Fall newsletter, page 2

Everything is Illuminated

I spent two memorable weeks in Ukraine in June 1992. So, this movie about a Jewish lad seeking his devastated roots reminded me of a memorable landscape and people. Most of the dialogue was in English, with a seasoning of subtitled Russian. It was fun to recognize an occasional word.

The filmmakers effectively used light as a metaphor. Much of the film was hilarious, despite the grim subject matter. The driver feigned blindness, but that wasn't a problem, since he had his demented "Seeing Eye Bitch."

Beautiful people, beautiful country, and a grim legacy that continues to affect the present, with sorrow and with redemption.

Jack MacDevitt -- The Devil's Eye

The Devil's Eye is constructed as a mystery, and holds the interest of the reader from beginning to end. This retired customs official knows the mindset of bureaucrats who consider their own careers to be of supreme importance, and are criminally indifferent to the consequences of their venal actions. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, the Romans didn't crucify Jesus between two thieves to humiliate him. It just happened to be crucifixion day, and there were only three slots available.
MacDevitt excels, however, in creating believable landscapes and backdrops for his stories. Imagine a planet so far out on the edge of the galaxy that its night sky contains precisely one star ...

(I know, I have a dissertation to organize and launch -- but our library suddenly offered books by my favorite novelists simultaneously -- Orson Card, Jack MacDevitt, Michael Flynn, Gregory Benford -- and even a posthumously published novel by the all-time grand master Arthur C. Clarke.)

Soulless faith

In Turkish, the -s_z suffix means "without." If you like black coffee, no milk, you ask for "Sütsüz kahve, lütfen." No sugar? That would be şekersiz. Today's thought from İncil is from Yacub (James) 2:26:

Ruhsuz beden nasil ölüyse, eylemsiz iman da ölüdür.

Ruh is, I believe, a cognate with the Hebrew word for spirit. That's what it means, anyhow. As a body (beden) sans spirit is dead, even so faith sans works is dead.

Which means -- for those of us who live in terms of our faith, it is way too easy to slip into a fantasy world. If we are not acting on what we believe, we are amusing ourselves within the playgrounds of our imaginations. You may have seen the movie A Beautiful Mind. The protagonist took vacations into a parallel universe, wherein he was at the center of a global conspiracy, and the world depended on what he did next. He was also schizophrenic.

May God have mercy upon us.
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And in other news, I just finished Orson Scott Card's Ender in Exile. A reasonably good read -- but the unremitting snarkiness of the dialogue does tend to get old pretty quick. All the characters sound like mouthy brats, alas.

Inappropriate suspician (James 1:6-9)

Hello again, fans and friends. Sorry to be away so long -- winding up course work while working full time soaked up a considerable amount of attention. Now, thank God, I "only" have a dissertation to complete -- and then, loans to pay off!

I was reading the first chapter of James (Yakub'un mektubu) this morning. Verse 6 (and a few after) especially impressed me:

Yalnız hiç kuşku duymadan, imanla istesin. Çünkü kuşku duyan kisi rüzgarın sürükleyip savurduğu deniz dalgasına benzer. Tüm yaşamında böyle deüişken, karasız olan adam Rab'den bir şey alacaüın, ummasşn.

Key words this morning -- kuşku duyan.

• Kuşku -- suspician, doubt.
• Kuşkusuz -- doubtlessly, beyond suspician.
• Kuşku duymak -- to feel suspicious.

When we approach God in prayer, we must do so in faith. The natural thing, alas, is to feel suspicious of our God's motivations and reasons. After all, the serpent began undermining Eve's faith by questioning God's good intentions, and suggesting that the Almighty was stingy, withholding good things from mankind. How do we know that God has our best interests at heart, and is not just using us as pawns in some cosmic chess game?[1]

That's the adventure of faith -- coming to terms with an invisible, but very present, deity. Asking boldly, assuming, on the basis of what we know, of what has been revealed, that our requests will be heard, and answered in the best possible way.


[1] parenthentically -- this is the cosmology in F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack series. Take the God of the Bible out of the picture, stir in an amoral "force" (complete with, or competing with, a dark side!) and you get horror, not hope.

City of Ember -- strongly recommend

Walden Media, the folks who brought us the Narnia movies, recently released another family movie, City of Ember. The star of the show, other than Bill Murray as the venal villain, was the set -- a convincing portrayal of a deteriorating, claustrophobic and isolated underground city. Biblically-literate folks will be reminded of first-century AD Israel, a culture that had reached its expiration date, and failed to grasp the entire reason for its existence.

Excellent plot, especially for anyone who distrusts pretentious, overweening, and over-reaching human governments. The star mole scenes might be frightening for younger children, but our 10 year old took them in stride.

We'll probably buy the video when it comes available, early January, as a contribution to a firm that is trying to do worthy things in the arts. Christian billionaire Philip Anschluss got tired of listening to complaints about Hollywood, and decided to light a candle, rather than fruitlessly curse the darkness.

(parenthetically -- incandescent bulbs can last nearly forever, if you make the filaments thick enough. They generate less light, however, and that has a brownish "ember" tint ...)