Speak, Memory

Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Publisher: Penguin

Date Published: Originally published under the title ‘Conclusive Evidence’ in America and ’Speak, Memory’ in England in 1951. This Penguin addition with additional ‘Chapter 16′ was published 2000.

Pages: 272

An Autobiography Revisited

‘Speak, memory’ said Vladimir Nabokov. And immediately a host of enchanting recollections came flooding back to him; of his comfortable childhood and adolescence, of his rich, liberal-minded father, his beautiful mother, an army of relations and family hangers-on and of grand old houses in St Petersburg and the surrounding countryside in pre-revolutionary Russia. Young love, butterflies, tutors and a multitude of other themes thread together to weave an autobiography which is itself a work of art.

‘Speak, Memory’ is the autobiographical memoir of Vladimir Nabokov, author of the infamous Lolita, and is set during the twilight era of the Russian Tsars and the uprising of the Bolshevists. His privileged childhood, the world of Russia in the early 1900’s and the often fantastical histories and legends of his extremely extended family are lovingly described (family photos and a crude map are included). The memoir follows him after his exile from Russia to Europe and eventually to the boat that will carry him to America. In classic Nabokov tradition the lines between fact and fiction, truthful memory and exaggeration, are elusive and fanatically distorted. 

Nabokov is a magician and he captivates his audience with unparalleled sensory descriptions. He describes with stunning accuracy things we have all seen and are nestled in our memories, yet paid little attention to at the time or in our every day life – for instance ‘the discreet, pleasantly cool, rhythmically undulating caress  of a caterpillar ascending ones bare skin’. ‘Speak, Memory’ lavishes in details – smells, textures, the play of light - and in the constant merging and unmerging of the conscious and subconscious sides of our brain.

‘Speak, Memory’ is homage to the transcendant qualities of art, language, memory and to everything which is emotional, nostalgic and beautiful. It is porn for lovers of language, poetry and the written word in general. It is writing for writing’s sake; an excercise in the art and pleasure of linguistics. At times it almost seems to transcend its autobiographical form into poetry. This is the perfect companion for those who suffer from logolepsy or any other love of obscure, difficult to pronounce words.

Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko said in a Playboy interview that he could “hear the clatter of surgical tools in Nabokov’s prose”, a statement I can’t really argue with either. Nabokov seems to dissect not only his memory, but every presentation of information in this autobiography, with a meticulous, almost scientific rigour. Riddles, chess problems and complex poetic rhythms are painstakingly intertwined in the work, something that I find interesting and alienating.

There is an ever present sense of narcissism and self obsession in ‘Speak, Memory’ (as there are in all autobiographical works, but even more strongly here). Nabokov hardly mentions his siblings, despite being one of five. He often refers to himself as the ‘favorite son’. People, especially past girlfriends, sometimes seem like mere objects, or pawns, in his game of memory, as opposed to real humans with individual needs and lives separate from Nabokov. Until the last third of the memoir he touches very little on the politics  of the Russian Revolution, he only refers to how it affects his family, particularly his Father - this aspect of self-absorption is extremely deliberate and also actually refreshing. It grounds the actions of the revolutionists in reality and helps to understand how powerful political and historical forces affect people in their everyday lives.  

This particular Penguin edition contains an appendix, ‘Chapter Sixteen’ or ‘Conclusive Evidence’, a pseudo-review written by Nabokov in 1950. ’Conclusive Evidence’ is very odd and a serves to increase the reader’s lack of surety about Nabokov. Nabokov is an elusive and self-aware figure, often admitting his contradictions or giving clues as to when he is misleading his audience. For instance, despite lamenting his lost home he admits that being wrenched away has created a bittersweet nostalgia that has fuelled his creativity. In contrast to this, his true emotions, if they are ever presented at all, are hidden within riddles and false trails for the reader to decipher. ‘Chapter Sixteen’ throws some of the opinions that the audience may have come to believe into doubt – which is simultaneously frustrating and intriguing. It causes ‘Speak, Memory’ to be a highly re-readable autobiography.

