Chronicles of Narnia

This will be my last post for this class. I just finished this book The voyage of the Dawn treader. I now understand literature in a sense that i did not before. I came to a realization that my life as a christian is a spiritual journey. I have heard this said so many times, but when i was reading this last chapter, literally 5 minutes ago, tears came down my face as i felt this peace come over me. It was the strangest thing. My life is a spiritual journey. I do not know how long it will take me to arrive to my destination, or the struggles that i have to face to get there, but i do know that i have an amazing bridge builder to help me get there. I understand that this is a growing process, in which i strive to become a better, more mature, spirit filled christian. In this story, Asland never left them alone to despair, but he was with them in the time of need. Christ is the lamb and the lion and he is with us when we need Him. He builds the bridge for us to get to our destination. In this story, Asland is filled with grace and compassion but also authority and respect. Jesus is the same way to me. I fear Him, i respect Him. But i have this love for him that i can not explain. He is my everything and i truly mean that. He has saved me, brought me from my deepest despair, and by his grace he is still with me. I stumble and i fall sometimes. Sometimes my ship gets off-course, however he is always there to guide me back on the right path. In my deep dark places, he sends the bird to comfort me and to give me peace. My life is no longer just a set of rules that i need to follow to be a good christian, but my life has a goal now. I am running a race to reach my destination. It is an adventure, a journey in which i am always maturing and becoming who Christ intended me to be. Christ is my guide for this journey. The amazing thing is that this journey almost never ends. I can always go to higher or deeper places. My walk with God is something new now. It is not a boring set of rules, but a journey. i am excited to see where God's path leads me. This journey will not be easy, but i keep picturing that beautiful scene from the end of this book where they reach the end of the journey. they made it to their goal. I remember feeling that this was so rewarding for them. They made it         through all of the trials and hard times. The spiritual journey is the same. Wow. the funny part is that i realized this through literature at three in the morning! I was not expecting this.

Interpretation - A Story about the Body

Adam Williams

Special Post II – Interpretation

A Story about the Body

By: Robert Hass

1.       A Story about the Body is about a man who thinks that he has fallen in love with an almost sixty-year-old woman. Both the younger man and the woman work at an artists’ colony during this summer. The woman was a Japanese painter, and the man was a composer. The woman’s art captivated the man, the way she moved her body and her hands. It states, “He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused and considered answers to his questions.” Then one night, after a concert, the woman abruptly says that she knows that the young man wants to ‘have her’ but she has to be honest with him and tell him that she has had a mastectomy on both breasts. Shocked, the man states that he cannot handle this and he walks away to his home. The very next morning, the man wakes up to find a blue bowl on the porch that looks like it is filled with rose petals, but when he looks deeper, he finds that it is filled with dead bees.

2.      I chose this story, because this story has a deep meaning behind it that needs to be brought to attention. Obviously, the bowl represents some deeper meaning than just a blue bowl filled with dead bees, but the question is what does it actually represent? What do the rose pedals represent? Why are they only on the surface? Does the bowl represent the man or the woman? We also have to understand the man’s motives. Where his motives bad? Was he actually in love with her? One thing that I needed to think about was his motives. The reasons stated in this story about his love for the women seemed to be real. However, they were not deep reasons for love. Also, there seems to be a common interpretation that one could think; this story is about a man who is shallow and evil. He is only interested in the physical beauty of the woman. However, I disagree and intend to bring out these interpretations.

