partsofspeaking

Saw a commercial last night for a televised golf tournament. Actually it was a commercial about Tiger Woods. We watch golf here; we have played it quite a bit. The media's insistence on spotlighting on Tiger Woods, as if there were no other golfers, is disgusting.

Would someone explain the purpose of Twitter? It seems to be a place for celebrities to embarrass themselves.

Why do commercials show mothers playing with their children in strenuous, outdoor games, like pirates and in treehouses? Aren't children supposed to play with other chilldren? Where did we get this idea that mothers have to play all day with their children? The message is an odd one: be all to your children. Cater to their needs. Don't expect them to find children to play with and solve their own problems. Mommy will do it. Mommy will not let you out of her sight. Mommy gets all her meaning from the child, rather than seeing the child as a gift from God whom (she and her husband) are raising (assumes the point of raising it to produce a functional adult) to contribute and not be the center of the world. Rant over.

I don't think most of us look at Revelation and see grace. Yet that is the last sentence: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Where is grace in Revelation? Grace toward believers who are rescued from tribulation (if one takes a premillennial view, discussed below). Grace toward the many who are converted even in the midst of plagues. Grace in the methods of evangelism: it is clear angels are means of evangelism in Revelation, which they never are in the rest of the Bible or New Testament age. Grace even to those who are martyred and taken out of the worst judgments, which are pretty horrific. I felt like I was watching a Michael Bay movie sometimes when I studied the book. Now about premillennialism: MacArthur makes a very good argument for premillenialism. I at least now can say I fully understand it and am more sympathetic to it, although not ready to fully say it's the only way to interpret it. That view just didn't exist until the 1840s, so one has...

Although I am not sure why, I struggle a great deal with fully accepting and embracing the life of a writer. I try to introduce myself as a writer, but my day job (which takes more hours of my life) wins out. (Woudn't it be better if I introduced myself as a human being, or a child of God, or a wife and mother, or some other title instead of focusing on what earns a paycheck?) Maybe it's because I self-publish, for the most part. Maybe it's because I don't think I'm really good enough. Maybe because it sounds pretentious (it shouldn't--my seventh novel is about to be released, so that puts me ahead of most.) Maybe because I haven't made much money at it and definitely have very few reviews on Amazon. Even worse, I still argue and wrestle with myself whether I should spend so much of my time in this art form that demands so much of the reader/recipient.  A musician works very, very hard to present a piece of music that might take five or ten minutes of th...

For some reason my husband had the original Star War s on TV while we ate lunch. (The TV runs almost constantly here but I rarely sit and watch for any length of time.) I watched about half an hour. He noted how much the dialogue sounded like the dialogue in American Graffiti . At one point, when Han defends his spaceship, it sounds just like Paul LeMat defending his car.  I could have sworn the line was the same (I just saw some of AG recently). The dialogue is notoriously bad in SW . Alec Guinness famously complained about it but admitted it made him a fortune. I said, "I bet Mark Hamill didn't think he'd be playing the same part 40 years later."  Yet, I will defend it because he created a world and a fresh vision of its inhabitants. He must have done something right to capture so many millions. I saw it in 1978 at a drive-in, and it was released in 1977--that tells you how popular it was that it was still playing a year later. (Whatever happened to drive-ins? T...

There are many challenges to studying Revelation: the symbolism, the timeline, and the two thousand years of commentary on it.  However, to us today I think the biggest challenge is that we are not John's primary audience. I know, I know, the Bible is for everybody, in every age, etc. etc. I submit that is too facile an answer. For example, in the ending chapters we are told "there is no more sea" and "the sea and the grave gave up their dead." The people of John's time, in the Near East and Roman Empires, would have seen the "sea" totally differently from how we do. They would have seen nature differently from our way. We see nature as beautiful, majestic. Nature (creation) to his audience was a source of food, either easily or by hard work. It was a symbol of God's power and a cause of disasters. They had little time to enjoy the Rocky Mountains just because. Almost every phrase in Revelation challenges us to  shift our worldview, get o...

