Left-Handed Sons of the Right Hand

Benjamin (בִּנְיָמִון) was originally named Ben-Oni (בֶּן־אוֹנִי). Rachel died giving birth, and named him "Son of My Sorrow," but his father preferred "Son of the Right Hand." This signifies a position of favour and authority, which we find to be the case when his father refuses to let him go to Egypt with his brothers, and we all know the story. What is interesting to me is that the only times I can think of in all of Scripture that a man is mentioned as being right or left handed (Ehud in Judges 3:15 and the slingers of Judges 20 and 1 Chronicles 12:2), he is a left handed "son of the right hand."

In the book of Judges, Israel's rise to power in the Middle East is being traced. They begin faithfully and obediently, and serve God all the time of Joshua's life (110 years, one ten less than Moses' 120, which is the perfect government of ten twelves). They rebel, and are delivered into the hand of "Chushan-rishathayim," literally "Kuwshan of double-wickedness" for eight years, and from whom they are saved by Othni-el the "force of God," son of "the hunter," nephew of Caleb. Now we hit verse twelve of chapter three, and it gets interesting. God strengthens the Calf (Eglon), king of "her father" (Mo-ab) against Israel, who collects Lot and Esau and takes the "erect" city, the city of the palm trees; then the Israelites return to Egypt in all but geography, becoming slaves to their gods. But upon their repentance, God raises up Unity (Ehud), the left handed son of the right hand to kill Eglon and deliver Israel after three sets of six years: three weeks of years with no Sabbaths (Jordan stretched you a little, but I shall stretch you much...).

So, here is my theory.

The right hand is a place of honour. But Israel throughout the book of Judges is dishonourable: they rebel time after time, and the book is a chiasm with the theme of left-handedness being one of the first bookends (chapter three, immediately after the introduction, and chapter 20, immediately before the conclusion; in each case, Judah goes up first, in each case Israel is unified: Ehud means unity, and many more similarities). Now this is in itself significant, but it's made far more so by the fact that Hebrew has no word for left-handed. The Hebrew actually reads that Ehud was a man whose "right hand was bound" (הַיְמִינִ֔י אִ֥ישׁ אִטֵּ֖ר יַד־ יְמִינֹ֑ו) and the seven hundred slingers were "men of bound right hands." So in Judges, Israel's honour is bound: they are rebellious and dishonourable. But then they unify against this dishonour and destroy it in submission to God.

But right after this (chronologically), they again rebel: they have been dishonoured among the surrounding nations because of rebellion, and only freed by God's mercy through judges. But now they want to be just like the surrounding nations, not a lesser nation to be conquered and re-conquered. So they are given a king of the left hand, whose dishonour shapes the noblest king of Israel, whose dynasty takes Israel from her dishonour into her greatest glory.

All Right, I'll Tell You

The Dragon's Tooth by N.D. Wilson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


All I've got to say is that I've got quite decent taste.

I was actually kind of nervous going into this one. I'd really liked Leepike, loved 100 Cupboards more with every book and every reading, and was afraid that this one would be a letdown. After all, I love Hylfing. Mordecai and Caleb are awe-inspiring, and Henry and Zeke are the kind of laid back friends that are extremely hard to find in books. And I, unfortunately, have a great fear that Richard had some of his roots in me. But hey, second base isn't all bad.

So, I started this one slowly. And then I finished it fast. It feels weightier, more ponderous, and more ambitious than the Cupboards series with its references to everything from Gilgamesh through Earhart, and the way that it links them is probably going to inspire exultant cries of "I knew it!" from thirty-five year old conspiracy theorists that will be loud enough to wake their sleeping mothers, and will make several Harrell's excessively happy. The number of characters surprised me, but it is a five book series, and I expect to meet them all again in the entirely too distant future. An easy five-star book, and with the number of worlds that this one opened to me, I've got to say that N. D. Wilson's Chestertonian imagination has left the bay and is probably happily frolicking somewhere in the North Atlantic, miles from the nearest land. And that makes the Jesse happy.

"One of them was a people. He smelled like a people, looked like a people, and moved like a people." When does book two come out?



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That There Stairway Gets Y'all to Heaven

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csBjdP8spXs&feature=related

Just a delightful foray into bluegrass. I especially love the comment "If you play this backwards, the Devil challenges you to a fiddle contest."

