Confessions
St. Augustine
Book V
Ch. 1
The Lord sees into all hearts, even the hard and closed ones. He will soften and heal those hearts according to His will.
Ch. 2
The wicked flee God's gentleness to collide with His justice.
"Thou art near even to those who go farthest from thee"
"Thou art the Lord, who canst remake what thou didst make and can comfort them"
Ch. 3
Religious men ask, "what is the source of the intelligence by which they investigate?" The prideful discover many true things about creation without learning the Truth of the Creator.
Ch. 4
God isn't pleased by the man who knows a lot but doesn't know Him.
Ch. 5
Augustine attacks Mani for presuming to teach what he does not know. He condemns Mani for impersonating the Holy Spirit falsely.
Ch. 6
An eloquence, when unfettered from truth, is like a gaudy chalice with a drink that doesn't quench the thirst.
Ch. 7
Augustine's interaction with the Manichean Bishop, Faustus, and Faustus' inability to help Augustine understand why Manicheism was preferable to other belief systems served as the final breaking point between Augustine and Manicheism.
Ch. 8
Augustine leaves Carthage and heads for Rome.
Augustine points out that his mother's prayers were not answered in the way she hoped for (he still left Carthage for Rome). God did not let her temporary request undermine His work and end goal for Augustine.
Ch. 9
The fetter of original sin is that we all die in Adam. But we can be forgiven in Christ.
Ch. 10
Sin was all the more uncurable because Augustine would not confess it.
Augustine even rejected the true faith because of his dualistic leanings. That dualism caused him many numerous problems.
Ch. 11
The dualism and belief in a great evil that makes God finite allowed him to twist and to fall prey to twisted theology.
Ch. 12
Rome did not turn out to be the paradise that Augustine had hoped for.
Ch. 13
Augustine goes to Milan and meets Ambrose. He is attracted to Ambrose because of his nature, even if Augustine was unwilling as of yet to hear Ambrose's message.
Ch. 14
Ambrose's teachings slowly changed Augustine.
Augustine joined the Catholic faith because the philosophers, in all their wisdom, could not offer the cure, they had not the salvation of Christ.
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Closely Watched Trains
From Goodreads
Closely Watched Trains
Bohumil Hrabal
I enjoyed Closely Watched Trains more than Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age. Mainly, I enjoyed the former more than the latter because the former was written using more conventional punctuation. Hrabal combines absurdity and hilarious notions to highlight life during wartime and the success of resistance. It's poignant, dark and full of life. I thought it was a great book and I think I'd like to watch the movie.
Closely Watched Trains
Bohumil Hrabal
I enjoyed Closely Watched Trains more than Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age. Mainly, I enjoyed the former more than the latter because the former was written using more conventional punctuation. Hrabal combines absurdity and hilarious notions to highlight life during wartime and the success of resistance. It's poignant, dark and full of life. I thought it was a great book and I think I'd like to watch the movie.
Notes on Confessions Book IV
Confessions
St. Augustine
Book IV
Ch. 1
Augustine confesses his past sins so he can make a sacrificial offer.
He asks what is he without God, "For what am I to myself without thee but a guide to my own downfall?"
Ch. 2
"I knew not how to love thee because I knew not how to conceive of anything beyond corporeal splendors".
Ch. 3.
Augustine argues against astrology because it tries to take the blame rightly placed on individual men and transfer it to the heavens and the celestial bodies.
He condemns astrological predictions coming true, through the voice of an old wise man, as the combination of chance and the workings of the human mind to turn those events caused by chance to fit the prediction.
Ch. 4
"There is no true friendship save between those thou dost bind together and who cleave to thee by that love which is, 'shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given us'"
Augustine turned a friend away from God to his superstitions. Yet, God still followed the two men and saved the man who had fallen away from him before his death.
God is both, at once, the God of vengeance and a Fountain of Mercies
Ch. 5
Dealing with grief is easier with God than without.
Ch. 6
"Every soul is wretched that is fettered in the friendship of mortal things".
Augustine is so overcome with grief at the loss of his friend that he is falling apart. This extra passion and the violence it is causing his soul occurs because he does not know God, who can balance him.
Ch. 7
Grief without God: "All things looked gloomy even the very light itself". He found solace in weeping but when his soul no longer wept it was weighed down.
