Thursday, April 28, 2005

Blackberry Winter

I did not know what "blackberry winter" was until last night. I was speaking with a lady from Bethlehem PB who is somewhere in her 80's about the weather we've been having recently (sounds like a boring topic, I know, but it started with another conversation about yard work). She mentioned that we have been having a blackberry winter. I guess she could tell I was confused. She went on to explain that a blackberry winter occurs when one experiences prolonged winter weather, into the month of April. There must be a week or so of cold weather after it has warmed up a bit (if I understood correctly) in order to have blackberries during the summer months. Definitely describes the weather we've been having lately. Warm one week, and cold the next. While it has been, at times, frustrating trying to decide what to wear during these indecisive weather months, I can now look forward to blackberries in the summer. And, using the term blackberry winter in the years to come.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Truly a majestic spectacle...

One of the things I enjoy most about college life is being able to walk all over campus and admire God's majesty all around. His sovreignty and incomprehensible imagination can be seen everywhere I look and on any particular day, sunny or rainy, warm or cold. (I often find myself smiling while walking though large puddles...sometimes rivers, while on campus after a rain.) Romans 1:20 "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse." Just think of all the different species in the world, mammals, insects, reptiles, plants, etc. Add to that number all the extinct species. What infinite wisdom and creativity the Creator has. All that to say, I came across an interesting quote last night while looking at Hassell's church history. Hassell is quoting Dr. J. H. Stirling, of Edinburgh.

"This universe is not an accidental cavity, into which an accidental dust has been accidentally swept into heaps for the accidental evolution of the majestic spectacle of organic and inorganic life. That majestic spectacle is a spectacle as plainly for the eye of reason as any diagram of mathematics. That majestic spectacle could have been constructed, was constructed, only in reason, for reason, and by reason."


Well stated, Dr. Stirling. Well stated.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Food for Thought

The beginning of a new era...my first blog. I thought I would start by offering you one of my favorite poems. It is titled "Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins, who I believe was U.S. poet laureate under President William Jefferson Clinton. I was first introduced to this poem by my English 103 teacher during my freshman year of college. (Ever since then I have had every good intention of picking up a copy of the book by Collins that contains this poem.) We were reading Pablo Neruda's Love Poems at the time. I was quite fascinated with Collins's precise description of what many of us often try to do to a poem when we read it: torture the meaning out of it. No details, just meaning. Collins tells his readers what they should do when reading a poem. Enjoy!



I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want then to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with a rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.


-Billy Collins