End of the Year Recap...in Pictures!

So where to start with pictures?
January was so long ago, I can't remember what I did, and then there was February and March, then April and May. June followed closely by July and August. I remember some of September and November. December I remember Christmas and something about a cruise. ANYWAY..here is a recap of some of the events of 2007 in pictures. If I messed on some of the dates, oh well, it is my blog and I can do as I wish! ENJOY!
Spring finds me in the back yard taking pictures..so, here is the glass wind chime:



the yard all set up for a gathering of friends:



Me looking for friends in Italy:



Me lost in Italy!



Ahhh July in Philly and looking at the Liberty Bell!



July also means FRESH BACKYARD PEACHES!!



A new member of the family...SweetTea

(Photo by Cathy)


and a jealous onlooker, Weinette



September was Cathy's Surprise Birthday Party!

(Photo by Cathy)


November was Thanksgiving and the gathering of the Grey Head Drinkers:

(Photo by Cathy)


December found the end of an era!



and the beginning of a new Era!



And to end the year...our Cruise


Many things to give thanks for and many things to be grateful for. I hope you have enjoyed the pictures this year and I look forward to more pictures and writing in 2008!

Almost Christmas

Well it is close enough to say Merry Christmas, as I am sure I will be busy enough tomorrow and may not be able to post. So, from our house to yours, we wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year as well!

For those who do not know, that is Sweet Tea that Cathy is holding. She, Sweet Tea, is celebrating her first Christmas with us. Weinett has taken to her quite well and they are a loving pair who enjoy playing and running about like weenie dogs.

Cruising in Mexican Waters

We got back Saturday from our Mexican cruise. It was a LOT of fun and we all enjoyed the trip. Here are some shots to show what we all saw! Where to start? Ok, Cathy in Puerto Vallarta:


Of course me doing the "Captain Morgan Stance"!


All of on the catamaran in Cabo,


Sunrise in Mazatlan:


Sunset at sea. (in case you can't read the picture!)


and what trip would be complete without a FLOWER picture!

December already!

So, it is already the 2nd of December and here we are getting ready for the end of the year and the beginning of 2008! My how time flies when you are alive! I bet if I was dead, I wouldn't even know or CARE what year or month it was. ANYWAY...a bit more serious here, November passed and with it Thanksgiving. Below are pictures from the backyard from Thanks giving as well as from inside the house.

The winter flowers are doing well and the bees are still about. These are snapdragons and the bees are really busy here!



I really do not know the name of this, but when in college we referred to them as "wild camellias", in that they are like wild roses with few petals and full of pollen. In any event, here is our rendition of the flower.


But inside the house there were also flowers! Cathy bought two bouquets from Costco (where else to shop you may ask?)and David arranged them in this styrofoam "pumpkin" we bought. They were a GREAT center piece for the serving table!


Also, after Thanks giving I had to return Duain to Santa Cruz. What a beautiful day it was and there for my picture snapping enjoyment was:


Lastly, not all are pretty pictures of flowers. This year we erected a flagpole in the front yard. Cathy and I thought it would be nice to fly our American Flag and honor our fathers, who both served in the US Armed Forces. I had a nice piece of granite and called a friend, Mark. His children had attended Howard School where I taught previously, and they, the family, make memorial stones. After a few proofs and ideas, we had he and his wife execute a memorial for our fathers. So to both of our fathers, we dedicated our flag pole and our flags that we fly.

Autumn

I enjoy the change of the seasons, well as close to a change as you can get here in the Central Valley of California. It isn't so much of a change, as the heat lets up and the cold starts. I enjoy the colors and the feel of the chill in the morning. Maybe not the COLD of the morning, but the brisk chill is nice. Winter has a feel and a smell all its own in the valley. The strong scent of leaves as they lay upon the ground and the change from BBQ smells to fireplace smells.

I do miss summer, and the longer days. I miss sitting outside and looking at flowers in bright full bloom. The winter flowers just don't shine with the green of summer. So as a last look at summer, before winter really sets in in, here is a last look at some unpublished pictures from this summer.


Though they are small, they are colorful. The sad part is they just weren't too sweet!


These will do so much better this coming year! I expect a LOT of pictures of them in 2008!


These did a lot better this year. I hope to plant more and get a full set of color from them!