Let me add this to the mix: http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/05/breakpoint-the-worst-argument-for-abortion/?utm_campaign=BreakPoint%20Daily&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=73018737&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9SpjllOPpoyB1p25x1Leyu_pK5Siybuan29Y5z0OODDHzCuD8I8EWTh5wZJHlxfi_CfgwBbDCAEQMH4bm20NYFOPDMxw&_hsmi=73018737

Although most people today would find them hard to watch, I find the films of Ingmar Bergman fascinating. One of his last, Autumn Sonata , was on the TCM streaming service and I watched it recently. Chilling. I believe it is also Ingrid Bergman's last movie, or almost. Just watch it. It explores human emotions and relationships unflinchingly. I was caught by a moment where Ingrid Bergman's character is accused of doing exactly what Ingrid herself did in her heyday--abandoned her child and husband for another man. Ingrid paid dearly for that act in terms of her career (and I have little sympathy for her), but as an older woman playing a narcisstic pianist who did the same thing as she did, it must have been hard. She always, as an actress, had the most expressive face, and her face in that scene betrays what she experienced because of running off with Rossellini. 

If you don't read it, you are missing out on the funniest thing on the Internet. They are equal opportunity mockers. They mock Arminians and Calvinists; Dems and Republicans; Trumpers and nonTrumpers; women and men.

The book of Revelation is not "the Revelation of something that will happen sometime." It is "the Revelation of Jesus Christ." The core theme of the book is the glory, majesty, character, breadth and depth, power, authority, kingship, lordship, awesomeness and beauty of Jesus Christ. One should read it for that alone. Simply study what it says about Christ, if you can't fathom the bowls and seals and plagues and harlot of Babylon (and after a three-month study, I still don't). Perhaps that will be a book to add to my list: The gospel according to the book of Revelation. Most do not see the gospel there, but it most clearly is. Need I list the way Christ is revealed here? No, I think it better to say, "You do it. "

This will be controversial and I'll get some pushback. So be it. I doubt that when the Burger court decided in 1973 that the Fourth Amendment's guarantees against unlawful search and seizure meant we had a right to privacy that extended to terminating a pregnancy we would still be debating it even more vehemently 26 years later. While abortion advocates (and I use that term fully, as pointed out below) like to say Roe is the established law of the land, so was the Dred Scott and the Korematsu decision and the Citizens United, which progressives hate. So they speak out of both sides of their mouths. ( Korematsu v . United States , 323 U.S. 214 (1944), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, which ordered Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II regardless of their citizenship--Wikipedia) I say abortion advocates because I remember a time when abortion was considered a right but only b...

Her main issue, her priority: More abortions. Oh, joy. Certainly what we need. How inspiring.

There is nothing like studying Revelation to take oneself out of the mundane troubles of this life and to adopt a "long view," i.e., eternal view. I've been embroiled in a matter at work that has taken up far too much of my time and emotional energy. It is one of those academic matters that proves the quip, "The reason conflicts in academia are so bitter is that the stakes are so small." It really came down to a few hundred dollars in someone's pay, but it ended up being far too life-sucking. I am not happy with the outcomes (my side lost), but such is life. However, it was a wake-up call from God about far more than I can get into here. Mainly, my priorities in my career life.  Consequently, I am working to shed unnecessary, octopus-like commitments that have wasted my time and energy from the "best" because they seemed "good." So this leads me to sitting at the dinner table with my husband last night having a snack before bedtime....

The second major revelation in studying Revelation is that the primary (first, at least chronologically) audience are Christians living in the Roman Empire under intense, real, imminent persecution. When John mentions beheadings, he's not exaggerating. I am reading Ten Caesars by Barry Strauss, having heard him interviewed on Jonah Goldberg's podcast and becoming interested in it. Those emperors had little compunction about killing their own family members if it meant protecting power and "legacy," so they would have had nonexistent concern about executing cult followers who they believed rebelled against the Roman order. Marytrs (with the double meaning of "witnesses" and "those who were executed for the gospel") is a significant word in Revelation and they have a prominent place in heaven and the millennial kingdom. John is saying, "Things are bad; know you will be redeemed, vindicated, defended, avenged in the age of come. God does not ...

