Recent (Good) Reads

Seventy-Seven Clocks, Christopher Fowler (British mystery) The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, Maryrose Wood (kid lit) Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl, N. D. Wilson (theological musings) Ten Second Staircase, Christopher Fowler (British mystery) Keeper, Kathi Appelt (kid lit) The Chestnut King, N. D. Wilson (fantasy)

Fall Highs

1. Trying out some of the hikes in AMC's Best Day Hikes in Connecticut
2. Finding my way home again, despite washed out bridges & unblazed trails
3. A used book sale across the street from my apartment
4. Frequent library visits
5. Scads of books, wedged in my bookshelves and piled on my dresser
6. Watching episodes of Avonlea on scratchy library dvd's
7. Jog/walking
8. Kids' Club
9. Pirate vs Ninja raking and volleyball
10. Leadership Core back at my apartment
11. Fabulous fall weather
12. Breathtaking sunsets and sunrises
13. Windows that open
14. Listening to Bill Mallonee bootlegs
15. Not studying

The Scandal of Particularity

The scandal of particularity is a still broader notion, for it includes the understanding that God is at work is certain very specific times and places and ways to accomplish His will. The Christian faith is not a religion of spiritual truths, of moral or inner principles by which one ought to (or even may) live. It is the claim, radical in the ancient world and still more radical today, that God has reached into human history to do those things necessary to restore the relationship between Himself and us that our first ancestors shattered, and which still divide us from Him. This scandal of particularity is at the heart of the claims of the Bible to historicity, and make it fundamentally different from every other religion on earth. -David Adams (quoted here).

Yeast

In the Passover, in the old way, the house was to be purified, every yeast germ removed. Long codes of purification were handed out to characters then, characters in those early chapters. Shellfish tainted you. Polyester tainted you. Foreskins tainted you. Human holiness was fragile in those days.

Things have changed...

Leave the yeast. Be the yeast. Do not fear the shadowy places. You will never be the first one there. Another went ahead and down until He came out the other side.

-N. D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl, 155.

Oreo

In this way Penelope's happy and sad feelings got all mixed up together, until they were not unlike one of those delicious cookies they have nowadays, the ones with a flat circle of sugary cream sandwiched between two chocolate-flavored wafers. In her heart she felt a soft, hidden core of sweet melancholy nestled inside crisp outer layers of joy...

-Maryrose Wood, The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, 175.

Pearly Gates

I do not doubt that whatever gates there may be, they will be pearly. But I know how pearls are made. Do you? In Heaven, the gates will be made of oyster spit.

Exercise: Envision those oysters.

-N. D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl, 155.