‘Speak, Memory’ should be read at a leisurely pace – to rush through would tarnish the imaginative banquet Nabokov has laboriously prepared. The mental images, and the overall complexity, should be savoured and slowly digested. This is definitely not for readers who like straight-forward, no fuss pros, or who read for plot rather than art. Whether or not the reader can take to Nabokov, ‘Speak, Memory’ stands are as an incredible literary achievement in its technical brilliance and as a window into a fragile era.

♥♥♥♥ – 4/5

[Via http://thewrittenwordreviews.wordpress.com]

Girls!Tune Him In, Turn Him On

Tune Him In, Turn Him On: Using Intuition to Find and Keep the Man of Your Dreams By Servet Hasan Published December 1, 2009 (Paperback) Llewellyn Worldwide

My son said yesterday, “Mom, you’re a witch.” Calmly.  With love in his voice, so I knew he didn’t mean the Margaret Hamilton kind.  I protested.  “You are,” he said, “You’re the most pure person I know, and when you’re really yourself, amazing things happen.”

So why do I need a book to remind me to use what’s God-given?  Tune Him In, Turn Him On arrived today, on time, as do most of the books I need and want most.  Servet Hasan says in her book that she comes from a long line of psychics, and that we all have this intuitive ability.  We just have to respect it — and listen to it!  Yeah. But.  I’ve spent a lifetime ignoring the magic I hear and see and feel — when it comes to the men who enter my romantic life.

Servet Hasan tells how to go out of body, into the body of the man we’re interested in — and sense him out.  Ask questions, and receive answers.  Respectfully.  She says he won’t know, but I have done this kind of thing before, and the guy nearly always calls me at that moment.  A bit spooky. If you have questions about a relationship, get quiet, and ask in your head — staying open to perceive the answers.  Trust your intuition. Another variation – reach out through your third eye and enter his heart chakra to sense his spirit.

Burn that past baggage, and monitor your thoughts.  If you’re hearing “nobody is going to want me,” you are to replace that thought immediately with something like “I naturally attract loving relationships into my life.”  Yay!  Doesn’t that feel awesome already.  Relationships, she says, have to be on all three levels – physical, spiritual and psychological.  She also says, like my friend Marianne Comaroto, to love yourself enough to marry yourself.

Servet is  happy to kick your butt if you’re hanging onto the wrong guy or nagging a guy.  She emphatically tells you to use your intuition to sense what is truly going on.  What a liberating stance.

As I read the book, my older son stopped by, saying he was headed out.  I noticed the Red Bull.  I stopped, and “read” him, and picked up that his ego was in command, and that his body didn’t really want that high level of caffeine.  So I told him.  He brushed it off, took off with his Red Bull, and I just got a text that said, “You were right.”

He’ll be okay.  So will I – now that I know I can use my intuition on men.

[Via http://dianapagejordan.com]

Review of Robert R. McCammon’s “Gone South”

Gone South was Robert R. McCammon’s Boy’s Life, which is one of my favorite books of all time. So I had a lot of high expectations for Gone South. While I loved Boy’s Life, I only liked Gone South.

Gone South is darker than Boy’s Life, but McCammon still writes it with a distinctive voice that pulls you in.

This is the story of Dan Lambert. He’s a bitter, disillusioned Vietnam vet living in Louisiana. He’s slowly dying and the bank is trying to repossess his truck. He kills a bank loan officer in a fit of madness and goes on the run.

He is pursued by two of the most-unlikely bounty hunters you’ll ever meet. Flint is a former carnival freak who has the partial head and arm of his unseparated twin brother in his torso. Cecil is an unusual Elvis impersonator who goes by the stage name of Pelvis.

While on the run, Lambert gains a traveling companion in Arden, a pretty girl with an ugly birthmark. She is seeking a faith healer named Bright Girl to help her.

McCammon wrote of the book, “Gone South is a journey from Hell back to the Garden of Eden. Back to a fresh start.”

