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Sire, the night is darker now
Dec. 27th, 2010 01:35 am
Currently at Toronto Pearson: -10. High today: -6.
I wanted to tell you all last week about the craziest weather thing I have ever seen: an area of low pressure crossed the middle of the continent from west to east, as they do, turned left at the Maritimes, as they often do, and then backed up into northern Quebec, as the one before it did, once again cranking up the lake-effect snow in a once-in-a-lifetime but twice-in-a-month way--and then proceeded to back all the way across James Bay and across Manitoba before dying out in the Northwest Territories. And that is the craziest weather thing I have ever seen.
I see it has been three years since I have brought my Christmas despair here. That's kind of surprising. It's been more years than that since I last went to the late Christmas Eve service at my old church, as I did this year. I'd say it's become almost completely worthless, but, eh, maybe it's just me. Oh wait, no, the sermon made up of facebook comments was not just me.
It is, as it happens, merely coincidence that I went to church on Christmas Eve after having read Paul Tillich for the first time the week before, but I guess it might not have been. (Something I was also reading last week, for my philosophy of religion class next term, was about the controversy over whether God has "middle knowledge", which is the strangely undescriptive term theologians have for knowledge of counterfactuals. If God has middle knowledge, then God knows whether or not it actually could have been the case that my going to church after reading Paul Tillich for the first time was not merely coincidental. Um.) Fortunately we Anglicans always have John 1:1-14, which I would say is Christianity distilled, for the Christmas gospel reading. The "light" part I like. The "word" part concerns me. (Of course, it's unfortunate that the word logos there has only ever been translated as "word"--but what else would you translate it as? "Logic" would be better, if you could massage it into the appropriately expansive meaning.) The creation part I'm afraid is just confusion (and makes me think again that I ought to look into some sort of Gnosticism one of these days).
You know, it strikes me that with light, logos, and creation, the opening of the gospel of John has all three of the senses of being you can identify with Heidegger: the shining of beings' being-unto-us; the way in which beings in general are; and the existence of entities. Huh. Is this anything? Everyone dwells on the creation and the word, but for me, the thing by far most needful is to dwell on the light.
I wanted to tell you all last week about the craziest weather thing I have ever seen: an area of low pressure crossed the middle of the continent from west to east, as they do, turned left at the Maritimes, as they often do, and then backed up into northern Quebec, as the one before it did, once again cranking up the lake-effect snow in a once-in-a-lifetime but twice-in-a-month way--and then proceeded to back all the way across James Bay and across Manitoba before dying out in the Northwest Territories. And that is the craziest weather thing I have ever seen.
I see it has been three years since I have brought my Christmas despair here. That's kind of surprising. It's been more years than that since I last went to the late Christmas Eve service at my old church, as I did this year. I'd say it's become almost completely worthless, but, eh, maybe it's just me. Oh wait, no, the sermon made up of facebook comments was not just me.
It is, as it happens, merely coincidence that I went to church on Christmas Eve after having read Paul Tillich for the first time the week before, but I guess it might not have been. (Something I was also reading last week, for my philosophy of religion class next term, was about the controversy over whether God has "middle knowledge", which is the strangely undescriptive term theologians have for knowledge of counterfactuals. If God has middle knowledge, then God knows whether or not it actually could have been the case that my going to church after reading Paul Tillich for the first time was not merely coincidental. Um.) Fortunately we Anglicans always have John 1:1-14, which I would say is Christianity distilled, for the Christmas gospel reading. The "light" part I like. The "word" part concerns me. (Of course, it's unfortunate that the word logos there has only ever been translated as "word"--but what else would you translate it as? "Logic" would be better, if you could massage it into the appropriately expansive meaning.) The creation part I'm afraid is just confusion (and makes me think again that I ought to look into some sort of Gnosticism one of these days).
You know, it strikes me that with light, logos, and creation, the opening of the gospel of John has all three of the senses of being you can identify with Heidegger: the shining of beings' being-unto-us; the way in which beings in general are; and the existence of entities. Huh. Is this anything? Everyone dwells on the creation and the word, but for me, the thing by far most needful is to dwell on the light.
