I Hate To Be The Bearer Of Good News
Yesterday was President Obama's birthday. I know I referred to it at the end of yesterday's post, but he's only fifty-four and, looking at some recent photos of him, I can truly believe what I once read in Roger Elwood's novel Angelwalk -- that the presidency ages you faster than any other job in the world. I'm surprised anyone WANTS a second term, between the acclaim and the opprobrium.
But I digress. Though it does blow me away that the "leader of the free world" is only eleven years older than me. Today my mom Doris would be seventy-nine years old, twenty-five years older than him ... I could really use some advice from her now. Oh, I know my mom is in heaven looking down with Jesus seeing me write this. Her faith in the last twenty years or so of her life was so vital for her,
and I expect so intense -- it got hard to hold a conversation with her that did NOT come back to her Savior, her Lord, and her God -- that while I'm glad to have spent the time with my mom that I got to (I stayed in Florida where my dad was before I moved to North Dakota, so I didn't get to see mom as much before visiting Kentucky with Martha and then the kids) I felt walking on eggshells.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Genesis 1:3, containing the first spoken words in the Bible. (As opposed to the first WRITTEN words, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" two verses earlier.) There's a photo in my office that's a reproduction from photographer Ansel Adams' series Fiat Lux (the Latin form of those first spoken words) and I really like it. That phrase comes at the end of the last book I read,
and I'm not sure if it should unnerve me or not. Sure, Joanne M. Harris' novel The Gospel of Loki (ISBN 9781481449465) was a lot of fun to read, essentially presenting the big and small events of Norse (here in North Dakota, more often referred to as Norwegian) mythology, which if your only meeting with the god of mischief comes from the Marvel Comics version ...
well, you're not that far off. But there's a few R-rated events that happen as well and Loki is the one narrating the story, so all of this is from his perspective. Since he is also known as the god of lies, god of trickery, etc. you can't assume he is telling the full truth, from Odin calling him forth out of Chaos and bringing him into the fold of Asgard as a brother to the fall of the gods known as Ragnarok.
"The good end happily, and the bad end unhappily. That is what fiction means." Do you think Oscar Wilde would agree with me that Loki ending his narration with
And so I waited in darkness, and dreamed, and thought to myself:
Let there be light.
Let there be light.
Let there be . . .
is a precursor to, much as what we call Christianity today expanded into and overwhelmed present-day Europe from today's Middle East says that ... maybe ... LOKI is the God of this new cycle? Oh don't worry, I don't really believe that! But as I often say and often steal from Dead Poets Society, just when you think you know something you have to look at it a different way.
And now that today my kids SLEPT IN -- usually Sarah at least is up to see Martha off early to work and then stays up to watch or do something on her tablet -- and I pray she and Jeffrey will be better today, particularly since school starts for them three weeks from yesterday, I'm feeling as though I should take the time to do what needs to be done. Give my family and my God more face time.
For I love them, David
But I digress. Though it does blow me away that the "leader of the free world" is only eleven years older than me. Today my mom Doris would be seventy-nine years old, twenty-five years older than him ... I could really use some advice from her now. Oh, I know my mom is in heaven looking down with Jesus seeing me write this. Her faith in the last twenty years or so of her life was so vital for her,
and I expect so intense -- it got hard to hold a conversation with her that did NOT come back to her Savior, her Lord, and her God -- that while I'm glad to have spent the time with my mom that I got to (I stayed in Florida where my dad was before I moved to North Dakota, so I didn't get to see mom as much before visiting Kentucky with Martha and then the kids) I felt walking on eggshells.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Genesis 1:3, containing the first spoken words in the Bible. (As opposed to the first WRITTEN words, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" two verses earlier.) There's a photo in my office that's a reproduction from photographer Ansel Adams' series Fiat Lux (the Latin form of those first spoken words) and I really like it. That phrase comes at the end of the last book I read,
and I'm not sure if it should unnerve me or not. Sure, Joanne M. Harris' novel The Gospel of Loki (ISBN 9781481449465) was a lot of fun to read, essentially presenting the big and small events of Norse (here in North Dakota, more often referred to as Norwegian) mythology, which if your only meeting with the god of mischief comes from the Marvel Comics version ...
well, you're not that far off. But there's a few R-rated events that happen as well and Loki is the one narrating the story, so all of this is from his perspective. Since he is also known as the god of lies, god of trickery, etc. you can't assume he is telling the full truth, from Odin calling him forth out of Chaos and bringing him into the fold of Asgard as a brother to the fall of the gods known as Ragnarok.
"The good end happily, and the bad end unhappily. That is what fiction means." Do you think Oscar Wilde would agree with me that Loki ending his narration with
And so I waited in darkness, and dreamed, and thought to myself:
Let there be light.
Let there be light.
Let there be . . .
is a precursor to, much as what we call Christianity today expanded into and overwhelmed present-day Europe from today's Middle East says that ... maybe ... LOKI is the God of this new cycle? Oh don't worry, I don't really believe that! But as I often say and often steal from Dead Poets Society, just when you think you know something you have to look at it a different way.
And now that today my kids SLEPT IN -- usually Sarah at least is up to see Martha off early to work and then stays up to watch or do something on her tablet -- and I pray she and Jeffrey will be better today, particularly since school starts for them three weeks from yesterday, I'm feeling as though I should take the time to do what needs to be done. Give my family and my God more face time.
For I love them, David
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