3.        A Story about the Body could be about a man who thinks that he has fallen in love with a Japanese woman, based on superficial reasoning. Let’s start from the beginning. In this story, both of the characters work at an artists’ colony. It states that the man has been watching her for a week now, in which this is a very short period of time to fall in love with someone. It also states that the man is young and the woman is almost sixty. This makes me question why would a young man want a sixty-year-old woman? Is he lonely? Maybe the man is lonely and the woman is kinds and genuine. The man is captivated by her work. An artist usually draws or paints from the heart. What they paint or draw can represent who they are. So maybe the man is captivated by who she is and how she paints or demonstrates who she is. The man is also captivated by the way she moves her body. After thinking about this, why would a young man be captivated physically about a sixty year old woman who has had a double mastectomy? The point here is that the dead bees could represent the harsh facts about shallow love that focuses on the outer appearance of the individual, but I disagree. I think that the man is captivated by who the lady is, not by her looks. Now this leads to the part where he finds out about the double mastectomy. When she tells him that she has lost both of her breasts, it says that he lost his radiance. This tells me that the man was excited and he had the butterflies of love. But they flew away when he received this news. Why did they fly away? Was he shallow? Was he only interested because of outer beauty? I think not. The deeper meaning here could mean that he can’t handle the weirdness of her not having breasts. This makes me think of the disabled in our communities. We often treat them as if they have some disease and they are a different species. I believe that the man was not shallow in a physical sense, but he was shallow in the love sense. Obviously this was not true love, but it was not a physical love. The man just could not handle the weirdness of being with someone without breasts. The next morning, he finds a blue bowl that is filled with dead bees and has a covering of rose pedals. There is a lot that can be interpreted here and in many different ways. The blue bowl represents the individual being, weather it is the man or woman. In this case, I believe it was the woman that is being represented. Next, the rose pedals do not represent shallow outer beauty, because I believe that is a misinterpretation. I believe that the rose pedals are the inner beauty that the man saw in the woman; the paintings, her work, whom she was. The dead bees are the most important part of this interpretation. They represent the woman, because the story says that she swept them up from the corner of her studio. The studio is the same place that the man fell in love with her work. I believe that the bees represent her dark corners, the ugly places of life. I do not believe that the bees represent the man’s ugly inside, because he did not like her for her looks anyways. The theme of this story is that we all have the dead bees inside our bowls, some are worse than others, but we all have them. We all also have the rose pedals, or most of us, which represent our inner beauty, however, the inner beauty cannot cover up or hide the dead bees of our lives. We must learn to embrace them and accept them.

4.      I believe that this story can be easily interpreted as a story about love based on physical looks. However I have a couple of facts to argue this interpretation. First, why would a young composer fall in love with a sixty year old woman, based on physical looks? If this were true, the man has to be older as well and therefore this would make the man seem like an immature teenager who loves based on looks. Second, the bowl represents the individual being, or the outer shell. We are all like the bowl in which we are filled with rose pedals and dead bees. If the interpretation is about physical shallowness, then why was the bowl not fancy or beautiful? The story states that it was a small blue bowl, and nothing more. The emphasis was on the inner part of that bowl, or what was inside of it. Therefore, this story is about the inner self, not physical love. Also, I believe that the bowl represented the woman, not the man, because the man was not an awful guy. Granite, this was not true love, but at least he was honest. If the story is based on physical love, then yes the bowl would represent the man, however it is based on inner beauty and the inner self of love. Therefore, the bowl represents the woman. Also, the bees were swept up from the corner of the same studio that she painted in. This shows me that she was almost hiding the nasty parts of her life and all that he saw was the beautiful paintings, not the bees. Altogether, the man has to accept the entire contents of the bowl; the good, the bad, and the ugly. He could not come to terms with this.

5.     I believe that this is an important lesson or interpretation of life and love. We all have our dead bees in our bowls which could represent our mistakes, hurts and pains. When we fall in love with someone, they must learn to accept all of the dead bees in our bowls, or else it will be a superficial love. We cannot just look at the rose pedals and think that is all we have with our loved ones. Every person has an ugly side to them, and every person has been through tough times and pains. For example, this woman has had a double mastectomy, in which her body is dying and it reminds me of the dead bees. However, true love has to accept this and love her for who she is. We need to look at beauty in a different way. It is great to cherish the beautiful things such as rose pedals, but we can also interpret the ugly things in life as beautiful. For example, good can come out of every situation. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

A Very old man, with Enormous wings

This story, A Very old man with enormous wings was a very interesting story. I found myself struggling with a few concepts. It is hard to read a story like this one and relate it to real life. For example, how do we read a story and try to grasp the meaning behind it, when we are thinking about an angel. None of us have actually seen an angel (that we know of) and we usually have a concept that the angels are beautiful and flawless in image. However, this angel was not beautiful. It was an old man, who was stuck in the mud. I had to learn to read these science fiction stories with an open mind, and it has helped. There were a couple of concepts that i really liked in this story. i learned to appreciate the fact that the angel was not beautiful. I learned to appreciate the fact that the angel did not fight to get free. One would think that the angel could use its supernatural powers to break free and leave. I think that the angel was there for a purpose, in which the angel was watching over the boy. The angel and the boy both got chicken pox at the same time. The main thing that i wish to talk about is about the beauty of the angel. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We tend to classify beauty as outward, majestic, stunning, and magnificent, radiant, and more wonderful adjectives. However, beauty is much deeper. Sometimes, beauty is the suddle things in our lives, such as a butterfly flying by, or the rain falling. We think rain is nasty, but to farmers, it is beautiful. We almost think of beauty as something we get out of something. That is mainly outward beauty. Life is beautiful and if we are thinking shallow about beauty, we will miss some of the great things that God has for us in our life. We can take for granite so much in our lives. Who catches an angel and takes it for granite? They profited off of this angel, make a skeptical of it, and they neglect it until the day that it flies away.