I have been and will continue to teach for two more weeks the book of Revelation, based on John MacArthur's commentaries.  It's been an interesting and intense ride.  Not just the study, but trying to communicate it to my class. In retrospect, it would have been easier to do the whole book rather than rotate with others; not that they did a poor job, but I could have had more continuity in my teaching. So I'm going to write a series of reflections. This is the first, and there will probably be at least a dozen over the next two weeks. #1: We are generally taught that Revelation stands alone, like some sort of ornament on a wedding cake. Commensurate with that misconception, we are taught that John is an old man, past 90, off on a deserted island getting all kinds of new visions that are unique to him. In reading about the creation of the canon, I learned that Revelation was one of the last books to be accepted into the canon and was often excluded by the early church,...

It must be hard to come up with 365 quotations for every edition of the Franklin-Covey Planners, which I have used for over 20 years.  Today's is: Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.  From Helen Keller. Am I the only one who sees the irony here?  And from May 4: Good, better, best. Never let is rest. Til your good is better and your better is best. From St. Jerome. Are they serious?  St. Jerome from the 4th century wrote in rhymed English? And so it goes. Blogging note: As always, my most popular post is where I "came out" about my Kallman's Syndrome. I plan to write a memoir soon, and that will be a big part of it.  Only the grace of God got me through it. 

Saddened to hear of the passing yesterday of Rachel Held Evans at 37. I have not read her work but have heard her cited and read reviews of her work. I have probably read articles by her in Christianity Today . She seems to have had an outsized influence on those who found themselves feeling marginalized by evangelicalism. That's a topic for another day; I understand why women would feel that way, and I certainly have myself. (That doesn't mean I'm ready to call a female for a pastor.) Mrs. Evans was far too young and I pray for her husband and parents. Yesterday was the three-year anniversary of the passing of a colleague of 39, and a good friend died this week, so this is a mournful week for me.  I am not impressed with foolishness right now. Now, quick transition: My son told me if I wanted to watch Avengers Endgame I should watch Infinity War on Netflix first. So Friday night, after a rough week, I did. It will be a while before I am psychologically ready to watch...

Last week I watched an old movie (1961) about Oscar Wilde, titled Oscar Wilde . It's the one with Robert Morley (rather heavy for Wilde) and his trial for unnatural relations, or actually, his libel trial against the father of his "friend." The father had written on a note that Wilde was a "sodomnite" and Wilde took him to court, but it did not end well and Wilde went on trial for that crime. Of course, the movie, which I thought good in many ways, mostly Wilde's dialogue, had low production values and never used any word such as "homosexual" or "sodomy" but it did quote from the trial that landed him in jail for two years, after which he went to Paris and never saw his children and wife again.  Ironically, the last word in the movie is "gay," as in "My life is happy and gay." From a literary point of few it was of interest because of the aesthetics in the late Victorian era. And, as I said, the bon mots are great....

Required reading for English students is Tim O'Brien's poignant short story, "The Things They Carried" about soldiers in Viet Nam. The items the soldiers carry on their missions and treks and death journeys are symbolic of their lives in the states, their dreams, their burdens, and the mistakes of the war.  I recommend it highly if you haven't read it. A close friend died this week. I am going through some very strong emotions; these emotions are mixed with feelings about struggles at work and news today that Rachel Held Evans, so young, died. I don't think I would have agreed with all of her writings, but she was taken too young and had a promising career and ministry. My friend's survivors (I'm being obscure here) asked me to come and look through some of her things that I might want before they sold them in an estate sale.  My friend had been very ill for many years (a fact in this equation that is making her death even more a struggle for me, a...

I'm a big fan of British mysteries. I dedicated my last book to Wilkie, Arthur, and Agatha. Has anyone ever noticed that the core of British mysteries is inheritances? The most common plotline is that someone kills to ensure an inheritance they either don't deserve or do but have been denied for some reason. But there is an unfortunate side effect of these plots: it makes the British look like a bunch of lazy louts who have no ambition except to inherit money and sit around all day on their "bums."   I don't think the work ethic of the little island that colonized the world is as bad as is portrayed in these mysteries.