Just stumbled across this Web page and I thought it was a great family gospel study idea—worth sharing:
http://www.truelightacademy.com/sacred_art_appreciation.html
You could do this with poetry or music, too. Study a bunch of sacred music by Bach or Handel or whoever else for several weeks. Reminds me of when I attended performances of Bach's B-Minor Mass and one of his passions (St. Matthew or St. John, can't remember which I heard). Stunning pieces of music, several hours long. Inspiring, uplifting, moving.
Here's an article we did about a BYU class that performed those long sacred works. They would spend months preparing for the performances and they would perform in sacred buildings: Salt Lake's Cathedral of the Madeleine, the Provo Tabernacle. I don't think the class exists anymore, which makes me sad. I loved those performances. When Christine and I were dating we went to a performance of the Messiah by this class at a Catholic church in Park City. Powerful.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Plutonic Relationships
I heard someone recently report that some astronomers and planetary scientists feel they were not adequately consulted when the decision was made to demote Pluto, and they are protesting the action. Apparently a only a small portion of the 9,000-member International Astronomical Union (IAU) made the decision, and those experts who were not there for the vote are, understandably, a bit miffed.
I have had a similar concern. This decision, to downgrade our solar system from an nine-planet system to an eight-planet assemblage, has far-reaching implications that were not adequately considered, and it affects a lot of people who were not invited to participate in the discussion. Only 424 people voted to change the definition of a planet. Even if all 9,000 astronomers voted, it seems like a paltry number when we have some 6.6 billion human inhabitants in the solar system.
My family, for instance, was not consulted. We are not astronomers or physicists. We don't even own a telescope, and none of us has ever seen Pluto. But the smallest planet in the solar system is, nonetheless, part of our lives. We live on one of the nine (or eight) planets in this solar system, and with so few planets, we feel somewhat attached to each of them. We are residents of this collection of objects swirling around the sun, and it seems we should be consulted in any significant change in the status of that collection. As should all the other residents. Shouldn't we have had an election or something? A public opinion poll, at the least? Shouldn't the people in charge of this decision stood up and asked all 6.6 billion of us on this planet whether we wanted our corner of the galaxy to change?
I, for one, was very happy with having nine planets. I like the number nine, and I was just getting used to the collection of planets that we had. On a recent trip across the wasteland of Nevada (which I, for one, would vote for getting rid of), our family listened repeatedly to a Nick Jr. CD that included a Blue's Clues song about the planets:
The Sun is a hot star,
And Mercury's hot too.
Venus is the brightest planet,
And Earth's home to me and you.
Mars is the red one,
Jupiter's most wide.
Saturn's got those icy rings,
And Uranus spins on its side.
Neptune's really windy,
And Pluto's really small.
We wanted to name the planets,
And now we've named them all.
It's a catchy tune. We all memorized it. For the first time in my life, I could name the planets in order from the Sun outward. I learned that Uranus spins on its side and that Neptune is windy. Who knew? I grew attached to that song and to the nine planets in it.
Then a week later, they got rid of Pluto.
Just like that, our song was obsolete and we had to help Lizzy unlearn the information about Pluto. No, it's not a planet after all. No, the solar system does not have nine planets; it has eight. No, Pluto is not gone. It's still there, but it's not a planet anymore.
Try to explain that to a five-year-old.
Our Blue's Clues song isn't the only thing that became obsolete on Aug. 24. Two dictionaries in our hosehold still define an outdated nine-planet solar system, and a nice educational placemat continues to claim Pluto, still proudly informing us that the smallest, farthest planet has a moon (actually three) when Venus has none. Our big Children's Space Atlas, which Lizzy enjoys studying, is also now full of misinformation about Pluto. I figure the 424 members of the IAU who made this decision owe our family at least $50 for replacement costs on various items that they just made outdated.
