A parody for Friday about Sunday...

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

The best seat-belt commercial ever

Current educational rhetoric...

Note the bent of the [current educational] rhetoric. We are to have a noble citizenry: but how exactly are citizens to be ennobled? manifestos canvassed for the reform of education have run thus ever since. They depart from the hard, specific, and achievable so that they may embrace the soft, indefinite, and ungraspable. While spraying sunny ideals with high-sounding words, their advocates seek deliverance in vague, half-realized science and good feelings.
~T.L. Simmons, Climbing Parnassus, p.209

Play Music: the movie

My friend Lynne has a couple of very talented sons who are teen-aged film makers. Watch their latest film (in two parts) below. It is brilliant. And you can see their previous film here.

Remember the names Benjamin and Nathan Spear. I think they'll be famous one day!

The imaginative mind...

"To seek to bring the spirit of the dead to life, to summon that spirit to speak and to have it speak, and to make it somehow again a part of the society of the living is an enterprise in which only the imaginative mind can hope to succeed."
~Hermann Hagedorn, as quoted by David Hicks, Norms and Nobility, p.31

Sabbath Sentiments

Join All the Glorious Names by Isaac Watts, 1709

Join all the glorious names
Of wisdom, love, and power,
That ever mortals knew,
That angels ever bore:
All are too mean to speak His worth,
To poor to set my Savior forth.

But O what gentle terms,
What condescending ways,
Doth our Redeemer use
To teach his heav’nly grace!
Mine eyes with joy and wonder see
What forms of love He bears for me.

Arrayed in mortal flesh,
He like an angel stands,
And holds the promises
And pardons in His hands;
Commissioned from His Father’s throne
To make His grace to mortals known.

Great Prophet of my God,
My tongue would bless Thy Name,
By Thee the joyful news
Of our salvation came,
The joyful news of sin forgiv’n
Of hell subdued, and peace with Heav’n.

Be Thou my Counsellor,
My Pattern, and my Guide,
And through this desert land
Still keep me near thy side:
Nor let my feet e’er run astray
Nor rove nor seek the crooked way.

I love my Shepherd’s voice,
His watchful eyes shall keep
My wand’ring soul among
The thousands of His sheep:
He feeds His flock, He calls their names,
His bosom bears the tender lambs.

To this dear Surety’s hand
Will I commit my cause;
He answers and fulfils
His Father’s broken laws:
Behold my soul at freedom set!
My Surety paid the dreadful debt.

Jesus, my great High Priest,
Offered His blood, and died;
My guilty conscience seeks
No sacrifice beside:
His powerful blood did once atone,
And now it pleads before the throne.

My Advocate appears
For my defense on high;
The Father bows his ears,
And lays his thunder by:
Not all that hell or sin can say
Shall turn his heart, his love away.

My dear almighty Lord,
My Conqueror and my King,
Thy scepter and Thy sword,
Thy reigning grace I sing:
Thine is the power; behold I sit
In willing bonds beneath Thy feet.

Now let my soul arise,
And tread the tempter down;
My Captain leads me forth
To conquest and a crown:
A feeble saint shall win the day,
Though death and hell obstruct the way.

Should all the hosts of death,
And powers of hell unknown,
Put their most dreadful forms
Of rage and mischief on,
I shall be safe, for Christ displays
Superior power, and guardian grace.

If guys were like girls....

Thanks to ED for posting this. It made me laugh out loud.

Hard-won independence...

...Over time advantages arise from this commerce (between our minds and words). One is mental expansion. Not only do our minds become better stored, but they also become more pliant, better able both to embrace new ideas and to judge old ones. They can analyze and synthesize on command. Our intellects graduate to a hard-won independence. They can cut through thickets of official obfuscation and doubletalk. Classically educated people are not the prime consumers of propaganda.
~T. L. Simmons, Climbing Parnassus, p.169

Concentrate on his Caliban...

...For when we accept the tyranny of the real over the ideal,we deny the human spirit--the better half of learning and the better half of man. Instead, we concentrate on his Caliban half, making him a more efficient berry-gatherer, a more discriminating shell collector, or a more willing water carrier. The notion of spirit we dismiss as mythological, out-of-date, and irrelevant: at any rate, the fact it cannot be seen in space or under a microscope makes it, in the end, no longer a proper subject for instruction...
~ David Hicks, Norms and Nobility, p.13

Inquiry...

Classical education is not, preeminently, of a specific time or place. It stands instead for a spirit of inquiry and form of instruction concerned with the development of style through language and of conscience through myth. The key word here is inquiry. Everything springs from the special nature of the inquiry. The inquiry dictates the form of instruction and establishes the moral framework for thought and action. Classical inquiry possesses three attributes. The first is general curiosity...Second,one responds to these questions by forming imaginative hypotheses...Third, one completes the inquiry by devising methods for testing the hypotheses.
~David Hicks, Norms and Nobility, p.18

Some Friday silliness...

HT: KY Sharon. Thanks!

Happiness...

"The purpose of education is not the assimilation of facts or the retention of information, but the habituation of the mind and body to will and act in accordance with what one knows...According to Aristotle, the perfect end of education will be an activity that is engaged in for its own sake, complete and sufficient unto itself. Aristotle calls the activity for which education prepares man-- happiness."
~David Hicks, Norms and nobility, p.20

A little Edwards, anyone?