The book has plenty of action and I enjoyed the two bounty hunters, but the ending left me feeling a little unsatisfied.

[Via http://jimsbookblog.wordpress.com]

Douglas Campbell, The Deliverance of God at SBL

Duke Divinity student, and occupant of seat 29D on Flight #443 (right next to me), Andy Rowell has shared (with permission from the participants) the audio of Douglas Campbell’s The Deliverance of God book review session at SBL. The respondents included: Michael Gorman, Doug Moo, and Alan Torence. Do check out his site and benefit from this session which discussed cutting edge issues with regard to justification theory.

Perhaps I will reflect on the session at some point (which I did, in fact, attend), and on the book (when I actually have time to read the 1000+ page work). For now, the audio of the session may be found here.

[Via http://sententiaenil.wordpress.com]

"We really have to protect people from wrong choices."

“Do you love me?”

There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. “Jonas. You, of all people. Precision of language, please!”

“What do you mean?” Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.

“Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it’s become almost obsolete,” his mother explained carefully.

Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.

“And of course our community can’t function smoothly if people don’t use precise language. You could ask, ‘Do you enjoy me?’ The answer is ‘Yes,’” his mother said.

“Or,” his father suggested, “‘Do you take pride in my accomplishments?’ And the answer is wholeheartedly ‘Yes.’”

“Do you understand why it’s inappropriate to use a word like ‘love’?” Mother asked.

Jonas nodded. “Yes, thank you, I do,” he replied slowly.

It was the first lie to his parents.

* * *

This excerpt from The Giver by Lois Lowry comes just after Jonas receives a memory of Christmas and family. It’s the first time he’s ever experienced real love, and it transforms him. This passage gives me chills–to think that such a society could exist with the absence of love.

In case you’ve been living under a rock and have never heard of this book, I’ll give you a brief summary. This novel takes place in a dystopian society in which every citizen conforms to the same concept of Sameness. As each child approaches the Ceremony of Twelve, he or she is given an assignment–a career choice, if you will, although a committee decides for each child based on his or her aptitude and interests. Jonas is chosen as the Receiver of Memories. He alone will receive the collective memory of society (collective unconscious, anyone?). He must carry the burden of all the emotions–happiness, love, pain, fear. He experiences poverty, war, hunger, sunshine, snow, Christmas, family, joy. No one else in the community ever knows that such extremes existed.

This is a world with color. Without art. Without music.

Without love.

It’s chilling in its portrayal. The novel beautifully explores notions of freedom. It made me realize that freedom of choice–in what I’ll wear, in where I’ll go to school, in whom I’ll marry–is something I often take for granted. What if that choice were taken away from me? Would I miss choice if I’d grown up without it?

I re-read this book this week because I was working on a paper for adolescent literature on how to use literature to teach social justice to secondary students. I chose this book and The Knife of Never Letting Go as examples of dystopian literature that can be used in the classroom. Dystopian literature is so intriguing and thought-provoking because it shows the extremes to which society could go if preventative action isn’t taken. Will we fight against those who remove choice? Will we fight for the oppressed? Can we make a change and avoid a bleak future?

Something to think about.

[Via http://hcgambrell.wordpress.com]

I am mostly the other I

I am mostly the other I; (Nov. 19, 2009)

Are you trying “To be what you are?” as the Greek poet Pindare once said? This is not at all similar to “Be yourself” which has practically no meaning as if you were hibernating and then decided to exhibit your “true” self.

What you are is never stable or cast in iron; the “I” is constantly being constructed and conquered: the body, our family history, our relations, our social values, our prescribed set of morals, and our social status. “To be what you are” is not to accept your “destiny” or what is being “maktoub”; it is an affirmation of your creativity to the kind of existence we dream to be.  I am never aware of my capabilities, abilities, and deficiencies except when I am on a course to change through deliberate actions, a different daily pattern of activities that has a purpose for the other me that I want to be.