Didn't these people consult economists? How about schools? Libraries? Those nonprofit, budget-strapped institutions are going to have quite a time refreshing their collections. The IAU should have at least coordinated with Congress so the government could have passed a special budget appropriation to fund the updating of all the school libraries.
A couple of weeks ago, we checked out a charming little children's book—seemingly harmless from the cover—from our local library. It's a counting book about a kindergartener's first 100 days of school, reporting what the child learns or does with each number for each day. For bedtime recently, Lizzy asked me to read it to her; we read up to number 25. All was going well until we got to number nine, which reported that there are nine planets in the solar system.
Being the diligent father that I am, and not wanting my daughter to be misled by such passé notions of a larger solar system found in unenlightened books in a sub-par library, I quickly made reference to the fact that there are really only eight planets in the solar system—a fact that I thought Lizzy knew quite well. But she seemed puzzled, so I explained again that Pluto used to be a planet, but we've now decided it isn't *really* a planet, even though it's still there, and so we don't really have nine planets like the book says, just eight.
I finished my explanation, and Lizzy said, "That's silly."
Exactly.
I have had a similar concern. This decision, to downgrade our solar system from an nine-planet system to an eight-planet assemblage, has far-reaching implications that were not adequately considered, and it affects a lot of people who were not invited to participate in the discussion. Only 424 people voted to change the definition of a planet. Even if all 9,000 astronomers voted, it seems like a paltry number when we have some 6.6 billion human inhabitants in the solar system.
My family, for instance, was not consulted. We are not astronomers or physicists. We don't even own a telescope, and none of us has ever seen Pluto. But the smallest planet in the solar system is, nonetheless, part of our lives. We live on one of the nine (or eight) planets in this solar system, and with so few planets, we feel somewhat attached to each of them. We are residents of this collection of objects swirling around the sun, and it seems we should be consulted in any significant change in the status of that collection. As should all the other residents. Shouldn't we have had an election or something? A public opinion poll, at the least? Shouldn't the people in charge of this decision stood up and asked all 6.6 billion of us on this planet whether we wanted our corner of the galaxy to change?
I, for one, was very happy with having nine planets. I like the number nine, and I was just getting used to the collection of planets that we had. On a recent trip across the wasteland of Nevada (which I, for one, would vote for getting rid of), our family listened repeatedly to a Nick Jr. CD that included a Blue's Clues song about the planets:
The Sun is a hot star,
And Mercury's hot too.
Venus is the brightest planet,
And Earth's home to me and you.
Mars is the red one,
Jupiter's most wide.
Saturn's got those icy rings,
And Uranus spins on its side.
Neptune's really windy,
And Pluto's really small.
We wanted to name the planets,
And now we've named them all.
It's a catchy tune. We all memorized it. For the first time in my life, I could name the planets in order from the Sun outward. I learned that Uranus spins on its side and that Neptune is windy. Who knew? I grew attached to that song and to the nine planets in it.
Then a week later, they got rid of Pluto.
Just like that, our song was obsolete and we had to help Lizzy unlearn the information about Pluto. No, it's not a planet after all. No, the solar system does not have nine planets; it has eight. No, Pluto is not gone. It's still there, but it's not a planet anymore.
Try to explain that to a five-year-old.
Our Blue's Clues song isn't the only thing that became obsolete on Aug. 24. Two dictionaries in our hosehold still define an outdated nine-planet solar system, and a nice educational placemat continues to claim Pluto, still proudly informing us that the smallest, farthest planet has a moon (actually three) when Venus has none. Our big Children's Space Atlas, which Lizzy enjoys studying, is also now full of misinformation about Pluto. I figure the 424 members of the IAU who made this decision owe our family at least $50 for replacement costs on various items that they just made outdated.
Didn't these people consult economists? How about schools? Libraries? Those nonprofit, budget-strapped institutions are going to have quite a time refreshing their collections. The IAU should have at least coordinated with Congress so the government could have passed a special budget appropriation to fund the updating of all the school libraries.