Blessings,
Jesse Broussard

And I'm Halfway Done...

Aug 23, 2011 (2 days ago)
With Seussian Pom Poms on their Heads
from Blog and Mablog by dougwils@christkirk.com (Douglas Wilson)
2 people liked this - you, and 1 more
The Dragon's Tooth releases today, so hotfoot it on down there. You don't want the line forming ahead of you.

There are two things I want to write about here. The first is the world that this new Ashtown series is set in, and the second is the world that we are in.

Cyrus and Antigone Smith live in a rundown roadside motel just west of Lake Michigan with their older brother Daniel. Their mother is nearby in a coma, and they visit her regularly. Their father has been dead for a few years. Now if you define spoilers as bits of information that you would not find out until chapter two or three, this might be a good time to stop reading. But if not, then carry on. It turns out their parents had a tenuous relationship with a really odd secret society, the Order of Brendan.

But this ancient order appears to be dedicated more to exploration and the collection of oddments than anything else. Think of a National Geographic society with paranormal powers, and a list of organization officers going back to the exploro-monk, Brendan. At the same time, their presence has contributed greatly to the twists and turns of our civilization, in ways you will discover soon enough. It turns out that a lot of disconnected and episodic battles in our history were actually parts of one, long running battle. But you can read about all that later. This book is releasing today, and Nate is virtually done with the manuscript of the second book, a manuscript which has the older cousins all agog, not to mention their parents and grandparents.

In the Cupboards trilogy, Nate successfully created scores of worlds, all connected by the motherboard of a wall full of cupboards. The protagonists were in and out of these worlds, not to mention being in and out of our own. In the new world of this new Ashtown series, the fantastic world is in effect an overlay of our own, with constant and ongoing interaction.

And this brings me to the second point, what I would describe as the central theme of all Nate's writing. His is an essentially Chestertonian vision. In a recent interview, he says that his point is to show that the world is "exactly as it seems." Lest we then nod and go back to sleep, the point is that we live in an actual world that is beyond bizzaro. To follow BBC cameramen in search of insects is to descend into the world of Dr. Seuss. If you don't think there really are creatures with Seussian pom-poms on their heads, then you obviously need to get out more. If you have the right kind of eyes, you can see it all, right here on Mulberry Street.

Chesterton put it this way. Our Father is younger than we; we have sinned and grown old. We constantly need to be brought up short. We need to be recalibrated. We need to look at the world with refreshed eyes. So the point of the right kind of fantasy -- which is what these books most certainly are -- is not to tell lies about the world. The point is confront the ever present Doldrum Lie.

The Cupboards series was a triology. This Ashtown series is planned to cover five volumes, and the journey starts today.

"One, Two, Five!" "Three, M'Lord." "Three!"

Five Cities that Ruled the World: How Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and New York Shaped Global History by Douglas Wilson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This was just jolly fun (fun comes from the Anglo-Saxon, enjoyable probably from Latin, which I know thanks to this book). It takes Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London and New York and traces the impact that they've had (and are having) upon the world. I was actually quite surprised to find that London and New York (but especially London) were my favorite chapters. I'm typically an ancient history kind of guy, with the cynical and un-Chestertonian theory that anything not here now must have been more interesting than all the stuff that is here now (but I'm getting better). However, the glance through the Puritans, the founding of baseball, the constant fires, et al, was just delightful.

A few of the more priceless snippets:

(On the subject of the ten-year or fewer exile imposed by Athens on various citizens) "When we think of such a brutal custom, and we look at the range of prominent persons in our day who could perhaps benefit from this process, it fills us with a strange combination of civilized disapproval and pagan wistfulness."

"A leading figure in this philhellene movement was George Noel Gordon--the poet Lord Byron. When he came of age, he began leading a seriously dissipated life. This lifestyle had a number of results, but one of them was to create a deep desire to do something worthwhile."

"Abraham Lincoln's great phrase 'of the people, by the people, and for the people' is actually from Wycliffe."

"Those who believe that God predetermines everything are the most likely to think that the king or Congress doesn't predestine anything."

"This is not to say that the war (of American independence) was over purely religious issues. It is to say that religion in that day was understood in such a way as to permeate all issues much more completely."

"One of the comforting things is that in the long run, stupidity doesn't work."