Apokatastasis

Apokatastasis. What a wonderful language Greek is. I wish I spoke it or at least was able to read it. I am left with just a smattering of words and their meanings, and then only in the Latin alphabet at that. Yet, from what I can see, Greek is a language of defined and specific words. Words that can only be taken in one meaning and carry a significance with just the use of the word.

It takes me back to Umberto Eco's work "The Search for the Perfect Language". Yet according to Eco and his research, the perfect language of the Western World was to have been Hebrew. For it was in Hebrew that God spoke to Adam, Jacob and Moses. Or so the scriptures say. An interesting idea, especially since I have been engaged in a book on St. Jerome and his work in translating from "Hebrew" to Latin the books of the bible. (I use quotes, because it seems a lot of the translations he has used are from Origen, though the commentaries on the scriptures are mostly the work of Jerome)

I also find that the idea or understanding that Jerome has of the scriptures is strongly based in the teaching and the skills of Origen. Yet to actually know what Origen taught is almost impossible. To borrow liberally from another source "One of the main difficulties in studying Origen [is] the necessity of examining all the works that we possess before asserting anything at all about him."[Crouzel, Henri. Origen. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, Ltd., 1985 (French), 1989 (Authorised English Translation by Worrall, A.S.)] This as you can see would be a major task, as few of the works of Origen are in English. When I left Christian Brothers High School in 1970, I had just completed Latin II, when I arrived at Marello Prep, they did not offer Latin, so I took Spanish. Alas, I lack the current skill.

What I have read about Origen has led me to think about him differently. Also the two books I have completed on how books were written in the early 3oo-400AD time period has also led me to see what is "written" is not always what was. Origen wrote ideas, not necessarily exactly what he believed. The fear of being called a heretic, or worse being excommunicated, was a real and major concern for many. From Augustine in his writings asserting that he is anything but a Manachian, to Jerome swearing he was not part of the Origenist Heresy are two examples.

I need to say that I have not abandoned my attempt to understand predestination, this is all part of the journey that I am on. You see, Origen had some ideas about God that would make all the ideas of predestination moot. I see some errors in his understanding of the pre-existence of souls, but if they pre-existed in the mind of God, does not mean they existed as individual realities. I know Aquinas says that "thoughts" in the mind of God are realities, but he also says that we can project onto the creator from the created, and we think, and we have ideas, but they are not realities. God may also have ideas that he does not intend to be created at a given moment in time.

Once I get past this hurdle I may be on to the next. I am glad this is not a sprint, but a long and arduous walk. I see how easily error and pitfalls could become one in this game of thinking. I do how ever have a soft spot in my heart for the idea of apokatastasis. This word, which I started with, means a coming to full circle in the end of time. God brings back all his creation to Himself. You see, predestination would be moot, but first again I need to see what Origen meant by this pre-existence of souls.

So, to whom do I turn, yet another man who was run from his Episcopate and was a follower of Origen and used his ideas in his sermons, St. John Chrysostom. Alas I must await for that book to arrive and be read, then I must mull those ideas and see how they all fit into this puzzle. I read some of the sermons of John years ago, but I want to know how he formed his ideas, then I can see how he looked at Origen and how he got around most of the Origenist Heresy. (If there was a heresy at all with Origen! I am beginning to question that. I mean, maybe "what we have here is a failure to communicate" to borrow from the line in Cool Hand Luke.)

The 11th hour of the 11 day of the 11 month

Harry Patch, 109, is the last survivor of the trenches in WWI. He fought in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, which is now part of The Rifles. members of the current regiment meet Harry the day before Remembrance Sunday.






Words fail me....

Animal Man vs. Animal Human

One of the first issues I need to clarify before I can address predestination head on, is creation itself. This may be an absurd idea to discuss, since most who read this already accept the fact that the story of Creation, as presented in Genesis, is a retelling of a theological truth, not of a physical, scientific creation. Allow me to explain that in more detail below.

"In the beginning there was God." A simple sentence that is potent in power and image. It states, through language what is a difficult idea to grasp, that God was present "In the beginning" of all things. God pre-exist time. I know we all know that, that God is eternal, but that is unique in the world in which Genesis was written. You see, at that time, about 4500 years ago (2500BC), most societies believed that the world was eternal and the gods arose from the earth.

In most creation stories of the time, the god creates from the earth, using elements already present. In Genesis we are presented with two forms of creation, one where God creates by word (in Greek, logos) and in another where he forms man from the clay of the earth BUT breaths into him the "breath of life, thus man became a living being". In both aspect of Genesis, God is the one who creates.