“To be what you are” is not denying how you were born and raised; you have to accept the premises of from where you are starting the change as the best objective capabilities and deficiencies to get where you want to be.  It is not even a matter of the will to change that usually has no tomorrow. It means the urge to acquire knowledge and interact with people and society to feel your reformed dreams and possibilities for a qualitative jump.  If you have no desire for continuing education then you might as well be one among the masses of invincible imbeciles, those holding the absolute “truths” simply because they don’t know any better. You might revert to mingling with the invincible hooligans in sport stadiums and activate mayhems for mythical power and mythical belonging and identities.

Traditionally, the subject “I” was correctly defined as the one subjected to his community traditions and customs, subjected to his mother, father and elder siblings. The subject was placed under and subordinated to the other adults in a community. The subject “I” is practically the object and has no special characteristics that distinguish him from the members of the community. The member of a community is subjugated by the two facets of power: first, the weight of determinism for manufacturing individuals such as laws and norms that channel heritage and obeying institutions and authority.  The second facet of power is extending supports, means, and dispositions to grow as a reflexive member who can exist by his own means. Thus, desires for autonomy have to be supplemented by the means in resources and knowledge to break through the support system.

A person is born with a double helix like the ADN helix: the first section determines his objective heritage and the second contains his potential for becoming another self. It is a phase that everyone had to go through; some like to be taken care of; they emulate their environment: They find in their community the means for their existence and their natural development.  Some go into an affirmative phase to separate and be independent and go their own way.

It is the second alternative that extended this modern term of “subject” to an individual who is trying to get free of his previous dependencies. To become autonomous is a process and not just a temporary state of mind; it is a quest to becoming “another extension of the self”.

Individual identity is fluid and constructed of many small decisions and by many tipping over actions that direct the trajectory of the person. If we could study a person’s trend in activities we discover that it is the little but consistent variations in activities that determine his change into another individual. The subject is ever “himself” when he is changing to some else. We start discovering our identity (characters and set of values) as we cohabite or co-exist with others.  Many couples grow and start looking at their partners in new perspectives: they are learning how they were and how they currently feel toward the characters and values of the partners. Living as couples is not just a mirror but a reflective teaching means of our evolving identity.

We are all intelligent. There are at least 8 kinds of intelligence.  Some are more intelligent than others in particular capabilities such as verbal, mathematical, abstraction, visual, auditory, socializing, interaction with others, or writing styles. Rarely anyone is ready to consider another man intelligent. If you want to be known as relatively intelligent then your best means is to antagonize everybody: enemies are more likely to be extended some forms of intelligence.

I think some have this distinct intelligence of synthesizing many components in their intelligence and they realize early on their correct social conditions and potentials: they are the ones who break through the quickest of their community traditions and fly to greener pastures or a life or harsher miseries.  Let us not be judgmental about another’ achievements; successes are mostly illusions; failures are real but worth the try by all means.

Note: this topic was generated from three long articles on the “conquest of the self” in the French monthly “Sciences Humaines” with the special issue on the art of convincing or rhetoric.

Book Club:: The Devil in the White City

I got to revisit one of my all time favorite books with this month’s book club book, Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, by Erik Larson. This book, although it is non-fiction, reads much like a fiction book; Larson does a fantastic job of pulling readers in to the story using only the facts. It tells the story of the architect, Daniel Burnham’s vision and quest to achieve achitectural splendor for the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 right along side the dark tale of Dr. Holmes, who kills between 27-200 people during the time of the fair.

For me, both storylines are equally intriguing for different reasons. On the architectural side of things, I love that Fredrick Law Olmstead is represented in the story as the first Landscape Architect in America. He tells the frustrations of most current Landscape Architects as he was striving to get the profession widely recognized as being worthy of more than just flowerbeds. The LA in me really geeks out on that. I also really enjoyed learned about all of the items that were ‘firsts’ at this time, the kodak camera, AC electricity current, the Ferris Wheel and many others. It’s amazing to see a time when America was on the cusp of so many modernizations.

On the other side of things, my interest in mystery is peaked and somewhat repulsed in the story of Dr. Holmes. That such a charming, deceptive man existed chills me.