A Temple of the Holy Ghost.

A Temple of the Holy Ghost, by Flannery O'Connor, was a very a little confusing. In fact, this was probably one of the more intricate stories that we have read so far, but i think that i understood the theme. The story starts off with two girls, who are ditsy and kind of disrespectful, that are looking at their clothes and they called themselves temple one and temple two. The story also introduces the main character, who is called the child. The story never tells us her real name, pretty much all we know is that she is 12 years old and she can be ugly and nasty. We find out that the two older girls are being sent to a convent and they dont seem to like it. In fact, one of the more comical parts of the story is when Suzanne and Joanne are making fun of the nun who said that when a guys behaving inappropriately in the back seat of the car, they are supposed to say that they are a temple of the holy spirit! I did think that this part was hilarious even though they were mocking Christianity. One common theme that i noticed was that the child was very judgmental. I feel that christians today can be so judgmental when their brother or sister fall. There is a common saying which says that christians are the only people who shoot their wounded. This, unfortunately can be a true statement sometimes. The ugly in the child was when she was having her judgmental rants. For example, when she has her rant about the Catholic song, she calls the boys a big old church of God ox. She states that she is so happy that she is not a part of that church. I started to judge her, but then i checked myself and asked myself, do i do this too? The answer i found is that sometimes i do the same thing. I often judge people who call themselves christians, but they fall or they dont live the holy life. I learn that i pick apart others sometimes, especially when they struggle with the same things that i struggle with. It was cool to see this story make me think about my own life. 

The Ones Who walk away from Omelas

This is a strange story, written by Ursula K. LeGuin, that is about a city that seems very happy, almost like a utopia. The author paints a picture of a city that seems almost perfect. They do not have a king, no soldiers, hardly any laws, and everyone is happy, although they would not describe themselves as happy. The city is also beautiful and it does not seem greedy for money. The story flips when the author moves to the scene describing the "it" in the cellar closet. This child is the source of the happiness for the Omelas, and they know this. Some have come to accept this reality, others still shed tears because of the sad child in the cellar. For some reason, there were terms set, that the city would be destroyed in its beauty if it is allowed to see sunlight and be free. One has to give its life for the rest to have happiness. But some realize, is this really true happiness? Is this true freedom? I began to realize that this is not the happy perfect place. Others in the story realize this and they decide to leave the glorious city of Omelas. They decide that they can not accept the reality of the world around them. The main connection that i am making with this story, is that the Omelas represents the world in some ways. The world we live in is by far not an Utopia. But i am strictly talking about the non-christian world. We have to decide to make a difference and not follow the world. Media, MTV, Hollywood, this reminds me of Omelas. They ruin childrens minds and fill them up with filth and dirt and immorality. Then they profit off of. The secular world thrives off of exposing young people and filling their minds with dirt. The young people in turn keep buying the merchandise, clothing, music, movies, and they buy into the culture of popularity. This is probably not what the author interpreted and i am sure that there are other interpretations, but this is one possible connection in my mind.