Grief with God: the weeping provides some relief but in the end one's soul is not weighed down, having been "raised up to thee, O Lord, for thee to lighten and lift it"
"Thus my error was my god"
Ch. 8
Time does strange things in the mind
Ch. 9
The only thing we cannot lose is God. Even if we lose him by rejecting Him we still find Him in the end, when we are punished for that rejection. Where can a man go to hide from God?
Ch. 10
"Wherever the soul of men turns itself, unless toward thee, it is enmeshed in sorrows"
The physical aspect of creation is good for what it was designed to do; but it cannot supersede the eternal. It cannot appoint its beginning or its end.
Ch. 11
"Do not let the tumult of your vanity deafen the ear of your heart"
The things of this earth perish. The things of God do not. Why then should my soul long for the perishable?
Even if we could perceive the whole of time and space in God's creation it would pale in comparison to God, the creator.
Ch. 12
If the physical creation pleases you, thank God for it. If another's soul pleases you, thank God for it. In essence, whatever your bent is (physical or spiritual), thank God for the gifts he gives that please you.
God is to be found wherever truth is.
Do not love the gift from God more than God the giver.
Ch. 13
Augustine's aesthetics formed a springboard for him towards finding God.
Ch. 14
Love and admiration of another without anchoring in God can be a selfish thing. Augustine loved and admired the orator in a way that he wanted to be loved and admired.
Love of another can stem from the other's popularity too. Augustine loved that orator because others loved him.
He then asked an interesting question: If others had not loved the orator then I would not have loved the orator. Yet, the orator's qualities would still be the same only the audience reactions would have changed. If this is the case, should one be loved and admired for the sake of their works, if their works are so susceptible to the tastes of the crowd?
Ch. 15
Evil is not a substance at all.
Like the emotions that stir up violent acts, the errors in our thinking contaminate the life of a rational soul.
All the knowledge and skill in learning is worth nothing if one errs by not understanding that all their knowledge flows from God.
"For our stability, when it is in thee, is stability indeed; but when it is in ourselves, then it is all unstable"
"And we need not fear that we shall find no place to return to because we fall away from it. For, in our absence, our home - which is thy eternity - does not fall away.
St. Augustine
Book IV
Ch. 1
Augustine confesses his past sins so he can make a sacrificial offer.
He asks what is he without God, "For what am I to myself without thee but a guide to my own downfall?"
Ch. 2
"I knew not how to love thee because I knew not how to conceive of anything beyond corporeal splendors".
Ch. 3.
Augustine argues against astrology because it tries to take the blame rightly placed on individual men and transfer it to the heavens and the celestial bodies.
He condemns astrological predictions coming true, through the voice of an old wise man, as the combination of chance and the workings of the human mind to turn those events caused by chance to fit the prediction.
Ch. 4
"There is no true friendship save between those thou dost bind together and who cleave to thee by that love which is, 'shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given us'"
Augustine turned a friend away from God to his superstitions. Yet, God still followed the two men and saved the man who had fallen away from him before his death.
God is both, at once, the God of vengeance and a Fountain of Mercies
Ch. 5
Dealing with grief is easier with God than without.
Ch. 6
"Every soul is wretched that is fettered in the friendship of mortal things".
Augustine is so overcome with grief at the loss of his friend that he is falling apart. This extra passion and the violence it is causing his soul occurs because he does not know God, who can balance him.
Ch. 7
Grief without God: "All things looked gloomy even the very light itself". He found solace in weeping but when his soul no longer wept it was weighed down.
Grief with God: the weeping provides some relief but in the end one's soul is not weighed down, having been "raised up to thee, O Lord, for thee to lighten and lift it"
"Thus my error was my god"
Ch. 8
Time does strange things in the mind
Ch. 9
The only thing we cannot lose is God. Even if we lose him by rejecting Him we still find Him in the end, when we are punished for that rejection. Where can a man go to hide from God?
Ch. 10
"Wherever the soul of men turns itself, unless toward thee, it is enmeshed in sorrows"
The physical aspect of creation is good for what it was designed to do; but it cannot supersede the eternal. It cannot appoint its beginning or its end.
Ch. 11
"Do not let the tumult of your vanity deafen the ear of your heart"
The things of this earth perish. The things of God do not. Why then should my soul long for the perishable?
Even if we could perceive the whole of time and space in God's creation it would pale in comparison to God, the creator.
Ch. 12
If the physical creation pleases you, thank God for it. If another's soul pleases you, thank God for it. In essence, whatever your bent is (physical or spiritual), thank God for the gifts he gives that please you.
God is to be found wherever truth is.
Do not love the gift from God more than God the giver.
Ch. 13
Augustine's aesthetics formed a springboard for him towards finding God.
Ch. 14
Love and admiration of another without anchoring in God can be a selfish thing. Augustine loved and admired the orator in a way that he wanted to be loved and admired.
Love of another can stem from the other's popularity too. Augustine loved that orator because others loved him.
He then asked an interesting question: If others had not loved the orator then I would not have loved the orator. Yet, the orator's qualities would still be the same only the audience reactions would have changed. If this is the case, should one be loved and admired for the sake of their works, if their works are so susceptible to the tastes of the crowd?
Ch. 15
Evil is not a substance at all.
Like the emotions that stir up violent acts, the errors in our thinking contaminate the life of a rational soul.
All the knowledge and skill in learning is worth nothing if one errs by not understanding that all their knowledge flows from God.
"For our stability, when it is in thee, is stability indeed; but when it is in ourselves, then it is all unstable"
"And we need not fear that we shall find no place to return to because we fall away from it. For, in our absence, our home - which is thy eternity - does not fall away.
Sunday, September 1, 2019
Alice in Wonderland
From Goodreads
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Lewis Carroll
I enjoyed reading this very much. I enjoy the fairy tale element of it because I like fairy tales and similar stories; but, what I really enjoyed about this book is how Carroll created an illogical logic that permeated the world. It's obviously aimed at a young audience but it is still captivating at any age.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Lewis Carroll
I enjoyed reading this very much. I enjoy the fairy tale element of it because I like fairy tales and similar stories; but, what I really enjoyed about this book is how Carroll created an illogical logic that permeated the world. It's obviously aimed at a young audience but it is still captivating at any age.
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
From Goodreads
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Richard Bach
What in the holy hell of hodgepodge gumblygook did I just read? Bach crammed a bit of eastern mysticism, a dash of de-deified Jesus as a dude, pseudoscience mumbojumbo, Socrates and a hobbyist's enthusiasm for aviation into a tumbler and shook it up to see what he could pour out. What poured out was a bunch of black and white seagull pictures that a sophomore in high school took on the family vacation that he deemed art surrounded by a boring, pointless fable. This is a prime example of spiritualism without a grounding in any truth. On a side note it did make me think about a story where the earth is falling apart because the number of souls remains constant and because of modern medicine the number of bodily beings is exhausting the stock of souls. Imagine, all the wicked souls who ought to be languishing in hell for eternity are being released early. That's where all the extra evil is coming from. Too much body, not enough soul. If I flesh it out for a hundred and fifty pages and find a high schooler with an old film SLR I could turn the idea into a movie. This book got made into a freaking movie!!! I'm probably not going to search it out, but I might try to track down the soundtrack by Neil Diamond.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Richard Bach
What in the holy hell of hodgepodge gumblygook did I just read? Bach crammed a bit of eastern mysticism, a dash of de-deified Jesus as a dude, pseudoscience mumbojumbo, Socrates and a hobbyist's enthusiasm for aviation into a tumbler and shook it up to see what he could pour out. What poured out was a bunch of black and white seagull pictures that a sophomore in high school took on the family vacation that he deemed art surrounded by a boring, pointless fable. This is a prime example of spiritualism without a grounding in any truth. On a side note it did make me think about a story where the earth is falling apart because the number of souls remains constant and because of modern medicine the number of bodily beings is exhausting the stock of souls. Imagine, all the wicked souls who ought to be languishing in hell for eternity are being released early. That's where all the extra evil is coming from. Too much body, not enough soul. If I flesh it out for a hundred and fifty pages and find a high schooler with an old film SLR I could turn the idea into a movie. This book got made into a freaking movie!!! I'm probably not going to search it out, but I might try to track down the soundtrack by Neil Diamond.
Mucha
From Goodreads
Mucha - An Illustrated Life
Roman Neugebauer
I picked this book in the Prague airport on the way home as an afterthought. I'm glad we had a few extra minutes because it was worth the impulse buy. Often those purchases don't pan out as well as this one did, like the house organ. But at about $5, the book not the organ, the stakes weren't that high. It's a quick read and a good miniature biography. There's a lot of interesting stuff in Mucha's life and it is written in an easy style to read. Mucha's aesthetic theories are intriguing too and how they are intertwined in a nationalism and ethnic struggle speak to the condition of late 19th century and early 20th century Europe. He was born and flourished at the dawn of a new age only to die as that dawn was blotted out by the clouds of Nazi Germany. His work's renaissance seems to be being born again at another tempestuous epoch's beginning.
