From the archives: What violence kills

From a post in November 2015

I read an interesting blog post recently: Simone Weil and Homer, by David Beardsley, on the Circe Institute blog. This is the part that struck me:

"By not making the clear connection to the one war, however, she made a clear connection to all War; to the eternal process that is inevitable when one country, one sect, one person, seeks domination.

"She also describes those moments of love that do break through the 'monotonous desolation:' hospitable, filial, brotherly, conjugal, even the friendship that can occur between mortal enemies such as Achilles and Priam.  'These moments of grace,' she says, 'are rare in the Iliad, but they are enough to make us feel with sharp regret what it is that violence has killed and will kill again.'”

December 6th, 1989: When the sky is falling

"On every side, wreckage. Debris hurtling into the air and then falling, falling..." 

~~ Jan Karon, Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good

In December 1989 I was young and single, about the age of our Appprentice. I was working in the high school liaison and admissions office of a local university, so very front-line, busy, lots of phone calls and people coming for tours and information.

On December 6th, we heard the news that 28 people had been shot on a college campus in Montreal. Half of them did not survive. Many of them were female engineering students. The shock of identification in our office and on the campus was immediate. This could have been here.

The Montreal massacre was a terrible demonstration of the enormous cost of  hate. In a world where one sky or another seems to be always falling, there is some measure of hope in knowing that we can use remembrance as a tool for change.

"Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another." ~~ Jean Paul Richter

Peace dove necklace created from bomb shell casings, at Ten Thousand Villages

Remembrance Day: An image of hope

Woldemar Neufeld, "In the Midst of Life"

From the archives: C.S. Lewis on Peacemaking and Pain

First posted November, 2009

"To ask that God's love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled, by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable....We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved: we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms."--C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

 "Lest we should think this a hardship, this kind of good begins on a level far above the creatures, for God Himself, as Son, from all eternity renders back to God as Father by filial obedience the being which the Father by paternal love eternally generates in the Son."--The Problem of Pain

 "Indignation at others' sufferings, though a generous passion, needs to be well managed lest it steal away patience and humanity from those who suffer and plant anger and cynicism in their stead."--The Problem of Pain

 "I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can....the dentist who can stop one toothache has deserved better of humanity than all the men who think they have some scheme for producing a perfectly healthy race."--from "Why I Am Not a Pacifist" (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

A Week of Joy: Thou Crownest the Year

Sometimes the King James Bible is very economical in gathering scattered thoughts into one place. The other night I did not have a full Bible handy, but I did have a very old Book of Psalms (printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society) that I bought years ago at a thrift store. The store had several others in the set of Bible books as well, which made me think of Charlotte Mason's idea of children reading one book at a time and adding to their "library"; and I wish now I had bought the others.

Anyway, I started reading at Psalm 65, and I was thinking about the three themes so far of Advent: Hope, Peace, Joy. Verses 5 and 6 seemed to be all about hope:

5 By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our salvation; who art the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of them that are afar off upon the sea:
6 Which by his strength setteth fast the mountains; being girded with power:

Verse 7 was about peace:

7 Which stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people.

Would there also be one for joy? Not just one, but three:

8 They also that dwell in the uttermost parts are afraid at thy tokens: thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice.
12 They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness: and the little hills rejoice on every side.
13 The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing.

And then there was this:

11 Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness.

Rejoice!

Wednesday Hodgepodge

1. What does Veteran's Day / Remembrance Day mean to you?

I read an interesting blog post recently: Simone Weil and Homer, by David Beardsley, on the Circe Institute blog. This is the part that struck me:

By not making the clear connection to the one war, however, she made a clear connection to all War; to the eternal process that is inevitable when one country, one sect, one person, seeks domination over another. 

She also describes those moments of love that do break through the “monotonous desolation:” hospitable, filial, brotherly, conjugal, even the friendship that can occur between mortal enemies such as Achilles and Priam.  “These moments of grace,” she says, “are rare in the Iliad, but they are enough to make us feel with sharp regret what it is that violence has killed and will kill again.”

2. What's your favorite film with a patriotic theme woven into the storyline?

Right now I'm in the middle of reading War and Remembrance, so I guess that counts too.

But a movie? How about the 1979 O Canada T.V. signoff?

3. Flu shot-yes or no? If you answered no, do you plan to get a flu shot? If not, why not? Have you ever had the flu?

I am ambivalent about the shot, that's all I can say. And yes, I've had the flu. To quote Jan Karon: "It feels like you've just eaten a dish of Miss Rose's week-old, unrefrigerated banana pudding and on are on your way to the emergency room in the back of a van that's been lived in through a long, hard winter by seven Russian wolfhounds..."