A couple of weeks ago, we checked out a charming little children's book—seemingly harmless from the cover—from our local library. It's a counting book about a kindergartener's first 100 days of school, reporting what the child learns or does with each number for each day. For bedtime recently, Lizzy asked me to read it to her; we read up to number 25. All was going well until we got to number nine, which reported that there are nine planets in the solar system.
Being the diligent father that I am, and not wanting my daughter to be misled by such passé notions of a larger solar system found in unenlightened books in a sub-par library, I quickly made reference to the fact that there are really only eight planets in the solar system—a fact that I thought Lizzy knew quite well. But she seemed puzzled, so I explained again that Pluto used to be a planet, but we've now decided it isn't *really* a planet, even though it's still there, and so we don't really have nine planets like the book says, just eight.
I finished my explanation, and Lizzy said, "That's silly."
Exactly.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Proverbs To Remember
Lately I've been reading the book of Proverbs, which, if I understand things right, is supposed to contain the wisdom of Solomon—or at least some of it. Not a bad recommendation for a book.
As you may be aware—or as you could guess without too much difficulty—the text of Proverbs is rather preoccupied with one thing: wisdom. It talks a lot about wisdom and understanding (often those two concepts paired, as they are in Job 28:28, which makes me wonder who paired them originally) and how good they are and how to get them and what things qualify one as a posessor of wisdom and how a posessor of wisdom behaves and so on. There are some wonderful proverbs in Proverbs: insightful observations and memorable admonitions aplenty.
The text, however, doesn't really flow. I should expect that, really. It is, after all, a collection of proverbs. Reading it should be like reading a quote book. But it's organized in chapters so somehow I expect chapters to have some logical organization and continuum. Perhaps it is there and I'm just not seeing it. But it appears to be a fairly random cobbling-together of Solomon's proverbs. Subjects are repeated in various chapters and verse often doesn't connect to verse.
Anyway, that's not a major problem, but it does make it not quite so engaging to read. You don't get a feeling of progression as you move through the book. It's just proverb after proverb after proverb, and some of the proverbs are beyond my comprehension and some of them are repetitious and the process can get a bit mind-numbing.
But there are some wonderful gems to be found. So this morning as I was going through chapter 17, I decided to start pulling out the gems. I've run across many proverbs in Proverbs that resonate with me, and I think extracting those proverbs from the text around them might be a good way for me to be more engaged in the reading of the book as well as a way to help me remember the highlights and benefit from them.
So, for what it's worth, here are my highlights from Proverbs, chapter 17. I worked backwards through chapter 14 today (pulling out my favorites), and maybe someday I'll post all of them here, but for now, here's one chapter's worth.
Chapter 17
10. a reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool.
17. a friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
22. a merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.
27. He that hath knowledge spareth his words: and a man of understanding is of an excellent spirit.
28. Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.
As you may be aware—or as you could guess without too much difficulty—the text of Proverbs is rather preoccupied with one thing: wisdom. It talks a lot about wisdom and understanding (often those two concepts paired, as they are in Job 28:28, which makes me wonder who paired them originally) and how good they are and how to get them and what things qualify one as a posessor of wisdom and how a posessor of wisdom behaves and so on. There are some wonderful proverbs in Proverbs: insightful observations and memorable admonitions aplenty.
The text, however, doesn't really flow. I should expect that, really. It is, after all, a collection of proverbs. Reading it should be like reading a quote book. But it's organized in chapters so somehow I expect chapters to have some logical organization and continuum. Perhaps it is there and I'm just not seeing it. But it appears to be a fairly random cobbling-together of Solomon's proverbs. Subjects are repeated in various chapters and verse often doesn't connect to verse.
Anyway, that's not a major problem, but it does make it not quite so engaging to read. You don't get a feeling of progression as you move through the book. It's just proverb after proverb after proverb, and some of the proverbs are beyond my comprehension and some of them are repetitious and the process can get a bit mind-numbing.