Last weekend, we had a guest teacher at church who spoke about the amazing theologian, Jonathan Edwards. He also preached an excellent sermon during our worship service. You can listen to all the teaching times here. I highly recommend the sermon, entitled "How Can I Know I am Elect?"

Heed the colors...

Teacher by Ethel Barnett DeVito

Child, though I tell you in this sunlit cove
This cup of captive sea is ever blue,
For you it may be equally as true
That it is nacre, emerald, taupe or mauve.

Youth, though I say to you our days are scrolled
In hues allied to charcoal, chalk or steel,
For you it may be equally as real
To name them carmine, coral, or yet gold.

Experience and age have tossed a bone:
The right to paint life as it seems to me,
And you may heed the colors that I see,
But never let them blind you to your own.

HT: Dana

Why Latin?

English, as we have wearily heard repeated in dreary textbooks, takes about sixty percent of its words--either directly or via modern romance languages-- from Latin. Any student who has invested strenuous years in Latin, both reading and writing it, will own an obvious edge with English over those who haven't. Not only has that student learned what the words mean, he has learned what they have meant; he has seen them jostling and lounging in their original habitat. They've gamboled at his feet. "Liberty" never means the same thing after our backs have been burdened with the full Roman weight of libertas...
...If people have family trees, so have words, and tracing their branches through time and place reveals the complexity of their characters. memorizing them, as we must do when learning to use a language, stretches the mind.
Our brains become more capacious: the more we memorize, the more we can memorize. We begin to feel at home with those old words, and thus we feel more at home with their descendants in our own tongue. Once we have seen and used them, they're strangers no more. They're tactile; we can roll them in our hands. Commerce with them becomes easy."
~T. L. Simmons, Climbing Parnassus, p.168

Learning a new song...

Dave and I help lead a "gathering hymn" each Sunday at our church. This is usually done with guitar, and with our pianist friend Gregg, and is usually a contemporary hymn used to call everyone to worship and focus our thoughts on the Lord. We are getting ready to teach a new song, and this morning as I sat listening to the bees buzzing in my beautiful pear tree and watched the daffodils sway in the breeze, I found myself contemplating the words. A good sign, I think! I am singing it every day to learn it well, and will start playing it soon and teaching it to my patient dh (who has been dragged into music leadership, and does a lovely job of it.) We have lately been spending a month learning a new hymn, then reviewing familiar ones. Here is the new song for May. You can listen to it by clicking on the link in the title below, then clicking on the recording.

Go Up, My Heart by Horatius Bonar and David Ward

Go up, go up, my heart,
And dwell with God above;
For here you cannot find
A satisfying love.
Don’t set your love upon
These things so stained and dim;
Go up to meet with God,
Take up your love to Him.

Chorus:
Go up, my heart, go up
To the fountain of delights.
Go up, my heart, go up
To the source of all joy, Jesus Christ.

Go up, go up, my heart,
Don’t spend your treasure here:
Ascend above these clouds,
Soar to a higher sphere.
Don’t waste your precious stores
On creature-love below;
To God that wealth belongs,
On Him that wealth bestow.

Kissing on a Sunday...

Found this sweet love song on Pandora this afternoon.

Sunday by Bebo Norman

Day is fading, but baby, I don't mind
'Cause sunlight is dancing in your eyes
And time is frozen but somehow flying by
Here with your hand holding mine

It just feels right kissing on a Sunday
I'll hold you tight as if it were the last day
With all my might, I will keep the world away
It just feels right kissing you on a Sunday

Time is racing to the sound of my heart beating
Can the dreaming escape this life
Unfair, maybe, but know that I'm not leaving
Right now, baby, life is kind

Make this moment last for a lifetime
Don't let it slip away
Play it over and over like your favorite song
And we'll fit forever in a day

Sabbath Sentiments

Judge not Christ's love by providences, but by promises. Bless God for shaking off false foundations, for any way whereby He keeps the soul awakened and looking after Christ; better sickness and temptations, than security and superficiality.
~Thomas Wilcox, "Honey Out of the Rock"

The sweet exchange...

“When our unrighteousness was fulfilled, and it had been made perfectly clear that its wages—punishment and death—were to be expected, then the season arrived during which God had decided to reveal at last His goodness and power (oh, the surpassing kindness and love of God!).

He did not hate us, or reject us, or bear a grudge against us; instead He was patient and forbearing; in His mercy He took upon Himself our sins; He Himself gave up His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy one for the lawless, the guiltless for the guilty, the just for the unjust, the incorruptible for the corruptible, the immortal for the mortal.

For what else but His righteousness could have covered our sins? In whom was it possible for us, the lawless and ungodly, to be justified, except in the Son of God alone?

O the sweet exchange, O the incomprehensible work of God, O the unexpected blessings, that the sinfulness of many should be hidden in one righteous person, while the righteousness of one should justify many sinners!”

–The Epistle to Diognetus, 9:2-­5, in The Apostolic Fathers, trans. Michael W. Holmes (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 709–710. [HT:Tolle Lege)

Something light for a Friday...

"Tense Times with Verbs" by Richard Lederer

The verbs in English are a fright.
How can we learn to read and write?
Today we speak, but first we spoke;
Some faucets leak, but never loke.
Today we write, but first we wrote;
We bite our tongues, but never bote.
Each day I teach, for years I taught,
And preachers preach, but never praught.
This tale I tell; This tale I told;
I smell the flowers, but never smold.
If knights still slay, as once they slew.
Then do we play, as once we plew?
If I still do as once I did,
Then do cows moo, as they once mid?