4. I've seen lots of people posting pictures of their Christmas trees up and decorated. Many stores have had Christmas on display since well before Halloween. Red cups are back at Starbucks, sans the holiday decor; and that has some people up in arms. What are your thoughts on all the holiday ruckus this second week of November?

My November ruckus is just about making things--it's the month when the holiday crafting roundups appear, and I'm usually in the mood to sew or crochet something. I pretty much ignore whatever other quasi-holiday stuff is going on out there, until after we light the first Advent candle.

5. What 'critter' are you most afraid of encountering unexpectedly? Why that one?

I am not really afraid of bugs, other than the fact that they can bite you and make you sick. I cheerfully swat them, or go somewhere else without feeling particularly traumatized. However, I am phobic about mice. I've decided that the differences between mice and bugs are a) they're bigger, and b) they have faces, c) with teeth.  Hamsters, I was okay with; I usually knew the hamster. (We haven't had a hamster here since Snowball.) Mice are just anonymous housebreakers.  I'm not so sure about Rose Fyleman's "I think mice are nice"; I agree more with the lines that come before that one: "They nibble things they shouldn't touch, and no-one seems to like them much." 

6. Do you like building things? What's the last thing you 'built'?

No, not really a builder here. Mr. Fixit is the tool guy.

7. In keeping with this month's theme of gratitude...what are you most grateful for that brings beauty to your daily life?

The sugar maple beside our driveway, for its greenness in the summer and its orangeness in the fall.

This post is linked from The Wednesday Hodgepodge at This Side of the Pond.

Quote for the Day: By the aid of imagination

"Rightly taught, every subject gives fuel to the imagination, and without imagination, no subject can be rightly followed. It is by the aid of imagination that a child comes to love people who do not belong to his own country, and as he learns the history of their great deeds and noble efforts, he is eager to learn something of the country in which they lived, of its shape and size, of its mountains, woods and rivers, of the causes that made the people what they are. We English people, I am sorry to say, have not usually the art of teaching our children to love other countries, and many of us think of foreign lands as we might think of a show at the White City, something that is there for us to look at, something that may rest us or divert us, but not something that stands as high, if not higher, than we do. We are still deluded by the idea that we may travel in a missionary spirit with civilisation streaming from our garments. We must change something in ourselves before we can hope to do much for our children in this respect." ~~ E.A. Parish, "Imagination as a Powerful Factor in a Well-Balanced Mind" (Parents' Review article, 1914)

Reposted quote: Alan Paton on St. Francis

First posted February 2008.

"....I wish to place on record that I am in unrepayable debt to Francis of Assisi, for when I pray his prayer [Make me an instrument of Thy peace], or even remember it, my melancholy is dispelled, my self-pity comes to an end, my faith is restored, because of this majestic conception of what the work of a disciple should be.

"So majestic is this conception that one dare no longer be sorry for oneself. This world ceases to be one's enemy and becomes the place where one lives and works and serves. Life is no longer nasty, mean, brutish, and short, but becomes the time that one needs to make it less nasty and mean, not only for others, but indeed also for oneself."--Alan Paton, Instrument of Thy Peace

Image found here.

Merry Christmas. Peace on Earth.

Peace Quest poster found here.

Quote for the day: Father Tim likes Marcus Aurelius

In Jan Karon's novel Shepherds Abiding, Father Tim quotes Marcus Aurelius to an elderly friend:

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 

Here are a few others 

“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.” 

“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”

“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.” 

“When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you.” 

Exam responses: Archimedes' War Machines

Book studied:  Archimedes and the Door of Science, by Jeanne Bendick

1. Tell all you know about Archimedes’ war machines.

Archimedes liked using science for nice purposes. He hated war. So when the king asked him to make war machines, he said he wouldn’t. Eventually they wore him down though. So Archimedes made war machines, and he taught men how to use them for several years. Then finally one day came when they were attacked. There was great pandemonium throughout the city. So Archimedes set up his machines, and put them to use. There was a claw that picked ships up and shook them around like they were toys, and so many more. So in that way the enemy retreated and the Syracusens were safe.

Advent I: Promises and Peacemaking

In honour of C.S. Lewis's 101st birthday today, I'm posting some quotes instead of a Sunday hymn.

"To ask that God's love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled, by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable....We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved: we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms."--The Problem of Pain

"Lest we should think this a hardship, this kind of good begins on a level far above the creatures, for God Himself, as Son, from all eternity renders back to God as Father by filial obedience the being which the Father by paternal love eternally generates in the Son."--The Problem of Pain

"Indignation at others' sufferings, though a generous passion, needs to be well managed lest it steal away patience and humanity from those who suffer and plant anger and cynicism in their stead."--The Problem of Pain

"I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can....the dentist who can stop one toothache has deserved better of humanity than all the men who think they have some scheme for producing and perfectly healthy race."--from "Why I Am Not a Pacifist" (The Weight of Glory)