Personal

  • Started learn­ing bridge on an app
  • Fed the gi­raffes at the Birmingham Zoo
  • Offer to buy a house was ac­cepted!

My Thoughts

  • George Washington was an epic hero. John Adams was a ro­man­tic hero.
  • Aragorn was an epic hero. Sam was a ro­man­tic hero.

Writing, Links, Podcasts

Notes

  • Jonathan and Mathieu Pageau, What is Symbolism?
    • Symbols are not ma­te­r­ial and sci­en­tific, but also not per­sonal and sub­jec­tive. They are uni­ver­sal.
    • If you want peo­ple to care about your story, use uni­ver­sal sym­bols.
    • Symbols are in­escapable. Scientists are me­di­a­tors be­tween heaven (theory) and earth (physical).
    • Patterns re­peated at dif­fer­ent level of re­al­ity.
    • You can ab­stract your­self out to do some phys­i­cal study, but there are lim­its. Quantum: ob­servers im­pact ob­ser­va­tions.
    • What does it mean, “go up into heaven”? Doesn’t mean float into space. Can’t in­ter­pret ma­te­ri­al­is­ti­cally.
    • Dante says the cos­mol­ogy of spheres is a con­de­scen­sion of heav­enly re­al­ity.
    • “Earth” meant mat­ter. When we re­al­ized there was mat­ter out­side earth, we split those terms. Word mean­ings shift.
    • “Jonah did­n’t get swal­lowed by a whale, be­cause the Bible says it was a fish, and whales aren’t fish.” Definition changed.
    • Snake in the gar­den is a sym­bol of time. Time is the cause of trans­for­ma­tion. Time is change. Cyclical trans­for­ma­tion of things to their op­po­sites. Not a metaphor. The snake caused a change.
    • Symbols are not metaphors and not ar­bi­trary.
    • Symbols are more im­por­tant that “what re­ally hap­pened”.
    • The Bible is com­mu­ni­cat­ing truth, not his­tory.
    • The Flood, the Red Sea, the Rubicon, the Deleware: cross­ing wa­ter to sym­bol­ize change of power. Doesn’t mean Washington did­n’t cross the Deleware, but the sym­bol is more im­por­tant than the “fact”. Arguing if it hap­pened misses the point.
    • It’s okay if some Bible sto­ries are fic­tional.
    • Symbolism is the union of fact and mean­ing.
    • Modernism is­n’t dis­en­chant­ment: it is dein­car­na­tion, the split­ting of the phys­i­cal and spir­i­tual.
    • Scientists care about the­ory and fact, and so are best at pre­serv­ing the union. But they are ma­te­ri­al­ists, so the­ory is not real.
    • Mathematical pat­tern is more real and uni­ver­sal than any ob­serv­able fact.
    • Criteria for a real sym­bol/​con­nec­tion: ex­actly the same as de­ter­min­ing valid sci­ence.
      • Consistent: works every­where
      • Comprehensive: many ex­am­ples (if it’s fun­da­men­tal, it will ap­pear many times)
      • Insightful: gives more un­der­stand­ing in­stead of just a code for some­thing else
        • Symbols are meant to re­veal, not hide
  • Orthodox Diary
    • Moderns sim­plify me­dieval Christendom, overly-de­mo­nize mod­ernism
    • Crusades were not wholly bad or good
    • Wokeism is moral ab­so­lutism, not rel­a­tivism
    • If Aquinas is Catholicism, Catholicism started in the 13th cen­tury
    • Catholicism is a re­sponse to Protestantism
    • Great Schism did­n’t change much in prac­tice
    • “Much of the Catholic ‘development of doc­trine’ that oc­curred af­ter Thomas Aquinas and es­pe­cially af­ter the Reformation is an at­tempt to grap­ple with emer­gent moder­nity.”
  • Angelina Stanford
    • Epic hero is semi-di­vine, fated for great­ness, with­stands the gods. Romantic hero is every­man, set apart by char­ac­ter not birth.
    • World War I was caused by Christian, clas­si­cally-ed­u­cated lead­ers. You still need virtue.
    • Since all knowl­edge is con­nected, there is no such thing as a side­track.
    • Picaresque is a wan­der­ing jour­ney, not a quest.
    • Stories don’t work mech­a­nis­ti­cally. You don’t be­come a mur­derer by read­ing mur­der mys­ter­ies. Not every­one that reads the Bible be­comes vir­tu­ous.
    • Modern Christians say we need to take sin more se­ri­ously: me­dievals said we take sin and our­selves to se­ri­ously. We should laugh at evil, like we do at Mr. Toad.
  • Cindy Rollins
    • Will read­ing about bad char­ac­ters make chil­dren bad? Too late, they’re al­ready bad.
    • The Bible is­n’t a char­ac­ter study.
  • Bryce Young: Everyone is in Adam or Christ: a child can­not be un-elect and in Christ.
  • Alastair Roberts: Baptism com­pared to a wed­ding, a coro­na­tion, an adop­tion
  • Thomas Banks: If books can save your soul, Jesus should have be­come a nov­el­ist.
  • Peter Zeihan via Doug Wilson: The US has 17 thou­sand miles of nav­i­ga­ble rivers. The rest of the world com­bined has 16 thou­sand.

Quotes

  • “How did a mag­i­cal, spir­i­tu­al­ist, mes­mer­ized Europe ever con­vince it­self that it was dis­en­chanted?” — Jason Ānanda Josephson-Storm

Words

  • Amble: horse gait where both legs on side move at the same time
  • Avuncular: per­tain­ing to an un­cle
  • Bilious: per­tain­ing to bile; dis­or­dered in bile; cho­leric, iras­ci­ble, ir­ri­ta­ble, an­gry
  • Cantle: to cut in pieces
  • Grabass: horse­play
  • Hassock: stuffed cush­ion or foot­stool
  • Humor: mois­ture; four an­cient hu­mors:
    • Blood: ar­dent (sanguine)
    • Phlegm: wa­tery, slug­gish, in­dif­fer­ent (phlegmatic)
    • Yellow bile: ir­ri­ta­ble (choleric)
    • Black bile: gloomy (melancholic) (melan (melanin, mal­ice) + choly (cholic))
  • Marmoreal: per­tain­ing to mar­ble
  • Nadir: low­est point, op­po­site of zenith
  • Patrimony: right or es­tate in­her­ited from fa­ther or an­ces­tor
  • Riparian: per­tain­ing to a river
  • Sanguine: hav­ing the color of blood, red; char­ac­ter­ized by abun­dant and ac­tive blood, warm, ar­dent
  • Spangle: small metal or­na­men­tal plate; there­fore, any lit­tle thing that sparkles
  • Tussock: dense tuft of grass
  • Yawl: small ship’s boat; to howl