But there are some wonderful gems to be found. So this morning as I was going through chapter 17, I decided to start pulling out the gems. I've run across many proverbs in Proverbs that resonate with me, and I think extracting those proverbs from the text around them might be a good way for me to be more engaged in the reading of the book as well as a way to help me remember the highlights and benefit from them.
So, for what it's worth, here are my highlights from Proverbs, chapter 17. I worked backwards through chapter 14 today (pulling out my favorites), and maybe someday I'll post all of them here, but for now, here's one chapter's worth.
Chapter 17
10. a reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool.
17. a friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
22. a merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.
27. He that hath knowledge spareth his words: and a man of understanding is of an excellent spirit.
28. Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Better Timp Photo
That last Timp photo just didn't cut it. Blogger was giving me problems loading the images, so I kept reducing the size until it worked, but then it lost the beauty of the image. Anyway, here's a cropped in shot of the mountain top; click on it to see it bigger.
Timp is such an amazing mountain. I sometimes bemoan the fact that our house doesn't offer a view down into or across the valley, but I love our view of Timp.
Timp is such an amazing mountain. I sometimes bemoan the fact that our house doesn't offer a view down into or across the valley, but I love our view of Timp.
Return of the Snow
It wasn't very long ago that I was blogging about all the snow still clinging to the mountains around here. By my memory, the snow patches lingered until mid- to late July before melting off the fronts (west) of the mountains.Well, here it is, barely two months later, and it's back. A big storm blew through over the weekend, covering the top half of Timp with a good dusting. The photo at right was taken from my house yesterday afternoon.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Esther
Eight years after Lehi left Jerusalem, the city was conquered by the Babylonians, and the Jews were taken captive. The Babylonian empire was huge and powerful, but within 50 years or so, an even greater empire swept in and absorbed Babylon. The Persian Empire stretched from Afghanistan to Lybia, including present-day Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel, Turkey, and part of Egypt. The empire contained six of the seven wonders of the world and more than 125 provinces with a multitude of cultures, religions, and languages.
In the middle of all this lived a young Jewish woman named Hadassah. Like other Jews who were living in this kingdom, Hadassah’s name had been changed; her new name was Esther. Esther’s father and mother had died, and her cousin had raised Esther as his daughter.
When the Persian king became unhappy with his wife, he got rid of her and held auditions for a new queen. Esther, a virtuous, beautiful young woman, won the competition and became the new queen of this vast empire.
But even though she was queen, Esther still couldn’t do just anything she wanted. One of the things she especially couldn’t do was see the king, unless he called for her. If she approached the king without being invited, she would be killed—unless the king chose to spare her life. But one day Esther needed to see the king, and he hadn’t called for her in a month.
An evil man in the king’s court had tricked the king into declaring that on a certain day, all Jews in the kingdom would be killed. Such a decree was no small thing; the kingdom, remember, included all of the Middle East; hence it included all of the Jews. If carried out, this would have meant the end of the Bible—somewhere in the Old Testament.
Esther, of course, didn’t want this to happen. She wanted the Bible to go on being written (for several hundred pages more), and she wanted the Jews—including herself—to go on living. She was, understandably, a bit concerned about seeing the king, however. It hadn’t taken much for him to get rid of his last queen, and Esther was about to break one of the laws of the kingdom. Her cousin encouraged her, saying, “Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14)
So Esther decided to go see the king—who didn’t know she was a Jew—and discuss this little problem with him. To get extra strength and help from God, she fasted, and she invited all Jews in the city to fast with her.
Esther was successful. The king saved her life and listened to her problem (it helped that she invited him to dinner to discuss it). When he understood the dastardly plan of the evil man, he reversed the decree, saved the Jews, destroyed the bad guy, and ensured that the Bible would go on being written.