And these are just his. Wilson has so prodigious a knowledge of random sayings and quotations from everyone, Ambrose Bierce to Robert E. Lee, Winston Churchill to Hannibal Barca, that you can count on getting dozens of great little sayings with which you may first impress your enemies, then bore your friends until they also are enemies that you may impress. Unless your friends are like me, in which case they'll listen with rapt attention, copying down the quotes that they might steal them at a later date.

So this book was solidly between a four and a five star read, what with the origins of baseball, the delights of long quotes of Milton, several of Churchill's juicier tidbits, and so, so, ever so much more. Reading this book solely for information would be like attending church for the central heating. It is a delight, and I highly recommend it.

Blessings,
Jesse Broussard



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To Beard or Not to Beard

Not the Cannibal

History of Hannibal by Jacob Abbott
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Well, this was actually quite disappointing. I probably went into this book with the wrong expectations, but I think I was justified in those expectations, and they were not even approached. Hannibal Barca, son of Hamilcar Barca, was a Carthaginian general of such brilliance that he is comparable to Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Pyrrhus of Epirus and Scipio Africanus (who became great studying Hannibal, and finally defeated him). Virtually every family in Rome lost a family member due to Hannibal in the fifteen years he spent occupying Italy like the Black Death, and had the Carthaginians supplied him with siege weapons (as he repeatedly requested), it is entirely possible (dare I say probable?) that he would have taken Rome itself. After all, he never lost a battle to the Romans in fifteen years of fighting them, and he was outnumbered in (almost?) every one of their conflicts. One of his battles is studied at West Point to this day as the greatest example of the deployment of troops in the history of warfare.

I was hoping for rundowns of his battles, his military strategy, his greatest victories and how they were achieved, armor and battle array, especially of Cannae: where Barca was outnumbered something like two to one, and yet it was the greatest defeat ever suffered by the Romans, who lost over 25% of their governing body in a matter of hours, and Cannae to this day is one of the bloodiest battles in human history. And I wanted to know exactly how the great Hannibal Barca, with all his elephants and heavy cavalry, was finally brought to bay by Scipio Africanus, and I didn't get a bit of it. Well, a bit. But it was preachy. "War is bad." Yeah, I know, but this guy was really good at it. That's what I was interested in.

To give a quick example: the fifteen years that he spent in Italy ravaging the countryside and decimating every single military force that the Romans could raise against him? It's mentioned in a phrase: it doesn't even earn a full sentence, just a phrase. We get a bit of depth in a couple of battles, but no detail of strategy: we are told that people hacked each other to pieces for hours, and then this side won. We are told that Hannibal was cunning, and we're given a couple of political strategies that he employed to great effect. Political strategies? The man successfully won battles (rather incessantly) for fifteen years, and to demonstrate his cunning, Abbott resorts to his politics? We're told that he was ruthless, and we're given no examples. Not a one. We are given multiple (often accidental) examples of his generosity, and we are assured that it must have served a political purpose; see the aforementioned (still undemonstrated) ruthlessness. Superstitions of the time are mocked, and a modern materialistic view of the world is superimposed upon the ancients, and even some of the more probable events of the time are questioned as being highly suspect.

Basically, I felt like Abbott had some deep-seated personal grudge against Hannibal, and wrote this biography as a chance to lambast him. "Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography." Well, Hannibal Barca was not recent, but this seems to apply quite aptly. So, I've got to say that this was an extremely poor biography of Hannibal if you're looking for any military strategy at all. But it was fully accurate (from a modern's point of view) on all it touched.

One conversation that was related, which was for me the high point of the book (and by the time it was related I would have put money down that it wouldn't have been) was between Hannibal and Scipio, long after their battle against each other (where Hannibal was destroyed by the great Scipio Africanus). In the conversation, military strategy naturally came up, and Scipio asked Hannibal who he considered to be the greatest military genius (clearly angling for a compliment, possibly for a well-deserved compliment). Hannibal responded that Alexander the Great was. Not pleased, but probably not surprised, Scipio asked who the second was. Hannibal responded with Pyrrhus of Epirus, due to his ability to make his soldiers and the inhabitants of conquered lands love him. Scipio then asked who was third, and Hannibal said something along the lines of, "well, that would be me." Deeply offended, Scipio sarcastically asked how Hannibal would have ranked himself if he had managed to defeat the lowly Scipio Africanus. Hannibal then responded, rather surprised, with one of my favorite answers of all time: that had he beat Scipio, he would have had no choice, but would have been by honesty compelled to place himself above even Alexander the Great of Macedon as the greatest military genius of all time.