The two men of the story never met and yet their paths coexisted in Chicago, a dark city striving to make itself equal with New York. Larson also does a great job telling the struggle of the city to come into it’s own through the fair.

Fantastic book! I loved reading it again. Larson makes history readily accessible with this book. 10/10

Glenn Beck book tour, Arguing with idiots, November 19, 2009, Columbia SC, Charleston SC, Orlando FL, Melbourne FL, Jupiter FL, Fort Lauderdale FL, Ft. Myers FL, Tampa FL, The Villages, FL

Arguing With Idiots

“Arguing @ Berkeley”

“Arguing with Idiots, Crazy Glenn Beck”

“Use Glenn Beck’s New Book When ARGUING WITH Liberal Progressive IDIOTS !!”

Glenn Beck Book Tour
 
November 19, 2009

Columbia, SC
6-7 pm
Books-A-Million
164 Forum Drive

Charleston, SC
9-10 pm
Barnes & Noble
1812 Rittenberg Boulevard  
 
November 20, 2009

Orlando, FL
11:30 am – 12:30 pm
Barnes & Noble
2418 East Colonial Drive

Melbourne, FL
2-3 pm
Books-A-Million
The Avenue Viera, 2251
Town Center Avenue

Jupiter, FL
5-6 pm
Books-A-Million
Chasewood Plaza, 6370
West Indiantown Road
Fort Lauderdale, FL
7:30 – 8:30 pm
Barnes & Noble
2051 N. Federal Highway    
 
November 21, 2009

Ft. Myers, FL
9-10 am
Borders
Gulf Coast Town Center

Tampa, FL
12-1:30 pm
Borders
909 Dale Mabry

The Villages, FL
3-7 pm Rally & Signing
Barnes & Noble
The Villages

http://www.glennbeck.com/bookczar/

imitation of Christ by thomas a kempis

Published: Multiple publishers

Published: 1418

Genre: Christian Living, Theology

Recommended: Not really, but it wouldn’t kill ya (unless you take some of his advice then it might)

Weak sauce

Okay, okay, I’ll be serious now.

It was okay, but his theology (his view of God) is slightly askew in some important areas.  He focuses mainly on the contemplative life, humility, and his worthlessness.  The simple life.  He also reflects on Jesus Christ as his only salvation and satisfaction; this was the best part of the book, however…

However, his three other emphases (as listed above) are so reflected on that I think he redefines the terms or if he doesn’t redefine the terms he places an inordinate emphasis upon them (rather it might be better to say that he places them in positions of highest authority, such that the glory of Jesus Christ seems to be diminished, logically, in his view).

He focuses so entirely on the inward life that he forgets that Christians are to be amongst the people, pointing others to Jesus Christ, and encouraging fellow believers.

He focuses so much on humility that it seems to become a source of pride for him, that humility is more to be sought than loving God, proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ, and standing for His truth.

He focuses so much on his own worthlessness (which is true), nevertheless he seems to revel in his worthlessness, taking pride in his worthlessness, instead of rejoicing in the fact of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ.  Our worthlessness should never become a source of pride, that is sick.

And finally, because of these misplaced emphases, Kempis seems to rest more in his own efforts to be humble and loving than in Christ’s work, than in Jesus Christ.  Kempis seems to steal the glory of salvation away from Christ.  I say seems to, because he does acknowledge that only Christ can save, apart from Christ no one can be saved.  But his words throughout this devotional seem to belie his own stated hope in Jesus Christ alone.  He seems to contradict himself (kind of like official Catholic Church doctrine).

This book was okay.  It does not live up to its billing as the best devotional next to the Bible (not sure who thinks it is, but that’s what it says on the back of the book).  Sorry Kempis, I love contemplating too and humility, but they are not gods to be worshiped and bowed down to.

This guy was definitely a monk.  No doubt about it.  Kind of felt sorry for him as I read the book.  He did not seem to know the true Christ.  Salvation through humility and self-flagellation.  But who knows, hopefully he was a sheep.  Not a good book though.  Some good one-liners, but really a poor book.  Not soul-edifying.