The second account is to me the most divinely inspired of the two. I do believe that Scripture is inspired, definitely not in the same way as a fundamentalist does, but I do believe that what was written expresses a divine truth. I believe that scripture is allegoric in many respects and as especially applied to the Old Testament, written as a religious history after the fact. Origin also believed in this allegoric approach to scripture. He saw the Old Testament solely as allegorical to what would come in the New Testament. As to why there are two accounts of creation in Genesis I will say but this, there are many ways to express a truth and when the Hebrew people were writing their history, they had two traditions with which to deal. In order not to offend or to say that one tradition was better than another, and since they both proclaim the same truth (God creates) what difference does it matter how you tell the story? Both were thus included in the written history from the oral histories.

Returning to my understanding of the second account of creation, if we look at the idea of man rising from the clay of the earth as evolution, then we have the animal man. At some point in that event, God intervened in the process and gave that animal man a "living breath", a rational soul, that made that animal man a human person. That "living breath", to me is the allegory of the infusion of the rational soul into the animal, that made the animal human.

It is not part of the "earthly" or "material" world but a thing from the divine that makes us different from the animals about us. Our ability to think, reason and to choose is what makes us different, and in a way more responsible than other animals. The animal man preexists the animal human. As such, the animal man which had preexisted lived and died as all animals do still today. The living breath did not change the nature of the animal man, for all animals have a soul, it changed the dynamics of the soul. That soul now could reason, and could tell the difference between right and wrong behavior. That is something a irrational soul cannot do.

So, my fist step is made, man as animal man, predates man as animal human. Animal man with an irrational soul is different from the animal human with a rational soul. The "living breath" of the book of Genesis is more than soul, it is a rational soul, in the image of the Giver, who too is rational and chooses. This gift of rational knowledge was not given to all animals, but to a special animal called man, now known as human.

Where my mind leads me....

So with all the trips and events that make my life, you may think that I have ignored the question I started on a few months ago, “Predestination”. I have not. I mull ideas over and then I mull some more. I am always thinking, even when it seems I am just wasting time doing laundry or cleaning the house, which reminds me, I need to do real soon.

I have narrowed the question down and have developed and idea, though very nascent and far from clear even to me. Let me put it this way:

Origen, the great master of scriptures has some ideas about predestination that are not considered to be “kosher” (if I may borrow a term). He also is not a master in the theological understanding as the Catholic Church regards eternity. It is not so much his ideas, but what others have done with his ideas.

Augustine of Hippo has his ideas of predestination as well. His ideas however are a bit twisted as he gets around to this topic towards the end of his life. He is very concerned about his image and his standing as a great leader in the early church and as such defends his orthodox beliefs a bit too far, in a “I am more ‘Catholic’ in my teaching than you are” type of mode. He tends to go overboard in his teaching as a way of showing that he really isn’t a Manichæan Heretic.

Then there is my beloved Aquinas. Here he is trying to master and teach an idea that he has from Augustine, that is flawed, and unable to look at Origen’s ideas because he is “out of favor” at the time. He expounds upon the ideas of Augustine and sets what is an “opinion” of a major early father of the church, who is trying to defend his own “Catholic Credentials from assault, into stone.

This is NOT to say that others have not spoken to the idea since then, but all have referred back to Aquinas and/or Augustine. So what about Origin? For another post there, more research yet to be done before I step out and speak about his ideas. But the conundrum that has me is a simple one if I can get to the root.

The whole problem of Predestination rests on the “Original Sin” of Eve and Adam. The fact that the sin is generative, in that it passes from parent to child and is found in all humans, with the exception of the Virgin Mary, who was conceived without sin (the Immaculate Conception dogma of the late 19th century), is the sticking point. What is the Original Sin? What is “it”? Is it a flaw in the soul, in the creation of humanity? I would say no, because God does not create imperfection. So what is the sin, that a human could have committed, that is passed from mother to child? Is the “sin” a defect in the human soul or body?

If we accept the idea that God is an active participant in creation, meaning that he is not just a great baker who throws ingredients together and lets them mix and bake without another look, but a caring God who participates at points of History, then the idea of original sin takes on an even more different color.

