the letter, but barring extremely rare word-by-word dictation, the scribe’s style would seep into the author’s words. Second, formulaic phrases were common and could comprise the bulk of the letter. In Paul’s case, this included not only the typical well-wishing and polite phrases of the day, but also hymns from the early church, teachings from the apostles in Jerusalem, and passages from the Old Testament. Furthermore, it would not at all be out of the question for the companions of the letter-writer to give input to the author. Given that Paul usually traveled with solid Christian companions, it makes sense that he would take into account their suggestions. All these things considered, it is not at all difficult to discount the criticisms against the authenticity of some Pauline epistles based on stylistic differences.

I could probably continue for quite some time about all the things I learned from the book, and there are probably things I learned without being conscious of it, but they have nevertheless already seeped into my understanding of Paul and the world of the first church. This book with all its details about Paul’s life and the surrounding culture helped Paul come alive for me (to the point that I shed a tear or two when they talked about his death and his concerns for his church-children at that time). It was most definitely a worthwhile read.



Book Information:
Title: Rediscovering Paul: an Introduction to His World, Letters, and Theology
Authors: David B. Capes, Rodney Reeves, E. Randolph Richards
Year Published: 2007

Happy Lists

Last year several happy lists emerged from Mr. Rahn's AP calculus class. There were some days when Courtney, Sara, and I simply couldn't listen to calculus anymore, so we passed around sheets of paper and listed things that made us happy. Here's the original list. My additions are in the Trebuchet font, Sara's are in the Georgia font, and Courtney's are in the Courier font.

• •    soup
• •    blue eyes
• •    reading a good book on a rainy day
• •    this pen*
• •    a hillside when its leaves change color
• •    Benny and Joon
• •    the scent of fallen leaves
• •    books/movies that make you cry
• •    chocolate, anytime, anywhere
• •    the wind
• •    perfectly golden roasted marshmallows
• •    doing random things at random times without caring what other people think about it (ex: taking jumping pictures in the rain during lunch)
• •    singing in the rain (both the musical and the actual activity)
• •    singing in general (the girls 100 building bathroom, best acoustics EVER)
• •    feeling good for no reason
• •    climbing trees (especially if I get covered in sap)
• •    trying on clothes at stores and striking poses in the mirror
• •    maria's hat**
• •    the oscillating universe (both the awesome dance move and the woefully obsolete astrophysical hypothesis)
• •    decorating Christmas trees (the good-smelling kind in your living room and x-mas tree shaped cookies)
• •    going through the day with a good song stuck in your head and dancing to it at random moments
• •    walking barefoot in nice, cool mud
• •    the smell of an herb garden
• •    the dog at Imago
• •    Imago in general
• •    harvest moons on midnight-black nights
• •    Halloween
• •    Reese's cups
• •    being in love
• •    being in love with someone who loves you back
• •    playing "Adagio" on the piano
• •    playing any piece in 6-8 time
• •    not playing class music
• •    bubbles
• •    saying "je ne sais pas"
• •    swinging
• •    prismacolor colored pencils
• •    the color of KMnO4
• •    photo booth pics!
• •    separation of photosynthetic pigments on chromatography paper
• •    cozy sweatshirts
• •    caution tape and duct tape
• •    gaff tape and glow tape
• •    the Festival of Lights
• •    any shade of green

* The pen I was using was my teal G2 pen.
** I was wearing my colorful stocking cap from Colombia.

from the whole a part

i am from farmers and mechanics and boilermakers
loss of hearing and digits
carrot tops and ginger kids and little reds

i am from tea parties and tree climbing
nail polish and grass stains
barbies and legos
flower fairies and star wars

i am from michigan ice cream and indiana pizza
tchaikovsky and rich mullins
john dog and ria kitty
lewis and jacques and tolkein
our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name and you are my sunshine my only sunshine

i am quietly shouting my independence
identifying with those before
facing my future unafraid




In every year of high school thus far, one of the first english class assignments has been some sort of creative writing piece describing ourselves. This year we were to write poems about how our past has influenced who we are now. Mine opened up this post. I explained it and shared it with my english class, and so now I share it with and explain it to you, my readers. I believe there are four of you now. Hurrah!