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Ashtown Burials

This is a trailer for N. D. Wilson's next book, starring the Super 8 star Joel Courtney.

Enjoy.

And I the Lord Have Not Done it?

Death in the City by Francis A. Schaeffer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


My favorite section in this book was a single throwaway paragraph in which he commented on Cantica Canticorum, the Song of Songs. Overall I was surprised with how readable he is: I was expecting more of an erudite, even an elitist tone, but he would have been perfectly intelligible to anyone. He speaks from a tremendous compassion, and there is in him a humility so vast that you almost don't recognize the depth of genius behind it. Almost. Yet for all of this, he has a simple, stark, prophetic view of our culture and its relation to God that is on the knife edge of desolation.

He would have been an astonishing man to know: to see so great a genius bent in such humility, in such tenderness lowered down to the most shattered of the lives God made. This was not a man who wrote from his ivory tower, but from the filthy, smoldering ruin; his arms bloody to the shoulders. "The hippies also speak of love, but they have made Haight-Ashbury a desert," and "Orthodoxy without compassion stinks to God."

As this is the first Schaeffer that I've read, I can't say with certainty, but I would guess this to be a decent introduction. It's comprised of lectures, and while it isn't Augustin's Confessions, it isn't like wading through deep mud either. I did very much like it, and am greatly looking forward to the next time I lift him off my shelf.

"How can we speak of judgment and yet not stand like the weeping prophet with tears?"



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Why Do the Heathen Nations Rage?

The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith by Peter Hitchens

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Peter Hitchens can write. His prose in this autobiographical journey from atheism to faith is at times elegant, precise, poignant, poetic, mystical and melancholy, and is almost universally exquisite. This book was like candy. Yes, "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly," but it's so refreshing to encounter someone that does it well. Here are a few samples of what I mean.


"It is my belief that passions as strong as his are more likely to be countered by the unexpected force of poetry, which can ambush the human heart at any time."

"It was illustrated with soppy pictures of Christ looking--in C. S. Lewis's potent sneer at stained-glass sentimentality--"like a consumptive girl."

"Unlike Christians, atheists have a high opinion of their own virtue."

"There were other things too. During a short spell at a cathedral choir school (not as a choirboy, since I sing like a donkey) I had experienced the intense beauty of the ancient Anglican chants, spiraling up into chilly stone vaults at Evensong... The prehistoric, mysterious poetry of the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis, perhaps a melancholy evening hymn, and the cold, ancient laments and curses of the Psalms, as the unique slow dusk of England gathers outside and inside the echoing, haunted, impossibly old building are extraordinarily potent. If you welcome them, they have an astonishing power to reassure and comfort. If you suspect or mistrust them, they will alarm and repel you like a strong and unwanted magic, something to flee from before it takes hold."

"My own confirmation, by contrast, was a miserable modern-language affair with all the poetic force of a driving test..."

"Utopia can only ever be reached across a sea of blood."

"The delusion of revolutionary progress, and the ruthlessness it justifies, survives any amount of experience."


So yeah, I was fond of this book. But more than just his voice when writing, his organization and progression through his experience and his understanding of the surrounding events is clear and extremely insightful. It is, in a word, a delightful book: it is not often that a book on this type of topic this feels more like a reward than a duty, but this is that rare one, and I highly recommend it.



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Smart Cat Says Dumb

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is definitely a 3.4 star book. A very quick read: I finished it in a good bit less than an hour of actual reading, and it's easily worth ten times that. It is tremendously subversive, and in a very wholesome way.

The author, John Taylor Gatto, is a fairly big deal in the NY state school system--Teacher of the Year and all that jazz--and his thesis is that our school system actually hinders learning. One of the analogies that he uses is the difference between a painter and a sculptor: a painter puts something on a canvas, and we view education this way. A sculptor takes away the obstacles, as Michaelangelo reputedly said, a sculptor "liberates" what is within the stone, and this is how we should view education. A teacher's job is not to fill the student's head with facts, but rather to facilitate their desire and ability to learn.

Which, to a great extent is true. And he goes back further than this; he goes back to the seven things that all teachers teach children and what the ramifications of these things are, and he carries it out further than this; he carries it out to what needs to happen to actually change the school system as it is. And this is why it is closer to three stars than to four in my mind: while it is extremely insightful and absolutely essential for anyone interested in education to, at the very least, encounter, it is operating within the framework of the public school system.

