Geoff's Miscellany

Now, I don't expect you to read these on the first day of Christmas, but there are 12 whole days of Christmas (that's right Adam Sandler).

James Chastek, who is just a Thomist, reflects carefully on what it means to call Mary, the Mother of God:

Nestorius insisted on the seemingly innocent theological clarification of referring to Mary as mother of Christ and not as Mother of God since “Christ” was an awaited figure in history but to take this “Mother of God” talk literally would give us the sheer contradiction of generating the ingenerable. Nestorianism mirrored the earlier and more widespread Arian heresy, which also boiled down to the same seemingly innocent desire to clarify that, whatever this “son of god” talk amounted to, there wasn’t literally a generated God.

I stumbled upon Scripture, revelation, and Platonism in C.S. Lewis by Andrew Walker. I finally had time to read it today. The first 15 pages or so are pretty good. In them, he describes Lewis' six categories of revelation: the numinous, Sehnsucht/desire, conscience, Israel, pagan dreams/myths, and Jesus himself. After that, Walker attempts to critique Lewis' view of the Incarnation and appears to miss Lewis' point, at one point evidently critiquing a view Lewis explicitly rejects as Lewis' own view (29 and 32). But if you want to learn about Lewis' understanding of divine revelation and perhaps inform your own, it's still worth a read. 

A popular blog managed not to conform to the zeitgeist. I found this treasure trove of ways to lose friends and alienate people:

1. Negative egocentrism. The #1 most boring way of behaving was what the researchers described as "being negative and complaining, talking about one's problems, displaying disinterest in others."
2. Banality. "Talking about trivial or superficial things, being interested in only one topic, and repeating the same stories and jokes again and again."
3. Low affectivity. Showing little enthusiasm, speaking in a monotone, engaging in very little eye contact, behaving in a very unexpressive way.
4. Tediousness. "Talking slowly, pausing a long time before responding, taking a long time to make one's points, and dragging conversations on."
5. Passivity. Having little to say, not having any opinions, being too predictable or too likely to try to conform with what everyone else is saying.
6. Self-preoccupation. Talking all about yourself.
7. Seriousness. Coming across as very serious, rarely smiling.
8. Boring ingratiation. "Trying to be funny or nice in order to impress other people."
9. Distraction. Doing things that interfere with the conversation, getting sidetracked too easily, and engaging in too much small talk.

This list is interesting in light of what I would call the modern socio-sexual emergency, namely that marriages appear to be becoming less pleasant and less common over time, and I think it's because people are becoming less interesting and less pleasant. Several of these elements of being perfectly boring are so prevalent in the current year as to be indistinguishable from appropriate behavior. For instance, negative ego-centrism and passivity go together in the victim mindset. Everything is wrong with me and nobody will fix it. This attitude is only endearing to mothers, which is why men who have it marry wives who parent them. Negative ego-centrism also goes with banality, distraction, self-preoccupation, and low-affectivity. People spend so much time in video-games, at boring jobs, and watching TV and porn, that normal conversations are boring and there are less big-ideas, big visions, and plans in their heads. It's sad, but true. I suspect a lack of genuine spiritual aspiration leads to low aspiration in general.

A few years ago I read this horrifying article: Males can lactate. A recent event, which does not include me lactating occurred which reminded me of it. Enjoy this unsettling series of anecdotes: “Among them was a South American man, observed by Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who subbed as wet nurse after his wife fell ill as well as male missionaries in Brazil that were the sole milk supply for their children because their wives had shriveled breasts. More recently, Agence France-Presse reported a short piece in 2002 on a 38-year-old man in Sri Lanka who nursed his two daughters through their infancy after his wife died during the birth of her second child.”

Here are some links:

Newly Discovered Blogs

Ella Prichard’s Blog - Her website has excellent resources on grieving as well as several fun posts (like recipes and the like). Ella is a great writer, I do not know how she manages to write so frequently since she works so hard on perfect punctuation and grammar, but I commend her!

Bravegirlliving - This is written by a very bright young woman who struggled (struggles) with an eating disorder and includes her reflections on the Christian life as well as on the interior struggles of anybody with a psychological illness of that sort.