Author Bio: Thomas à Kempis was born around 1380 in the Lower Rhine region of Kempen, Germany and died in 1471.  He was a monk with the Brothers of the Common Life.  They favored the simple life.  Sad.  Jesus’ life was not simple, why should ours be?  Get moving, share the gospel, and “enjoy the drama J-Dub, enjoy the drama.”  (Thanks Wikipedia)

"Must Have" Thanksgiving Book

One of the many privileges of homeschool is that I do not have to reprogram the kids with the truth of the reason of celebrating a particular holiday.  We are able to teach the historical truth as we best know of it and have researched it.  I have enjoyed so much teaching the children about Thanksgiving each year with the help of a book called “Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving”, written by Eric Metaxas.  It is a historically accurate book, written in a storybook type form, made to interest children of all ages. 

The book parallels Squanto and the Old Testament biblical character Joseph.  This book tells the story of Squanto, his captivity, being sold as a slave, but to monks who told him about God and how God had a plan for him, even in his pain.   The story of Joseph has always captivated my heart at so many levels.  As I read this book to the kids today, during history, I was reminded that God had Josiah choose to read for his bedtime story two nights ago a storybook of Joseph and his coat of many colors.  How neat of God, to lead Josiah to that book, and have us discuss it, how God allows difficult things to happen in our lives, for our good and for His glory, how we must receive both “bad and good” from God as gifts because He has a plan.  And then, today, for us to consider Squanto, and for Governor William Bradford of Plymouth to compare Squanto to Joseph.  What a terrific moment, one of those that takes my breath away like only God can!

“Hallelujah!  Who but the glorious God of heaven could so miraculously weave together the wandering lives of a lonely Patuxet brave and a struggling band of English Pilgrims in such a way that would bless the whole world for centuries to come?”   

Jeremiah 29:11 (New International Version)

11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Genesis 50:19-20 (New International Version)

 19 But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion review

The Global Spiral recently published a very detailed review of Malcolm Jeeves and Warren S. Brown’s book, Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion. The book is one of our newer releases in the Templeton Science and Religion series and the entire series has been getting some positive attention lately. From the review:

This book provides an excellent and very accessible overview of the state-of-the-question at the intersection of the cognitive sciences, psychology, and religion….Hence it is without hesitation that I recommend Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion as a wonderful primer that clarifies the Illusions, Delusions, and Realities about Human Nature.

Click here for the full review.

Eat Pray Love (what more do you need?)

I don’t mean to do it, but I seem to read books in pairs, similar stories with similar conflicts and themes. This book mirrors my previous book review- to an extent- of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. (minus the ex-husband who met a guy on gay.com) This story is about a woman who realizes she is trapped under years of anger, angst, and shame and eventually becomes a mere shell of her former vivacity. Her strident lengths to control and dictate her life have resulted in utter failure and the loss of everything she thoughts was important and expected for success. She departs on a year-long journey to learn how to be a healthy, balanced, godly human. She travels to Italy, India, and then to Indonesia on her journey eventually learning how to… yes, that’s it: Eat, Pray and then to Love. It is a brilliantly written story of self re-discovery and I found several points that significantly impacted me.

Unfortunately, I was so excited to send these two books to my mom for her to read that I sent them UPS before writing this post. That means I don’t have a quippy excerpt to include at the end of this post to illustrate the story. So, you’ll just have to trust me- it’s a fantastic book and you should read it. Do it… seriously. Go out and buy/borrow this book and read every single page.

‘Claudette Colvin’ – Phillip Hoose’s Finalist for the 2009 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Honors a Teenager Who Wouldn’t Give Up Her Bus Seat

“It’s my constitutional right!”

CLAUDETTE COLVIN: Twice Toward Justice. By Phillip Hoose. FSG/Melanie Kroupa, 133 pp., $19.95. 10 and up.

