two quotes from the first chapter of Walter Brueggemann's The Book that Brings New Life

Why is it that the mind that has found God still retains or constantly reverts to the feeling of not having found Him? Why does His absence weigh on us even in the presence itself, however intimate it may be? Why face to face with Him who penetrates all things, why that insurmountable obstacle, that unbridgeable gap? Why always a wall or a gaping void? Why do all things, as soon as they have shown Him to us, betray us by concealing Him again? -henri de lubac

i have gotten three spam emails in the last three days. well, i mean, i've gotten a lot more than that, but only about three have beaten google's impressive spam filter and made it all the way to my inbox. what has been weird about them (they were all viagra ads) is that they are all quoting famous russian novels. it is strange how you can tell that it's russian just from the flow of the narrative. maybe it is the way they translate it. or maybe (and much more likely, now that i think about) it is just my relatively limited exposure to world literature. the second one was from the brothers karmazov. this last one was from Mikhail Bulgakov's the master and margarita. who would've figured that junk email purveyers would be so well read.

... scheming, quarrelsome, sycophantic swine.' 'He's absolutely right! ' thought Stepa, amazed at such a truthful, precise and succinct description of Khustov. The ruins of yesterday were piecing themselves together now, but the manager of the Variety still felt vaguely anxious. There was still a gaping black void in his memory. He had absolutely no recollection of having seen this stranger in his office the day before. 'Woland, professor of black magic,' said the visitor gravely, and seeing Stepa was still in difficulties he described their meeting in detail. He had arrived in Moscow from abroad yesterday, had immediately called on Stepa and offered himself as a guest artiste at the Variety. Stepa had telephoned the Moscow District Theatrical Commission, had agreed to the proposal (Stepa turned pale and blinked) and had signed a contract with Professor Woland for seven performances (Stepa's mouth dropped open), inviting Woland to call on him at ten o'clock the next morning to conclude the details. ... So Woland had come. When he arrived he had been met by Grunya the maid, who explained that she herself had only just...

postus scriptus - the subject line (also about a character from russian literature) is from a mountain goats song called 'love love love'. listen, it is a recent favourite of mine.

some days i listen to the free online talks provided at the regent college website. lately it's been a series of lectures on theology and culture, evaluating the viewpoints of several prominent christian thinkers. this was my favourite quote from the day before last:

it's not just about a bunch of guys off in the woods being studly theologians.
- john stackhouse, on deitrich bonhoeffer's 'life together' (a book about the church)

i sometimes wonder if there are things you cannot possibly know until you have lived them for a while. until you have let the idea work through you, have let it sit and mix with even the dimmest thoughts in your head and the most honest feelings in the farthest, deepest, loneliest part of your gut. and i wonder if maybe you have to cross your fingers and hope or guess wildly or maybe even fake part of it for a time until it becomes real and firm and perceptibly corporeal - until it is solid enough to stay without you needing to think reaffiriming thoughts every five minutes to keep it there.

i really hope that you don't have to fake part of it. i would hate that. it would eat me up. when i was in high school i did this bible study with a good friend and this guy that we took (okay, at least i took) to be a sort of spiritual guide. hacking his way through the supernatural jungle, with us pilgrims in tow. and i remember us talking about how if you didn't 'feel' like you loved Jesus the best way to go about it might be to start living like it and keep hoping until you really did. i am not sure if that is true. i have never been much of a feeler, myself, so, i try not to judge them too harshly.

or maybe that first paragraph is really wrong and that is not the case at all. maybe there is a deeper and more real type of magic moment that i have not yet uncovered in my travels. one that makes you see things you hadn't even guessed were around or even possible. maybe it will come tomorrow when i am thinking about it and hoping for it. maybe it will come in fifteen years when i am alone living with a cat in an attic (a well furnished attic, though, with big windows) and thinking that i desperately wanted this magic to come fourteen years prior. who knows? i do not, for certain. if i had to guess, though, i wouldn't put my money on the magic feeling.

i guess if everything were easy this life would be really boring and tedious. i am glad that the important things are hard to know about. so, thank you Lord for sweaty palms and lumps in the throat and nervous habits and obvious tells at the poker table. i am glad for them.

one of my favourite things is when i discover that i am smarter than my computer. this does not happen very often because my computer is pretty darn smart, see. but this morning i was taking notes on an n.t. wright article and i typed the word 'fissiparous' (because the good ol' bishop o' durham had used it) into my computer and it thought that i had spelled something wrong. another point for me.

it is true that i would have felt even more proud if i had actually known what the word meant, and hadn't had to look it up. but that doesn't matter, see. the point is that i at least knew that it *was* a word.

UPDATE: upon reflection, i admit that this is a pretty sad and nerdish 'favourite' thing. maybe it could be a ... slightly amusing thing?

last thursday night i went to a gathering at an organization that some of my friends are in, something called international teams. they care a lot about refugees, and i happened to see that on one of their shelves was a book called 'embracing the infidel,' and i was intrigued enough by the title and the reviews on the back of the dust jacket to borrow it and read it this week. the book is written by a guy named behzad yaghmaian, who was born in Iran but moved to the United States where he is a political economy professor. the book is about immigrants. legal and illegal, trying to get out of muslim states and into the west. the book is formatted as a collection of short stories.

to gather the stories for the book, he took time off from teaching and travelled to the middle east, starting in Iran, talking to people about what they enjoyed about the state and what troubled them. from there he would move closer and closer to the heart of 'the west,' first to turkey, then to greece, to france and finally to england (the dream destination of many journeying migrants). i find that books full of good stories, especially real true-to-life stories, are hard to put down. i sometimes found it difficult to separate the individuals' stories in my mind because so many of the narrative elements were similar (harsh past, border guard brutality, rejection by friends family and prospective countries, hunger, poverty), but the content was more than worth a little confusion.

i've never really thought much about refugees or migrants. there just weren't many in northern ontario. reading this book has brought me a lot of questions, however. in the book, people are often rejected for asylum because their home-countries have become safer (i'm thinking mainly of afghanistan), or because there is a regime change that western countries deem favorable. in some ways i find it hard to really understand why these people are so dead-set on going to the west. is it really that much better? i suppose it is for some, what with the harsh family judgment they are receiving in their conservative countries. but what really drives them to the west? the commercials they see on tv? freedom, free markets, less corruption. you can hardly blame them for wanting to be part of it when we (the west) flaunt what we have in their direction on every channel and website, twenty-four seven. we want them to buy our goods and want to expand our markets to them, but don't want them coming over to where we are, taking our jobs, yadda yadda. and i can understand the immigration policies that these western countries have, too, to a certain extent. but it is hard to justify when you think that we have turned the west into a promised land in their eyes and then put up a big thick line around it with guard dogs and square badges prone to violence.

you can read sample chapters on his website.

today i:
- took nellie for a walk
- got dirty looks from at least one u of w epidemiologist
- discovered an excellent sunset viewing location
- participated in my first experimental medical test
- ate my first gyro in far-too-long
- played a five string guitar in the dark
- read stories about muslim refugees
- took my first kw bus ride
- made fun of the ctv newscaster and his pink tie

i want winter to end. the sooner the better.