A Gauge of Importance

Too busy for ____________ is just entirely too busy.

Fill in the blank! (No, really. Do it.)

Some of mine: contemplation, food, sleep, friends, laughter, repentance, compassion! ...

What Beautiful Scrawly F's for S's

Beinecke releases several hi-res sample images of Edwards' writings.

Lucy

Yesterday I was getting on the 1 train after Redeemer's evening service, and there were 3 rowdy hoodlums in the car -- probably around my age. Early during that 60-block ride from 79th one of them stops paying attention to his friends and begins to stare oh-so-awkwardly, as I try without success to avert his gaze in Maslow's Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences.

I'm stepping off the train now and he grabs the other guy's arm... "Man I saw dat girl in dat movie Keill Bill!" "Awwwww shoooot..."

If I had still been on the train and clever enough I should have said meng I knows you! I seen you in the Gangster's Paradise. Or JayZ's last vid.

The Wilderness of Preparation

Abraham our father,
Was simply told to leave.
Go forth from your land and from your kindred
and even from your father's house.
To the land that I will show you.

This is the setting out.
The leaving of everything behind.
Leaving the social milieu. The preconceptions.
The definitions. The language. The narrowed field
of vision. The expectations.
No longer expecting relationships, memories, words, or
letters to mean what they used to mean. To be, in a
word: Open.

If you think you know what you will find,
Then you will find nothing.
If you expect nothing,
Then you will always be surprised.
And able to bless the One who creates the world anew
each morning.
So it is with setting out on the path of liberation, leaving
everything.

He would even have to discover
The way he would discover
While he was on the way.
Of him it was said, A man who set out and did not know
for which place he was destined. . .

Then there is being alone.
In the most God forsaken place.
Where God visits after all.
Leaving one's house and one's parents and one's family,
And finally the slave pits themselves
For a wilderness of no expectations.
Somewhere where I will learn what I will learn.
Where I can "see" what I will be.

-- Lawrence Kushner

Thanks M.

I am always so floored by professors who listen, as though I actually could tell them something new. Man, good profs make all the difference. I'm looking very forward to more work with Calichman, Levin, Mittelman, Staloff. How did it take so long to find these guys...??

FINALLY found an apartment today. I can actually have 24-hour days again! Without the 2-hour commute cap at the top and bottom of each day.
FINALLY excited about any remaining time at this school.

Shiggity shiggity schwaa.

Today, I learned that
An upside down lowercase
E is called a schwa.

Hypergrammarian Tendencies

Us r whoaz.

Yesterday after service Irene and I were discussing the ablative case outside the trailer (e.g. "pro bono" or "solā gratiā Dei") while spot-cleaning baby saliva.

Jerry, Rebecca, and I once pondered the correct use of "It is I," or "It's I," vs. the bastardized "It's me," and how "to be" verbs require the predicate. Jesus had it right, e.g. in Mt. 14:27 and probably has supremely godly grammar.

Isaiah, however... does not. Or does he?

I came across his wonderful "Woe is me" lament again this morning and sadly, yes, it bothered my brain. Ophelia says the same in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Apparently there's a book by Patricia O'Conner titled Woe Is I. And an angry hypergrammarian blogs about its in/correctness here.

In summary, some claim that "me" is in the dative, so the meaning is actually "Woe is (un)to me," though Safire thinks Shakespeare would just have written this if it's what he meant, or "Woe is mine" if poetic meter required three syllables. Purist predicate nominatarians in the "It's I" camp believe "Woe is I" is the gramatically pristine form.

For 400 years before Shakespeare, the written record shows people using woe is me, woe is us, woe is unto me, woe to them. It was ordinary English. If Shakespeare had written "Woe is I," we might want to examine his reasons, but "woe is me" requires no deep interpretation.

Please smack me if I ever say "Woe is I." And if I ever ROFL. Do people actually ROFL?

Why so... Comprehensive?

A fourth reason for Christianity's success is to be found in its inclusiveness. More than any of its competitors it attracted all races and classes ... Judaism never quite escaped from its racial bonds ... Christianity however gloried in its appeal to Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian. The philosophies never really won the allegiance of the masses ... they appealed primarily to the educated [the morally and socially cultured] ... Christianity, however ... drew the lowly and unlettered ... yet also developed a philosophy which commanded the respect of many of the learned ... Christianity, too, was for both sexes, whereas two of its main rivals were primarily for men. The Church welcomed both rich and poor. In contrast with it, the mystery cults were usually for people of means: initiation into them was expensive ... No other [religion] took in so many groups and strata of society ... The query must be raised of why this comprehensiveness came to be. It was not in Judaism. Why did it appear in Christianity?

-- K.S. Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity.