Given for You

The table in my dining room is a square, white altar. Each meal is offered up. I have chosen my fruit, a cantaloupe, ripe, mature, without spot or blemish, and wholly pleasing unto me. Take, eat. And so I do. The skin is pale, with faint touches of green that flinch under my threatening fingertips, and faint ridges that speak like braille, silent but enticing.

Not every meal is the Eucharist, but whatever we eat, we eat to Him, and for that matter, whatever we eat is itself a reflection of His death. This melon, green without, orange within, tomb to a thousand seeds, had one work in the world: to hang on a vine that we might live. Now the gift lies dead. My knife slices smoothly into its side, and the juice spurts out, glittering transparent beads in the sunlight. I take my first bite, slurping the living water, licking it from my fingers, sticky-smooth and saccharine, reveling in the sacrifice. Stillness fills the air, reverence and awe in the face of mystery. All of you, drink it.

I can smell the blood in the air, the faint, sweet aroma of death. But the story continues. Every discarded seed can someday bring forth many more. As I rip the flesh from the rind, I receive new life. Like the graveclothes, the peel is left behind, empty, bright green mottled through the last vestiges of orange mortality. In this cantaloupe, we can see resurrection. This supper is the Lord's.

naps

Pizza in the Shower?

The back story: yesterday, I cleaned with bleach most of the afternoon, and by the evening, I had most of the symptoms of the flu. Anyways, my sleep talking was in peak form afterwards.
As recorded by Lauryl:

"Morning, here I go.
I will give them showers and I will give them pizzas.
That will be my job.
I can't remember the word for it."

[Lauryl points out the problems of having a shower and pizza simultaneously.]

"Yeah, it happened to Craig last year. It sounded pretty darn epic."

snow, sunshine, spring.

#552: Correlation

Book Catalog: Moscow

A major project for this year: compiling an organized list of all my books. Here is the Moscow division, which currently totals... ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN. *beams*

Book of Common Prayer
Cantus Christi
Cruden’s Concordance
Greek New Testament
New King James Bible

Adler, Mortimer - How to Read a Book
Aristotle - On Rhetoric
Asimov, Isaac - I, Robot
Augustine - City of God, The Confessions

Barth, Karl - The Teaching of the Church Regarding Baptism
Berlinghoff, William P. - Math Through the Ages
Bronte, Anne - Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre, Villette
Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights

Calvin, John - Institutes of the Christian Religion (2 vols)
Chesterton, G. K. - Heretics, Manalive, Orthodoxy, Selected Essays
Christie, Agatha - Death Comes as the End
Cicero - Ad Herennium
Coldplay - X & Y (music)
Corbett, Edward P. J. - Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student
Crilly, Tony - 50 Mathematical Ideas You Really Ought to Know
Cross, Milton - Encyclopedia of the Great Composers and Their Music (2 vols)

Devlin, Keith - The Math Gene
Dewdney, A. K. - Yes, We Have No Neutrons
Diacu, Florin - The Lost Milennium: History’s Timetables Under Siege
Donne, John: Poetry and Prose
Dresbold, Michelle - Sex, Lies, and Handwriting
Du Maurier, Daphne - Rebecca

Eidelberg, Joseph - The Biblical Hebrew Origin of the Japanese People
Elfman, Danny - The Nightmare Before Christmas (music)
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Euclid - The Elements, vol. 1

Frame, John M. - The Doctrine of the Christian Life, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God

Gaiman, Neil - Smoke and Mirrors
Gilmore, Robert - Alice in Quantumland
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Gott, J. Richard - Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe

Hengel, Martin - Crucifixion
Hoffecker, W. Andrew - Revolutions in Worldview
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World

James, P. D. - Original Sin

Kline, Morris - Mathematics for the Non-Mathematician, Mathematics in Western Culture
Kurlansky, Mark - Salt: A World History

Lamb, Charles & Mary - Illustrated Tales from Shakespeare
Le Couteur, Penny - Napoleon’s Buttons: How Seventeen Molecules Changed History
Leithart, Peter - A House for my Name, Miniatures and Morals, Solomon Among the Postmoderns
Levine, Gail Carson - Ella Enchanted
Lewis, C. S. - The Great Divorce, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters, Surprised by Joy, That Hideous Strength
Luther, Martin - Luther & Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation

MacArthur, Brian - The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches
Mann, Thomas - The Oxford Guide to Library Research
Milton, John - Selected Poems
McCourt, Frank - Angela’s Ashes
McKinley, Robin - Beauty
Murray, John - Redemption Accomplished and Applied

Orberg, Hans - Lingua Latine Per Se Illustrata
Orwell, George - 1984, Animal Farm

Pare, Jean - Cookies, Four Ingredient Recipes, Muffins & More, Potluck Dishes, Vegetables,
Pearcey, Nancy - The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy
Priest, Christopher - The Prestige
Plato - Gorgias
Poythress, Verne S. - Understanding Dispensationalists

Quintilian - The Orator's Education, vol. 1

Robertson, O. Palmer - The Christ of the Covenants
Rombauer, Irma - The Joy of Cooking

Salinger, J. D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Scott, Walter - Ivanhoe
Shakespeare, William - Collected Works
Sparks, Nicholas - The Notebook; A Walk to Remember
Spieler, Marlena - Mexican Recipes
Suess, Dr. - The Cat in the Hat, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back

Tartuffe, Jean-Baptiste - Moliere
Trudeau, Richard J. - The Non-Euclidean Revolution
Tunberg, Geunevera & Terentio - Cattus Petasatus
Turabian, Kate L.- A Manual for Writers

Van der zee, Leonard - Christ, Baptism, and the Lord's Supper
Van Doren, Charles - A History of Knowledge, Past, Present, and Future
Voltaire - Candide

Watterson, Bill - Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons, Scientific Progress Goes Boink!
Weston, Anthony - A Rulebook for Arguments
Wilde, Oscar - The Importance of Being Earnest
Williams, Joseph - Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace
Wilson, Douglas - Joy at the End of the Tether, Reforming Marriage, Standing on the Promises
Wilson, Nancy - Praise Her In the Gates
Wright, N. T. - Evil and the Justice of God, Surprised by Hope
Wynne-Jones, Diana - Howl’s Moving Castle

2.28.09