And he understands this system: he goes back to Horace Mann and he truly and profoundly knows what he's dealing with, but he thinks it can be saved, while I think it's invention was a catastrophic event the likes of which the American world will never see again. It is the single damning weakness of our nation: it has created a generational gap, ripping (indeed, aborting, as it were) the children from the wombs of their parents long before they were ready to be on their own, thus depriving them of all of the wisdom and truth that their parents possessed. And to fill the void that is created? What is it that replaces the discipline and culture of a family? A lowest common denominator cookie-cutter classroom run by teachers that typically look at our children as the one thing standing between them and a couple stiff martinis (you know the ones I mean, straight out of a Pink Floyd song). So we foster this mental infanticide, and the most influential thing that many a mother will ever say to her son is "I'll see you after school, honey," and all of this simply because we live within the failed experiment and view it as the natural state of affairs.

But in any case, Gatto sees the failure of the system in a way that very few people do. This book is a necessary read to understand how the government schools fail our children.



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Thanks to the Valkyrie

Jane Austen by Peter J. Leithart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was fascinating, and in some ways kind of an exposé. I'm actually quite delighted by the fact that the far-inferior Bronte's really didn't like Austen at all. Especially as I know several people that always mix up who wrote what, which is simply inconceivable to me. It's like asking who wrote King Lear: Edward de Vere as Shakespeare or Stephanie Meyer.



What I chiefly had not known was the depth of her religious conviction. If you read the books, you get glimpses of it. Very little of that survives the screenwriters (if any), and it's typically forgotten. But this is a woman whose last words were "God grant me patience. Pray for me, oh pray for me."



She was delightful, flippant, lively, witty and at times downright savage in her prose. Consider a few examples. When a woman gave birth, or 'was brought to bed' untimely due to a fright, Austen speculated "I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband." Or in a letter to her sister, she commented "Expect a most agreeable Letter for not being overburdened with subject--(having nothing at all to say)--I shall have no check to my Genius from beginning to end." In what ended up being one of my favorite sections of Leithart's book, he quotes her as having said that she (and I quote): "attended the theater to see Don Juan, 'whom we left in Hell at 1/2 past 11.' One home was full of 'modern Elegancies,' but lacked an air of seriousness: 'if it had not been for some naked Cupids over the Mantlepiece, which must be a fine study for Girls, one should never have Smelt Instruction.' "



Not exactly the Austen that most people describe: far more vivacious, far less Victorian prudishness, let alone Edwardian weirdness that has been attributed to her as of late. She was a good deal more like Eliza Bennett than we typically seem to think, delighted and amused by the folly of others, and not the first person you'd want to cross swords with in the dinner-time chatter.



So this was a great book, an especially fine read after just going through her novels. Also, I was called in to arbitrate as to which was better: Persuasion or Northanger Abbey. In an attempt to avoid being slain by a very diminutive, Chesterton loving girl, I shall gladly (and nervously) say that Persuasion is Austen's finest serious novel, but of all her books (which is to say, of all her heroines), the one I'll return to most often out of a simple, childlike affection will be the lovely Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey.



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My New Diet

I'm now adopting a strict diet--a very strict diet in fact. I'm limiting myself to food. Here's how.

Smirking

From Wilson (the older than two generations below him and younger than one above): "And as for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution? Ah, t'would be glory. To borrow a line from somebody (I forget who), once the debate started, we would have the special treat of watching all the big spenders of Congress standing in front of microphones, cameras rolling, and all of them sweating like Mike Tyson at a spelling bee. After that, the Lord could take me home anytime. I will have lived a full life."

Bunter the Beloved

Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers by Dorothy L. Sayers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Well this was a jolly little romp. A great deal of Bunter, which always makes me happy, and Wimsey got a nice Folio Dante, which makes me jealous. All in all a rather typical (and therefore pleasant) little mystery by Sayers. Great fun.



