Really good TED talk on humanity’s relationship with fire and how (as an animist might say) we have fallen out of right relationship with it. Pyne also has written a related book that looks interesting.
The Excesses of God
Robinson Jeffers
Is it not by his high superfluousness we know
Our God? For to equal a need
Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling
Rainbows over the rain
And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows
On the domes of deep sea-shells,
And make the necessary embrace of breeding
Beautiful also as fire,
Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom
Nor the birds without music:
There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,
The extravagant kindness, the fountain
Humanity can understand, and would flow likewise
If power and desire were perch-mates.
Wendell Berry, Another Day: Sabbath Poems, 2013-2023
The Given Life, part 3
After we left Springville church, we started attending Peerless Trinity Pentecostal Church. A digression: you’ll notice both of the churches so far include a reference to the Trinity in their name. The reason for this is to distinguish ourselves from the “Oneness” or “Apostolic” Pentecostals. I think we were close to the same numerically in our local area, but on any larger scale the Oneness Pentecostals outnumbered us significantly. Oneness Pentecostals are so named because they deny the Trinity.
The private property on the northeast side of Murray Forest is being logged. I’ve spent most of my time on the other side. However, my special spot is, I think, just over the line into private land and now I’m worried about its destruction.
Today at the historical society’s research library, we discovered that our house was built in 1908—two years earlier than we had been told.
Audit is officially over as of today. I’m started to feel normal after a weeklong cold. I’m off work next week. Things are looking up!
Will there still be old men sitting in restaurants at 6am drinking coffee and talking about nothing in particular by the time I’m old enough to join them?
Rachel has more or less finished the floor refinishing project. I think it looks wonderful! She also made herself a great reading corner.
I’ll be so glad when this election is over. I always resist writing about electoral politics because 1. what the hell do I know and 2. I hate the dread I feel after I do say something. Still, I wrote something yesterday and then woke up at 12:19am and deleted it. (Way too late, obviously.) Not that I said anything wrong. Basically, it’s bad practice to presume to peer into the inner workings of people you don’t actually know, despite the fact that everybody with internet access does it every damn day. Also, we have got to learn not to trust any opinion that gives us the pleasure of feeling superior. Those two sentences, removed from the context of our miserable godcursed politics, are the heart of what I wanted to say.