Mucha - An Illustrated Life
Roman Neugebauer
I picked this book in the Prague airport on the way home as an afterthought. I'm glad we had a few extra minutes because it was worth the impulse buy. Often those purchases don't pan out as well as this one did, like the house organ. But at about $5, the book not the organ, the stakes weren't that high. It's a quick read and a good miniature biography. There's a lot of interesting stuff in Mucha's life and it is written in an easy style to read. Mucha's aesthetic theories are intriguing too and how they are intertwined in a nationalism and ethnic struggle speak to the condition of late 19th century and early 20th century Europe. He was born and flourished at the dawn of a new age only to die as that dawn was blotted out by the clouds of Nazi Germany. His work's renaissance seems to be being born again at another tempestuous epoch's beginning.
Notes on Confessions Book III
Confessions
St. Augustine
Book III
Ch. 1
In loving for the sake of loving, some pleasure is to be found because love was created by God. But love, not rooted in God, is unsatisfying.
Love, when abstracted for its own sake, opens man to the scourging of jealousy, fear, anger and strife.
Augustine polluted the spring of friendship with lust. (The notion here of polluting at the spring of friendship is interesting. It denotes that all the water coming forth from the spring is polluted. Later in the chapter he uses another water analogy, the rivers are flowing but he questions where they wind up).
Ch. 2
What kind of compassion is it that arises from viewing fictitious and unreal sufferings? Without considering God in this compassion we pervert it, turn it into pity and seek to achieve some sort of feeling from the sorrows of others. It is not compassion at all, but selfish.
Augustine sought out the sorrowful plays because the sorrow captured his imagination. Apart from God, being in his own sorrowful place because of it, it was obvious why Augustine sought it out. In seeking out the imagined sorrows of the stage, he didn't have to dig deeper into his own sorrow, which stemmed from his ignoring of God.
Ch. 3
Even in this state God's mercy hovered over Augustine from afar.
The wreckers (a group of intellectuals who mocked others with their eloquence) became wreckers because they were wrecked themselves. It's a "hurt people hurt people" kind of thing.
Ch. 4
Augustine was struck by Cicero's Hortensius. It was through this lost book that a sudden realization came over Augustine. He was struck by the substance and not the style of Cicero. Now, Augustine would seek wisdom for its own sake and not for the glory that studying would bring him.
Ch. 5
After Cicero, Augustine read the Scriptures and was nonplussed. He regarded them as beneath him and stylistically inferior to the Roman writers.
Ch. 6
He tried the Manicheans but the dishes they served him did not satisfy his hunger.
The spirit is before the material: "For thy spiritual works came before these material creations, celestial and shining though they are".
God had mercy on Augustine before he confessed his sins.
Ch. 7
Evil is nothing but a privation of good. Evil has no being.
To judge the patriarchs for their "sins" or "follies" is to judge men whom God called righteous as unrighteous. They apply a human standard to something that is divine. That they judge this way is not surprising because they do not know God; they do not know the divine. "It is as if a man in an armory, not knowing what piece goes on what part of the body, should put a greave on his head and a helmet on his shin and then complain because they did not fit."
Augustine then makes some interesting points on men being upset with the Scriptures because men whom God had called righteous were allowed to do something that they are now no longer permitted to do. "Or as if, on some holiday when afternoon business was forbidden, one were to grumble at not being allowed to go on selling as it had been lawful for him to do in the forenoon." Some of Augustine's arguments could be used to favor a very stratified society and likely has been some of the foundation stones for aristocratic thinking. But, his point in showing it is that God is just in all his actions towards man. He also takes on the idea that this makes justice a relative concept. He answers this by saying that, no, justice is not variable but the times over which she presides are.
Ch. 8
"The fellowship that should be between God and us is violated whenever that nature is polluted by perverted lust".
God is the greatest authority of all and to be obeyed over all.
When men sin against God they also sin against their own souls.
This is arrogance or a false sense of freedom: to love our own good more than God, the common good of all.