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The George Shall Smile

Wicked Bugs by Amy Stewart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I feel like the wine taster at the wedding in Cana: the best was saved for last. The best, in this case, being zombie bugs, bugs that take over an unwilling host (such as a cockroach, grasshopper, snail, etc) and use it for their own nefarious purposes, such as turning its antennae iridescent colours and waving them around to attract the nearby Nazgul, or perhaps causing grasshoppers, drunk with vino del mar, to fall violently in love with a particular passing fish. Alas, leaping to the water like Jean Valjean does not preserve them from perishing in it like Agamemmnon: they can't swim, and die in a bliss of ardent, wet-gilled fervour, doubtlessly delivering poignant love poems with their last breaths. Of particular warm and fuzzy feelings for me, who have peeled back ceilings and watched them scurry away, opened ovens to the sight of cockroaches two inches deep, and found the scientific way (trial and error) that a roach's head is entirely unnecessary to the survival of the rest of the roach (for a few days, anyway: plenty of time to reproduce) is the delightful insect that stings a roach, then inserts its stinger into the temporarily immobilized roach's brain, and then, steering via the antennae, walks the now docile behemoth back to its own home like it was leading an elephant, where it lays its larvae on the roach's abdomen. They proceed to eat the roach from the inside out, turning it into a disposable incubator, and I applaud them.

Other, more well-adjusted humans will probably loathe this book. But those of us that delight in the misery of others, or at least those who can find admiration for their creative methods of dying--seriously, how many autopsies come back with "caterpillar" filled in under "cause of death?" That's impressive--those humans like me, in other words, will greatly enjoy this book. In fact, we'll probably convince our roommates to bathe in raid and never leave the home (safe save for bedbugs, the lice that killed half of Napoleon's army, the black-widow's kiss of death, and numerous other delights).

As it is a dictionary of types, it's not the smoothest read. But who cares? It's not a novel, it's a catalogue of ants whose bites resemble gunshot wounds, of black flies that kill animals by the tens of thousands, of parasites that through itching inspire suicide, of bugs that shoot acid at the rate of a heavy machine-gun, even of a super-society of Argentine ants stretching from San Diego to Eureka, Ca. And as such it is awesome. Enough to raise up a new generation of entomologists, who can then write more books like this one, inspiring the Jesse to heights of ecstasy as yet uninspired by aught but bugs.



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Oh, Udolfo...

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


My one complaint about this book would have to be its length: there's not nearly enough of it. But, I'd often wondered exactly what a book written from Jane Bennet's perspective would be like, and now I think I have have a fairly decent idea.



Catherine is a sweet, naive girl who tends to believe too much in the innate goodness of all people that she loves, and too much in the necessity of the villains of her Gothic novels. But she is only seventeen, after all, though she turns eighteen somewhere in the book.



This read almost like Austen was simply idly amusing herself in the writing of it. I was two chapters from the end and wondering how she was going to tie it all together when out of the blue the omniscient narrator suddenly begins a conversation with the reader.



Most of the book was lighter and more flippant than her others, but of all her heroes, I have to say I've now put Henry Tilney right toward the top of the list, and of her heroines, I kind of like Catherine. She's a bit of a ditz, but such a sweet, dewy eyed ditz that you can't help but feel a bit protective of her, like you want to cloister her away from the big bad world so she can remain a naive seventeen year old forever.



Anyway, great fun, and more overtly fun than any of her others to date.

Also, it's just delightful to have an Austen heroine reading a Bronte novel, and thus to get a rather hilarious book review by Austen herself...



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Wildebeest and Eagle

When this baby wildebeest becomes a grandfather, he's going to be the most annoying grandfather in the world, always going on about the time that he got attacked by lions and crocodiles at the same time. But I think he's earned it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM


And then of course, my favorite bird on earth, just because of what it can do: the Golden Eagle.


First, it can kill a goat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XafAdkZIYKA


But the way it brings down a deer is simply unreal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAsXtDKdU0Q&feature=related


Enjoy.

Pretty Much Sums it Up.

http://www.tobyjsumpter.com/a-cautionary-tale/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HavingTwoLegs+%28Having+Two+Legs%29

Rachel Jankovic via Piper

Rachel Jankovic is Doug Wilson's youngest daughter, and she wrote a magnificent piece on motherhood that is posted on Piper's website.

Enjoy.


Motherhood Is a Calling (And Where Your Children Rank)
July 14, 2011 | by: Rachel Jankovic | Category: Commentary
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A few years ago, when I just had four children and when the oldest was still three, I loaded them all up to go on a walk. After the final sippy cup had found a place and we were ready to go, my two-year-old turned to me and said, “Wow! You have your hands full!”