The most obvious thing about my poem is probably the rejection of capital letters and punctuation. I really don't like capital letters all that much, and I generally skimp on punctuation in my poems, so Ms. Miller said I could just omit both altogether. She said it reminded her of e.e. cummings, so I decided to take after another one of his stylistic techniques. The title is purposefully ambiguous, especially when heard rather than seen. It says that I'm both a part of the whole and apart from the whole. While I love being a part of my family, I also seek to be something apart from them.

In the first stanza I talk about my parents and other older relatives. The first two parts of the first line are just as they appear (the farmer and mechanic parts), but the third (the boilermaker part) is not. Purdue's mascot is the boilermaker, and a lot of my family members have gone there. On my dad's side, my dad, his brother, both his parents, and his dad's dad all went there. On my mom's side, my mom, her dad, his brother (I think), and several of her first, second, and third cousins went to Purdue. If I go there as I'm planning to, I'll be the fourth generation there in a direct line on my dad's side and the third generation in a direct line on my mom's side. The second line refers to the fact that members of my dad's side of the family are prone to hearing loss and many members of my mom's side of the family are missing fingers or toes from various accidents. The third line is a reference to the fact that I've got red-heads sprinkled all over both sides of my family (including my parents, who both used to have red hair). That would explain why myself and four of my six other siblings have undeniably red hair.

The entire second stanza not only tells about things that I enjoyed as a younger child, but it also shows that I had a wide range of interests. While I liked girly things, I also loved getting dirty and doing some tom-boy-ish things. The third stanza is about memories and old traditions. Whenever we visited my mom's parents in Michigan, we used to go to the same ice cream parlor. They had all sorts of fun flavors. My mom's grandparents live in Indiana, and whenever we visit them we eat Pizza King pizza (it's delicious). For several years, my mom, my sisters, and I used to go see the Cincinnati Ballet's performance of the Nutcracker every winter. That tradition kindled within me a love for Tchaikovsky's music that continues to this day. My dad has several Rich Mullins tapes that we used to listen to on road trips. I can probably sing every single song by now. John Dog was the name of the dog that my older brother got for his fifth birthday. He died just two winters ago at the age of thirteen. We all miss him. Ria Kitty is a stuffed cat I got in Washington, D.C. when I was five. I had lost my Ria Baby and Oatmeal Bear on the subway, so I got Ria Kitty. C.S. Lewis, Brian Jacques, and J.R.R. Tolkein were three authors whose works I read often as I grew up. The last line of the third stanza got chopped in half, but it's still meant to be one line. The first half refers to a family tradition established longer ago than I can remember. Every night we all say the Lord's Prayer together. The second half is a line from a song that my dad and I sang every night when I was little. It had within it a line that we argued about every night as part of the tradition.

The final stanza is just some stuff about appreciating where I've come from, yet wanting to be something a little different that those before me. I pretty much already explained that part when I explained the title.

Summer Reading (in retrospect)

As usual (and as predicted), I spent a considerable amount of my summer reading. Some of the books were books I planned on reading, and others were not. Here's what I did read and my brief opinion of each.

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling
  I can only stand the even numbered books in this series. This was not an even numbered book, therefore I couldn't stand it. It was very melodramatic. Harry should have died. She could have just skipped the epilogue. It was pointless.
  
  
• the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn)
  The first book was okay, I developed an intense dislike for the heroine in the second and third books, and the last one was horrible, but at least the heroine made a much better vampire than she did a human.
  
  
• Heart of Darnkess by Joseph Conrad
  I was prepared for this to be a dull and depressing book. It was somewhat depressing, but I wouldn't describe it as dull. It was thick at times, but I enjoyed it. There was so much there to be drawn out. I loved the style in which it was written. I do think he could have ended the story sooner and skipped the part with Kurtz's wife. It seemed so out of place.