Ch. 9
There are also sins committed by men who are making progress towards God. These men are to be censored for their sins but not condemned, because, "they show the hope of bearing fruit, like the green shoot of the growing corn"
Ch. 10
Augustine condemns Manichean teaching as it focuses on the created things rather than who the things were created for and for whom the things were created by.
Ch. 11
Augustine's mother saw by the light of faith that Augustine was dead.
Ch. 12
Augustine admits that deep in his Manichean thought he was unteachable and taken in by the novelty of heresy. She even implored a bishop to talk with him but the bishop refused. When Monica persisted and wept the bishop exclaimed that, a man who is surrounded by so many tears can not perish. Monica took these exclamations as a word from God
St. Augustine
Book III
Ch. 1
In loving for the sake of loving, some pleasure is to be found because love was created by God. But love, not rooted in God, is unsatisfying.
Love, when abstracted for its own sake, opens man to the scourging of jealousy, fear, anger and strife.
Augustine polluted the spring of friendship with lust. (The notion here of polluting at the spring of friendship is interesting. It denotes that all the water coming forth from the spring is polluted. Later in the chapter he uses another water analogy, the rivers are flowing but he questions where they wind up).
Ch. 2
What kind of compassion is it that arises from viewing fictitious and unreal sufferings? Without considering God in this compassion we pervert it, turn it into pity and seek to achieve some sort of feeling from the sorrows of others. It is not compassion at all, but selfish.
Augustine sought out the sorrowful plays because the sorrow captured his imagination. Apart from God, being in his own sorrowful place because of it, it was obvious why Augustine sought it out. In seeking out the imagined sorrows of the stage, he didn't have to dig deeper into his own sorrow, which stemmed from his ignoring of God.
Ch. 3
Even in this state God's mercy hovered over Augustine from afar.
The wreckers (a group of intellectuals who mocked others with their eloquence) became wreckers because they were wrecked themselves. It's a "hurt people hurt people" kind of thing.
Ch. 4
Augustine was struck by Cicero's Hortensius. It was through this lost book that a sudden realization came over Augustine. He was struck by the substance and not the style of Cicero. Now, Augustine would seek wisdom for its own sake and not for the glory that studying would bring him.
Ch. 5
After Cicero, Augustine read the Scriptures and was nonplussed. He regarded them as beneath him and stylistically inferior to the Roman writers.
Ch. 6
He tried the Manicheans but the dishes they served him did not satisfy his hunger.
The spirit is before the material: "For thy spiritual works came before these material creations, celestial and shining though they are".
God had mercy on Augustine before he confessed his sins.
Ch. 7
Evil is nothing but a privation of good. Evil has no being.
To judge the patriarchs for their "sins" or "follies" is to judge men whom God called righteous as unrighteous. They apply a human standard to something that is divine. That they judge this way is not surprising because they do not know God; they do not know the divine. "It is as if a man in an armory, not knowing what piece goes on what part of the body, should put a greave on his head and a helmet on his shin and then complain because they did not fit."
Augustine then makes some interesting points on men being upset with the Scriptures because men whom God had called righteous were allowed to do something that they are now no longer permitted to do. "Or as if, on some holiday when afternoon business was forbidden, one were to grumble at not being allowed to go on selling as it had been lawful for him to do in the forenoon." Some of Augustine's arguments could be used to favor a very stratified society and likely has been some of the foundation stones for aristocratic thinking. But, his point in showing it is that God is just in all his actions towards man. He also takes on the idea that this makes justice a relative concept. He answers this by saying that, no, justice is not variable but the times over which she presides are.
Ch. 8
"The fellowship that should be between God and us is violated whenever that nature is polluted by perverted lust".
God is the greatest authority of all and to be obeyed over all.
When men sin against God they also sin against their own souls.
This is arrogance or a false sense of freedom: to love our own good more than God, the common good of all.
Ch. 9
There are also sins committed by men who are making progress towards God. These men are to be censored for their sins but not condemned, because, "they show the hope of bearing fruit, like the green shoot of the growing corn"
Ch. 10
Augustine condemns Manichean teaching as it focuses on the created things rather than who the things were created for and for whom the things were created by.
Ch. 11
Augustine's mother saw by the light of faith that Augustine was dead.
Ch. 12
Augustine admits that deep in his Manichean thought he was unteachable and taken in by the novelty of heresy. She even implored a bishop to talk with him but the bishop refused. When Monica persisted and wept the bishop exclaimed that, a man who is surrounded by so many tears can not perish. Monica took these exclamations as a word from God
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