She could have just as well said, “Don’t you know what causes that?” or “Are they all yours?!”

Everywhere you go, people want to talk about your children. Why you shouldn’t have had them, how you could have prevented them, and why they would never do what you have done. They want to make sure you know that you won’t be smiling anymore when they are teenagers. All this at the grocery store, in line, while your children listen.

A Rock-Bottom Job?

The truth is that years ago, before this generation of mothers was even born, our society decided where children rank in the list of important things. When abortion was legalized, we wrote it into law.

Children rank way below college. Below world travel for sure. Below the ability to go out at night at your leisure. Below honing your body at the gym. Below any job you may have or hope to get. In fact, children rate below your desire to sit around and pick your toes, if that is what you want to do. Below everything. Children are the last thing you should ever spend your time doing.

If you grew up in this culture, it is very hard to get a biblical perspective on motherhood, to think like a free Christian woman about your life, your children. How much have we listened to partial truths and half lies? Do we believe that we want children because there is some biological urge, or the phantom “baby itch”? Are we really in this because of cute little clothes and photo opportunities? Is motherhood a rock-bottom job for those who can’t do more, or those who are satisfied with drudgery? If so, what were we thinking?

It's Not a Hobby

Motherhood is not a hobby, it is a calling. You do not collect children because you find them cuter than stamps. It is not something to do if you can squeeze the time in. It is what God gave you time for.

Christian mothers carry their children in hostile territory. When you are in public with them, you are standing with, and defending, the objects of cultural dislike. You are publicly testifying that you value what God values, and that you refuse to value what the world values. You stand with the defenseless and in front of the needy. You represent everything that our culture hates, because you represent laying down your life for another—and laying down your life for another represents the gospel.

Our culture is simply afraid of death. Laying down your own life, in any way, is terrifying. Strangely, it is that fear that drives the abortion industry: fear that your dreams will die, that your future will die, that your freedom will die—and trying to escape that death by running into the arms of death.

Run to the Cross

But a Christian should have a different paradigm. We should run to to the cross. To death. So lay down your hopes. Lay down your future. Lay down your petty annoyances. Lay down your desire to be recognized. Lay down your fussiness at your children. Lay down your perfectly clean house. Lay down your grievances about the life you are living. Lay down the imaginary life you could have had by yourself. Let it go.

Death to yourself is not the end of the story. We, of all people, ought to know what follows death. The Christian life is resurrection life, life that cannot be contained by death, the kind of life that is only possible when you have been to the cross and back.

The Bible is clear about the value of children. Jesus loved them, and we are commanded to love them, to bring them up in the nurture of the Lord. We are to imitate God and take pleasure in our children.

The Question Is How

The question here is not whether you are representing the gospel, it is how you are representing it. Have you given your life to your children resentfully? Do you tally every thing you do for them like a loan shark tallies debts? Or do you give them life the way God gave it to us—freely?

It isn’t enough to pretend. You might fool a few people. That person in line at the store might believe you when you plaster on a fake smile, but your children won’t. They know exactly where they stand with you. They know the things that you rate above them. They know everything you resent and hold against them. They know that you faked a cheerful answer to that lady, only to whisper threats or bark at them in the car.

Children know the difference between a mother who is saving face to a stranger and a mother who defends their life and their worth with her smile, her love, and her absolute loyalty.

Hands Full of Good Things

When my little girl told me, “Your hands are full!” I was so thankful that she already knew what my answer would be. It was the same one that I always gave: “Yes they are—full of good things!”

Live the gospel in the things that no one sees. Sacrifice for your children in places that only they will know about. Put their value ahead of yours. Grow them up in the clean air of gospel living. Your testimony to the gospel in the little details of your life is more valuable to them than you can imagine. If you tell them the gospel, but live to yourself, they will never believe it. Give your life for theirs every day, joyfully. Lay down pettiness. Lay down fussiness. Lay down resentment about the dishes, about the laundry, about how no one knows how hard you work.

Stop clinging to yourself and cling to the cross. There is more joy and more life and more laughter on the other side of death than you can possibly carry alone.

Rachel Jankovic is a wife, homemaker, and mother. She is the author of "Loving the Little Years" and blogs at Femina. Her husband is Luke, and they have five children: Evangeline (5), Daphne (4), Chloe (2), Titus (2), and Blaire (5 months).