Saturday, September 12, 2009

Musings from my studies...

Philosophy: "Do the gods love piety because it is pious, or is it piety because they love it?" Applied to my life, does God love piety (or holiness) because it is holy, or is holiness holy because God loves it? Interesting question....is it really true, as Plato quotes Socrates as saying, that "the unexamined life is not worth living", or would it be better to "abandon all learning and there will be no sorrow"? Is my professor correct when he says, "when you desire and seek the wisdom of God, you will always receive monotony and frustration"? I do agree with Lao Tze, "tending to the state is like tending to a small fish, poke it too much and it disintegrates", though his famous "the path is where the woods are not" doesn't seem to apply much on the prairies.
Literature: Beginning with anonymous medieval songs, many of which have as many as 20 different translations handed down through history, we compare two main kinds of writing:
"lyric" (referring to a brief, first-person, poem expressing a state of mind or process of perception which is set to music)
"ballad" (epic, dramatic, third-person story sung to a typically illiterate audience)
I, for one, appreciate the deep brevity of this lyric called "Western Wind":
Western wind, when will thou blow,
the small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms,
and I in my bed again!
Perhaps this is merely because I'm still acclimating to Calgary's dry climate, wind and a new bed. ;)

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