Parnassus

2015-10-15 Parnassus img01I didn’t look upward, but I was going that way. The air was damp. The cold, rough rungs were all I saw, all I dared see. I was afraid, too afraid to tremble—afraid that if I stopped to rest or to look for the walls of the shaft in the darkness, the rungs would crumble loose, their anchors give way.

I climbed for hours. Weary. I kept climbing. I didn’t know why. I couldn’t even remember where I’d started, when I’d started, any time before I’d started. Always climbing, and that was all. All that existed for me was one steel rung, then the next, and the next. Maybe I would see stars again, if I would just keep going. Continue reading

Home is Where

2015-4-30 Home img01Have you ever longed for adventure? How about for home? Do you ever feel unsatisfied with the ordinary, as though your lifestyle can’t contain you? Or do you wonder if you’ve ever really known what it’s like to have roots – to have a place that’s yours, utterly and indisputably yours, to identify with it, and to prize it more highly than any possession? I have had and do have these feelings, often. Usually it’s a paradoxical mix of all them at once, combined with an irrational urge to adopt the Pacific-Northwestern aesthetic. For lo, I am hipster. But I’m sure I’m not unique in these feelings: the themes of wandering and home have run through songs in all ages, from Homer’s Odyssey to John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High.”

The American folk singer-songwriter genre especially lends itself to these themes. Continue reading

Where Have All the Recipes Gone, Long Time Passing?

2014-11-27 thanksgiving img01My particular friend Miss Lane and I have shared many, many conversations during our friendship, which has weathered perfect storms and endured more than half the length of our lives. The deepest confidence exists between us. Yet, there is one secret she will never, ever impart to me: namely, the chocolate chip cookie recipe passed down to her from her ancestresses. Continue reading

Egyptian Gold in the Christian’s Treasury

2014-8-7 Egyptians img01When the people of Israel were thrust out of Egypt in the time of Moses, they took at God’s command some of Egypt’s riches with them. To a Christian observer of the Western Heritage, the phrase “plundering the Egyptians” may have an additional, metaphorical meaning. From Tertullian’s “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” to Clement of Alexandria’s “The way of truth is therefore one. . . . into it, as into a perennial river, streams flow from all sides,” the early church writers ran the gamut of attitudes towards extra-biblical philosophy. Augustine’s use of imagery from the book of Exodus, arguing for a sanctification of pagan philosophy, has prompted enthusiastic battle cries of “Plunder ALL the Egyptians!”

But before we take their stuff, can we make positively certain our use for it is better than theirs? Continue reading

Beware the Frozen Hype

T2014-04-17 Frozen img01he hype is wrong about Frozen. Doubtless you’ve seen the fan art, rave reviews, and musical tributes flooding the Internet. Frozen encourages viewers to be themselves, and challenges the traditional fairy-tale trope of love at first sight, say the critics. But if you’re like me, you’re sick of being told the moral of Frozen, and doubly sick of hearing “Let It Go” in a thousand different forms—because really there can never be too many covers of a Broadway-style, award-bait song about throwing off the restraints of fear and social expectations (/sarc). But please, don’t mistake me: Frozen is a great movie—just not for the ubiquitously-trumpeted reasons.

Continue reading

Work Hard, Play Hard

2014-3-27 Frisbee img01O spinning disc, O Wham-O’s gift to all

The pure of heart, Great Frisbee! now do we

Rejoice in thy return, the vernal sign.

No more is campus snowy white, in thrall

To Jadis’ temperamental atrophy.

Good spring! Good sun! Good weather! Feel we fine!

In harmony your circle’s motion lends

The vibrance and perfection of the spheres

In ev’ry catch the grace of Venus, in each

Throw the furiosity of Mars;

And here in Tellus unserene extends

A line of friendship, spins a web of peers

In Ultimacy one. Some learn, some teach,

But reaching for the disc we grasp the stars.