I assume that most of us accept a modified understanding of evolution. Let me explain, I do not believe that this universe is a “by chance” happening. It is too vast to have just happened by accident. There is, and I use this phrase carefully, and intelligent being who is behind it all. (I am not calling for the teaching of Intelligent Design, as that is creationism and I do not believe in that) What I am saying is that their is a God, who has created laws of nature and physics and has allowed those laws to work. I also believe that the God does, at times unknown to us, interacts in those laws, but usually within those laws. I do not believe that a spiritual essence can evolve from a physical essence, thus at some point in the evolution of the human species, God has intervened and infused a spiritual essence into the human creature, which we commonly call a soul.

This blending of the the two essences is to me where we have what many call the original sin. INCOMPATIBILITY. As I would call it, a secondary cause. Without the infusion of a soul, the human animal cannot sin, as any irrational animal cannot sin.

Thus I am here at this point. I need to find a good translation of Origin’s works in English, as I am not able to handle it in any other language!

Philadelphia 2007

I was very lucky this year and was elected to attend the NEA convention in Philadelphia during the July 4th holiday. I spend long days at the Convention..YES I REALLY DID!...and some time with my wife doing tourist stuff! I would not bother you with pics from the NEA Convention, but I will with my tourist stuff!
This is Independence Hall all set up for a concert on July 4th.


Here it is again a day before the 4th. That must have been the 3rd..mmmmmm


Then of COURSE Betsy Ross' house and Ben. Franklin's Post Office!



Cathy at Penn's Landing. That is the Delaware River in the back and the opposite shore is New Jersey. A bit down river on the Jersey side is the decommissioned battleship New Jersey.


The Liberty Bell...from the outside looking in!

The side trips and side shows

We stopped at places between cities. I know from Assisi to Florence we stopped at a Castle that is owned by a gentleman who rents out rooms/suites for about 200 Euro a night. If there are four of you traveling, that works out to 50 Euro or about 63USD a night. Not bad considering the accommodations and that he ran a series of 5star restaurants in LA and Vail and other fine places. Here is view of the pool, and the tower in the back is a suite that is rented! Also a pic of me there!




And the young lady with the red flower was our tour guide, Barbara. This is she and a few of the students from another group walking away from the above mentioned castle through the main gate.


We stopped in Sienna, where of a lot of the door knockers that I posted earlier were shot. There is the street scene and one of me by a pillar that is used to mark off the race track for the "palio", a famous race that s held in Sienna every year.



Pompeii is always fun, here is a picture of me getting red again under the sun looking like I could blow my top before Mt. Vesuvius will! Also a road picture of the fine street building abilities of the Ancient Romans. I still believe that modern street construction could learn a lot from the Romans, such as FOUR FEET of sub structure instead of 2 feet which we use for far heavier vehicles and usage!


and some RANDOM SHOTS OF SILLINESS!

my lunch one day...anchovy stuffed peppers!

The view from my room in Serrento!

Sunrise over the new city of Assisi,

A nice place to sit and watch the world go by..a home patio in Assisi!

Capri

No, not the pants, the island of Capri. I had never been there before this trip. We left Rome and went to Pompeii and then spent the night in Sorrento. I had a private room that night, but the morning came early and we were off before 7AM to the Isle of Capri. We walked down this never ending set of stairs and then off to the ferry that would take us on the 45 minute ride from Sorrento to Capri. It was a wonderful day, sunny and bright, but a bit of haze in the air. Upon arrival, we left one ship and boarded a boat. I know the difference between a ship and a BOAT! The latter was a boat. In any event we sailed 3/4 the way around the Island and then back to harbor. From there we stood in line for about 45 minutes to take a tram to the top of the island where I could only WISH to own a residence or afford a hotel room. It was amazing! Here are some shots from the town at the top of the Island.....for those fine covered sidewalks, we have this:


For the shopper of the ULTRA fine goods we have this!


For the best in hotels and views, this!


For the city center, this.....


for the nature and scenic beauty lover...well, this is too much!


For the yachting readers, wait, does anyone I know own a yacht?..ANYWAY...


then leaving the fine island behind.....


I really enjoyed this day, I only wish I had prepared myself and covered myself in sunscreen...yes, the sun did its best to me the last day in Italy...I was scorched and hot and sweaty and ready for a LONG shower...but there was still an hour and a half sea voyage to Naples! And I choose to be topside and outside on the deck!
Oh well...at least the scenery was good and if the ship sank, I would be a steaming beacon of water to the rescue ship!