Lake Bonnie Park

I went to Lake Bonny Park for this field trip, and I stayed there for at least 45 minutes yesterday at 5pm. I went with Erin and we walked around and found a place to sit in the grass by the lake. I spent about twenty minutes in silence and read the poems by Mary Oliver. I really liked a couple of them, especially the poem "Praying". As i read this, it reminded me that we are supposed to be real with God. Yes, we need to have respect and reverence for God as we pray, but to be honest and real with God is so important. If we are in a relationship with Christ and God the "father", then we should be real with God. I love to think of it like the Geicho commercials when they have a normal person telling their story, then they have a movie star with a deep voice and dramatic voice tell their story. The real honest version was the real story. We should pray in the same manner sometimes. Yes with reverence, but when  things are going rough, God wants the real truth and we should trust Him enough to be honest with Him (its not like he doesn't know what we are thinking anyways). The first lines in the poem "It doesn't have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot", tells it all. Also, i sat back and just watched the nature, and i was thinking that the poem made sense. Why should we try to spruce up our words to a God who is so majestic already and magnificent. His creation is beautiful and perfect, until we mess up. We have sinful nature and the Spirit of God is what makes us beautiful, not our majestic words. Just because we pray in a beautiful language that is spruced up, does not mean that it makes our prayers bigger. I would think, that a God who created everything so beautiful and perfect, is a God who wants the real person, the real truth with respect and reverence. Not a buttered up language that we try to make pretty with our words. We cannot flatter God, i mean LOOK AT WHAT HE CREATED! One question about Mary Oliver that came to my mind was why does she format her poems like this? She puts breaks in the middle of sentences and her lines are sporadic all over the page. In the poem "messenger", i absolutely loved the first line "My work is loving the world". Not much needs to be said about this, but if everyone's job was to love the world, I wonder how much better the world would be? Nature and creation is a good way to appreciate and be in Awe of God and when we love God, we have to love His creation. It is so beautiful and perfect in many ways. 

Awe of God

The crystal waters, The green grass

The tall trees, The chirping birds

All reminders of the Awe of God

My image in the water

Imago Dei?

My sinful nature 

verses mother nature

Imago Dei?

One purpose, one plan

One creator, One God

But Imago Dei?

What is 

imago Dei?

Is it the wonder of creation?

The image of God reflected upon the waters face?

In nature we see

Imago dei

Which makes me stand

In awe of Nature

In Awe of my Creator

Field trip to Circle B

The field trip to Circle B was a good experience, despite being completely dressed up with shirt and tie. I thought it was going to be more of a nature hike and woods area, but to my surprise, it was not. I liked it a lot, and i like what they do there at circle B. My favorite thing that we did was when we paused and took a minute to think and concentrate, by ourselves and quietly. This pause made me meditate on God's creation. I love looking in amazment and awe at God's beautiful creation and it reminds me how much of an artist that God is. I was also reminded of how God is so intracit, and how perfectly the ecosystem fits together, until we mess it up. I liked the note that Professor Corrigan gave us. I like how he said to be present in time that you read poems and meditate, because in a recent post, i said that i was not with it and i could not concentrate. I had a rough day and could not focus and Hass's poem made absolutely no sense. I just became more upset while i read it. Therefore, obviously i agree with this point. Another thing that i like is that i need to slow down. It seems that we are always in a hurry, as Americans. We want fast food, fast traffic, fast lines, we want things now, and for school i seem to hurry with my assignments and try to finish them as fast as possible. In poetry and literature, i should not be in a hurry. Its the same with reading my bible, because if i am focused on my time, i am not doing it justice. One thing that is not a problem for me is cultivating a sense of awe. Awe is a word that came to me when we paused at Circle B and meditated and just thought quietly. God has a funny way of Awing us on a day to day basis. Everything from beautiful oceans and forest and different lands to thunderstorms and rainbows. God has a way of Awing us to remind us of His glory and His wonder.
I want to talk really quick about two stories that these notes reminded me of. The first is when i sat on Clearwater Beach at night with Erin and we just looked at the stars over the ocean. I was so amazed as i thought about God's glory. I absolutely love looking at the stars and wondering about life and asking the deep questions of life. This is a great spiritual practice.
The second story is back when i was in Ohio last summer. I went to the lake erie beach to read my bible and i sat on the end of the pier. I was reading when i felt something inside of me tell me to look up and watch the seagulls flying over the water. I just watched for a couple of minutes, then i turned back to my bible. All of the sudden, the fish in Lake erie came up to the surface, like a hand was forcing them to the surface and they just flopped around. The Seagulls went crazy like a starving man in a buffet. Everyone on the beach stopped what they were doing and were amazed that the fish were giving themselves up. It was very bizzare, but a scripture came to my mind and it says that God even feeds the birds of the air, are we not more important. This is the time when i was decided weather or not to come to college. This moment made me trust in God, and now i am here today writing this. God is so good. But this is another great spiritual practice.