I'll be taking a blog break due to summer stuff... back in a week or so.

It's worth keeping an eye on this course for when it goes on sale (it's tres cher, but I got it from my public library). Michel Sugrue's lectures on the Bible are the best I've ever heard (and as I'm in Seminary I'd like to think think that means something). He is a Princeton University (not Seminary) professor who has an astonishing talent for illumination. And here's some inspiration.

millinerd brand logboats

We've all been there: You hike to a beautiful mountain lake with large fish, but they're all jumping in the middle of the lake far from shore-casting range. Canoes are too heavy, float tubes too expensive - but now with millinerd brand logboats the fish don't stand a chance.

To order your millinerd brand logboat simply go to your nearest mountain lake and sit on a log using a stick as a paddle, and send $39.95 for the idea to millinerd.

wild and bald

Thanks to their somewhat recent graduation, I actually saw a wild bald eagle feeding her two eaglettes this afternoon. A woman had a telescope in her Idaho living room pointing at a tree... I looked on through and there there they were - though they probably didn't need a telescope to see me.

In other patriotic news, I watched almost all of the bi-coastal funeral service. Hey - it was a National Day of Mourning... what were you doing?

Both the ceremonial splendor and the speeches were the nation at its best, something we need to see but haven't in quite a while. Most of the speakers avoided the temptation to attack or defend the current administration (though there were a few slips), and some of the things said were particularly profound.

Yet the last address by a pastor was abysmal. If you're ever giving a president's funeral sermon, do make it a point not to mention yourself and your "ministry to the president" a lot. In fact, it would probably be best not to mention those things at all.

Alas, in honor of Reagan here's an elaborate and interesting site where he makes a few appearances.

Fish fear me

Well with two posts in a row referring to the the City of God, 'bout time for a vacation. So I took one. Got warmed up by fishin' with a med-school bound fellow Seminarian on the Jersey shore. All I caught were one of these, but the captain of the ship in pity donated one of his fluke to our cause, which was dinner. We ate it while trying to forget the fluke eye story. According to Fluke Facts:

When they first hatch from the egg, fluke larvae look just like any other fishes. Within a few days, however, the right eye starts to migrate over the top of the head. By the time it reaches its' inshore nursery area and settles to the bottom, both eyes are on the left hand side of the body and the little fish looks like a fluke.

Then off I was to visit the folks in Idaho, where on a trip to beautiful Loon Lake with my dad we caught trout, the prince of fish. At first I was concerned that we had caught the endangered bull trout (because we ate them), but upon discovering that bull trout look like this, and ours like this, I was no longer concerned. Turns out we caught brook trout, which from an ecological perspective are quite acceptable not to catch and release. We cooked 'em over the open fire - but forget the butter. Should you ever find yourself in a similar situation... remember the butter.

Augustine part II

Speaking of quotes from the City of God (with openers like that I'll again need obtain server back-up to accomodate traffic)- here's another one, this one regarding how to read the Bible:

Yet no one ought to suppose either that these things were written for no purpose, or that we should study only the historical truth, apart from any allegorical meanings; or, on the contrary, that they are only allegories, and that there were no such facts at all, or that, whether it be so or not, there is here no prophecy of the Church. For who in their right mind will contend that books so religiously preserved during thousands of years, and transmitted by so orderly a succession, were written without an object, or that only the bare historical facts are to be considered when we read them? -City of God Book XV

If ever one wanted a quote to sum up where Biblical scholarship has landed in the twenty-first century - that one from the fifth would do just fine. Finally we've caught up to Augustine who affirmed three principles:

1. The Bible has a strong historical element, but that doesn't mean it can be read like a science textbook. (The Moderns - liberals and fundies - erred on this side.)

2. The Bible is very rich when read allegorically, but such a reading can often go too far. (The Medievals erred on this side.)

3. There are of course many ways to read the Bible, but Christians read it all (both Testaments) with Christ and the Church (that is, Judaism for the Gentiles) in mind - a reading which has proven to be quite sustainable.

Augustine part I

So in true millinerd fashion the Mrs. and I are watching the History Channel's program on the Barbarians (Vikings, Goths, Visigoths, etc.). And to spice up their footage of the sack of Rome by the Goths (how do they get that?), the narrator reads a clip from St. Augustine's epic take on the subject, quoting him as saying simply, "all the slaughter, plundering, burning, and misery--was the result of the custom of war."

Wow! Such penatrating insight! The slaughter was the result of the "custom of war." Brilliant! What a formidable mind!

I felt it my duty to, lest you take from that small fragment that Augustine was a bore, to provide you with the full quotation:

All the spoiling, then, which Rome was exposed to in the recent calamity--all the slaughter, plundering, burning, and misery--was the result of the custom of war. But what was novel, was that savage barbarians showed themselves in so gentle a guise, that the largest churches were chosen and set apart for the purpose of being filled with the people to whom quarter was given, and that in them none were slain, from them none forcibly dragged; that into them many were led by their relenting enemies to be set at liberty, and that from them none were led into slavery by merciless foes. Whoever does not see that this is to be attributed to the name of Christ, and to the Christian temper, is blind; whoever sees this, and gives no praise, is ungrateful; whoever hinders any one from praising it, is mad. Far be it from any prudent man to impute this clemency to the barbarians. Their fierce and bloody minds were awed, and bridled, and marvellously tempered by Him who so long before said by His prophet, "I will visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquities with stripes; nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from them." -City of God Book I