• The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingslover
  I didn't know what to expect of this book, but it turned out to be a delightful book. I loved the narrator and all the other characters as well. Kingslover does an excellent job crafting characters that come to life.



• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  It's hard to see how this book made it onto Oprah's book list. I've never read a book with as much carnage and cannibalism as this one. Not to mention the pervading sense of despair. It was a good book though. It managed to communicate a lot more than was directly stated. I didn't exactly agree with all of it, however.



• The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
  This book was definitely not what I expected. In a bad way. Worked out the chronology of the whole thing quite excellently considering the fact that one of the main characters is a time traveler.



• The Legend of Drizzt: Books I-VIII by R.A. Salvatore
  I love this series. Out of all the books I've read, Drizzt Do'Urden ranks among my favorite characters. I started to try to summarize it, but I realized that that would take a lot of writing and probably wouldn't make complete sense without a good deal of further explanation, so I'll just skip my summary. Cattie-Brie, one of his companions, is another one of my favorite characters. She and I have a lot in common, and more often than not I find myself mentally integrated into the story from her point of view.



• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
  I read this book for the second time through this summer with three people from the college group at church. Unfortunately, we only got together to discuss our reading thrice. I'm really not sure why I'm writing even this much about our attempts to organize discussion, considering the fact that I think I'm down to one reader. And you, o reader, were also a reader of Mere Christianity. And you were always prepared to discuss it.



• Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen by Tamora Pierce
  I love the first book, but not so much the second one. More specifically, I loved Nawat Crow in the first book, but not in the second. He was so adorable and innocent, and then he wasn't either anymore. I did like the heroine all the way through both books, for the most part. She made an excellent spymaster for the revolution on the Copper Isles.
  
  
• Mr. Bliss by J.R.R. Tolkein
  Technically, this is a children's book, but it's nearly fifty pages long and it provides fun for all ages. There is a man named Mr. Bliss who loves to wear tall hats. He has a blind girabbit (giraffe/rabbit) living in his yard from whom he gets his weather forecasts. It's absolutely delightful, and comes with watercolor illustrations drawn by Tolkein himself.
  
  
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
  I began looking for this book when I was in a Hemingway mood. It was not in the library until three weeks later, by which time I was no longer in a Hemingway mood. I checked the book out anyway. I couldn't really get into it, and I was in the middle of a book from a fantastic series (The Legend of Drizzt, to be exact), so I returned it a few weeks later without having finished it. The portion I did read was decent, but I had more interesting books to read and more pressing tasks to complete.

I'm not letting myself read anything else until school starts. I would never finish my summer artwork or keep on track with my other duties. Once school starts, I'll be reading The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Legend of Drizzt Book IX: Siege of Darkness.

Summer Reading

So today I succumbed to my summer addiction and read a book completely unrelated to any current responsibilities.

I received Twilight by Stephanie Meyer at a surprise birthday party yesterday and read it today. I've been hearing good things about it for a while now, and it was better than I expected. Yes, it's a love story, but it's about a vampire and a human (which makes it so much more interesting), and most of it moves at a fairly fast pace. The book contained a suspenseful preview of the second book. Now I really want to read the second book, then I'll want to read the third, and then I'll be stuck waiting for the fourth (and final, I believe) installment. I personally think the main guy should just turn the main girl into a vampire. It would solve so many problems.

During the summer, I normally end up doing pretty much nothing but reading with a hint of gardening and a dash of artwork. Although I have a lot more to do this summer, I still plan on doing a lot of reading. There are two books that all of us AP students are required to read, and we also get to pick one off of a long list from the teacher. I couldn't decide, so I'm reading three of them. At least. Plus there's all the other books I want to read.

In all, I have quite the comprehensive list of books I plan(ned) on reading this summer. The starred ones are required (at least to some degree), and I've already read the top two. The first definitely could have been better.

-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by Rowling (I couldn't not finish the series)
-Twilight by Meyer
-New Moon by Meyer
-Eclipse by Meyer
-Breaking Dawn by Meyer (once again, I can't bear to let a series go unfinished, plus this one will hopefully remain enthralling all the way through)
-The Battle of Evernight by Dart-Thornton (the final book of a trilogy that really annoyed me, but I can't leave a story unfinished)
-Heart of Darkness* by Conrad
-The Bean Trees* by Kingslover
-The Road* by McCarthy
-The Time Traveler's Wife* by Niffenegger
-Beloved* by Morrison
-Three Cups of Tea by Mortenson and Relin
-The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by Barrow and Tipler
-The Hound of the Baskervilles by Doyle (it's going to be my school's fall play, so I want to review the tale)
-Guide to the Practical Study of Harmony by Tchaikovsky

I'm probably forgetting at least a couple. Perhaps I'll post reviews of them all. Perhaps not. I haven't decided.

The Sky's Seasons

What a lovely day. The snowflakes are falling lazily down and the world is muted on this first day of the year. To be realistically pessimistic, a lot of the lack of activity is probably due to hangovers in a significant chunk of society. But that's not a cheery wintry thought, now is it? Last night was marvelous as well. The wind sighed and blew and whistled about the trees and houses with a sorrowful yet simultaneously soothing and invigorating sound. Today is the kind of day when you want to read old books, play old piano songs, and drink strong chai tea. Once again, reality is a downer and truthfully, today is the day that I realize I have two days of break left and quite a bit to finish in that amount of time. I still get my tea though (plus I found some gingerbread cookies to eat with it, yum!), and my streak of unsuccessful tea-brewing has come to an end, thankfully. I started typing this yersterday, but I felt like adding this little bit today. Now on to the part that pertains to the title of the post.

I looked up at the sky yesterday and noticed how incredibly lovely it looked. Then I realized that it was the first truly winter sky I've seen yet this year. There are two types of blue skies: summer and winter. During fall and spring, you just get some days with summer skies and some with winter skies. Richard Adams does a wonderful job of describing the two kinds in one of my favorite books, Watership Down: "It was a fine, clear evening in mid-October...The sky, too, was void, with a thin clarity like that of water. In July, the still blue, thick as cream, had seemed close above the green trees, but now the blue was high and rare..." It was a delight to find that little passage at the end of the book when I first read it several years ago, because I thought I was insane for thinking that there were different blue skies for different seasons, but as you can see, if I'm out of my mind, at least I have good company. Yesterday's sky was distant, as if separated from the world by a thin but completely transparent sheet of ice, if that makes any sense at all. In the summer time, the sky and the earth are one everywhere, but in the winter they're only united at the distant horizon, and only barely even then. It gives a more dream-like quality to the world.

It's Days Like Today That I Dream Of

It's quite lovely out today. All I want to do is throw my window open wide and sit on my bed listening to music and reading or sketching. But alas, this can't happen all day long. Eventually my mom tells me to close the portal to the brisk outdoors, the physics book calls to me to sketch vector diagrams instead of faces, and my biology book wants me to read a history chapter about Darwin rather than Foxe's Book of Martyrs. But I've decided, for some reason I really can't explain, that what I spent several minutes trying to write would do well as a poem. I'm no accomplished poet, but I think this one's okay.


It's days like today that I dream of
It's true I suppose that I dream of
Unnumbered types of ideal days
But for this time all I dream is today

Grey skies hang so low by the treetops
The dark clouds now send rain in fat drops
Preoccupied winds bring northern air
All that I want is to sit and to stare

To sing till my voice becomes weary
With window wide open see clearly
Phalanges and face embrace the chill
If only if only the time I could still

But nazis* do come shutting windows
And textbooks do beg to be unclosed
This day like today now runs from me
All I can hope is that more will soon be



*I hope you've realized I don't mean the actual German Nazis or anything, but my mother can be a nazi of sorts in my eyes for her very anti-open-windows sentiments.