Esther’s example is inspiring for many reasons. First, she showed great courage. Second, she exercised strong faith. And third, she recognized that she needed strength beyond her own—she recognized her weakness and pled for God’s help. As her cousin said, she was born to that time, to that challenge, to that purpose. Esther was placed on earth at that time to be virtuous enough, beautiful enough, courageous enough, faithful enough, humble enough, and a good enough cook to save the Jews from being destroyed. (OK, she probably had good cooks as servants, but at least she must have had good culinary taste and good judgment in kitchen help; she had the king over for dinner twice in this little incident.)
Think for a moment of the implications of her action. She not only saved herself and her cousin and the Jews of her city, but she saved all of the Jews and all of the Jews’ descendents. She saved Jews who would live hundreds of years later, Jews like Zacharias and Elizabeth and John the Baptist, Jews like Joseph and Mary and the child Jesus, the heir to King David’s throne.
Esther’s courage not only saved the Jews, it also saved the One who would save the entire human race.
Esther was born to her time, to her task, and she lived up to it. So have we been born to our time, and we have a work to do, a work that may save generations.
In the middle of all this lived a young Jewish woman named Hadassah. Like other Jews who were living in this kingdom, Hadassah’s name had been changed; her new name was Esther. Esther’s father and mother had died, and her cousin had raised Esther as his daughter.
When the Persian king became unhappy with his wife, he got rid of her and held auditions for a new queen. Esther, a virtuous, beautiful young woman, won the competition and became the new queen of this vast empire.
But even though she was queen, Esther still couldn’t do just anything she wanted. One of the things she especially couldn’t do was see the king, unless he called for her. If she approached the king without being invited, she would be killed—unless the king chose to spare her life. But one day Esther needed to see the king, and he hadn’t called for her in a month.
An evil man in the king’s court had tricked the king into declaring that on a certain day, all Jews in the kingdom would be killed. Such a decree was no small thing; the kingdom, remember, included all of the Middle East; hence it included all of the Jews. If carried out, this would have meant the end of the Bible—somewhere in the Old Testament.
Esther, of course, didn’t want this to happen. She wanted the Bible to go on being written (for several hundred pages more), and she wanted the Jews—including herself—to go on living. She was, understandably, a bit concerned about seeing the king, however. It hadn’t taken much for him to get rid of his last queen, and Esther was about to break one of the laws of the kingdom. Her cousin encouraged her, saying, “Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14)
So Esther decided to go see the king—who didn’t know she was a Jew—and discuss this little problem with him. To get extra strength and help from God, she fasted, and she invited all Jews in the city to fast with her.
Esther was successful. The king saved her life and listened to her problem (it helped that she invited him to dinner to discuss it). When he understood the dastardly plan of the evil man, he reversed the decree, saved the Jews, destroyed the bad guy, and ensured that the Bible would go on being written.
Esther’s example is inspiring for many reasons. First, she showed great courage. Second, she exercised strong faith. And third, she recognized that she needed strength beyond her own—she recognized her weakness and pled for God’s help. As her cousin said, she was born to that time, to that challenge, to that purpose. Esther was placed on earth at that time to be virtuous enough, beautiful enough, courageous enough, faithful enough, humble enough, and a good enough cook to save the Jews from being destroyed. (OK, she probably had good cooks as servants, but at least she must have had good culinary taste and good judgment in kitchen help; she had the king over for dinner twice in this little incident.)
Think for a moment of the implications of her action. She not only saved herself and her cousin and the Jews of her city, but she saved all of the Jews and all of the Jews’ descendents. She saved Jews who would live hundreds of years later, Jews like Zacharias and Elizabeth and John the Baptist, Jews like Joseph and Mary and the child Jesus, the heir to King David’s throne.
Esther’s courage not only saved the Jews, it also saved the One who would save the entire human race.
Esther was born to her time, to her task, and she lived up to it. So have we been born to our time, and we have a work to do, a work that may save generations.
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