By Janice Harayda

Claudette Colvin brings down from the attic of American history a life that deserves a place on its front porch. The judges for the National Book Awards will announce on Wednesday whether this 2009 finalist is, in their view, the year’s best book of young people’s literature. It is certainly one of the most inspiring.

Beginning in late 1955, tens of thousands of black residents of the Alabama capital refused to ride the city’s buses after the police arrested Rosa Parks for not giving up her seat to a white passenger. The Montgomery bus boycott lasted until the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s ruling in Browder v. Gayle that segregated buses were unconstitutional. The decision strengthened the civil-rights movement and the career of the young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery who had encouraged the protesters to remain nonviolent, Martin Luther King Jr.

A plaintiff in Browder v. Gale was Claudette Colvin, an intelligent and strong-willed teenager from a family who lived in one of the poorest sections of the city. Nine months before Parks took her historic stand, Colvin was arrested and jailed after she refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a Montgomery bus. At the age of 15, Colvin had studied black history in school and idolized the abolitionist Harriet Tubman. So she did not go gently, as Parks did, when ordered her to yield her seat. As the police dragged her backwards off the bus, she screamed, “It’s my constitutional right!”

But while Parks became famous women, Colvin remains little known. Phillip Hoose shows the injustice of that neglect in this fascinating story of her early years – much of it told in her words — that combines oral history and pictorial biography. Colvin’s memories of growing up in segregated Montgomery are at times almost heartbreaking in their understatement. “My mother had always said, ‘If you can even talk to a white person without lowering your eyes you’re really doing something,’” Colvin recalls. And such comments are enriched by well-chosen black-and-white archival photos, including a copy of a Jim Crow–era sign that says: “NO DOGS NEGROS [SIC] MEXICANS.”

Claudette Colvin leaves unanswered many questions about Colvin’s later life, apparently because some events were too painful for her to discuss. But anyone would prefer to have this fine story of her life than none at all.

“The wonderful thing which you have just done makes me feel like a craven coward,” a man in Sacramento wrote to Colvin after hearing that police had arrested for her staying in a bus seat she had paid for. “How encouraging it would be more adults had your courage, self respect and integrity.” Indeed, it would.

Best line: One of many memorable details of life under Jim Crow laws, in Colvin’s words: “We could shop in white stores – they’d take our money all right – but they wouldn’t let us try anything on … When [my sister] and I needed shoes, my mom would trace the shape of our feet on a brown paper bag and we’d carry the outline to the store because we weren’t allowed to try the shoes on.”

Worst line: None.

Read an excerpt from Claudette Colvin.

Furthermore: Claudette Colvin is a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award for young people’s literature. the winner will be announced on Nov. 18, and the prize sponsor has posted more on the book on its Web site.

About the author: Hoose’s other books include Perfect, Once Removed, a memoir of the summer when his cousin Don Larsen pitched a perfect game in the World Series.

You can also follow janiceharayda (@janiceharayda) on Twitter www.twitter.com/janiceharayda, which may have other comments on the National Book Award finalists.

© 2009 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.janiceharayda.com

Food baskets for year 2050

Food baskets for year 2050; (Nov. 14, 2009)

I decided to combine and edit four posts into a comprehensive essay that might forecast the world’s agricultural state in the year 2050 as it will be inhabited by 10 billion people. The posts are: The long-term “Revenge of Geography”; “Food BANG, not the Big One”; “The world’s food basket: Africa is heaven for agro-business investments”; and “Africa is targeted to be exclusively the world’s food basket”

We are barely feeding the current world population and millions are dying of famine related malnutrition. In 1960, many developed nations had surpluses of food stuff; this is no longer the case.  Funny Mark Twain said “Buy lands; we are no more manufacturing those kinds of things”. The UN branch for Food and Agriculture Organization predicted that agricultural products will witness increases in prices over 50% by the year 2017 and predicted that famine will be the lot of 70 impoverished States harming 1.2 billion human.

Global problems for water shortages

We are witnessing the era of “Anthropocene” which means man is doing more damages to the environment than nature can stabilize; the main reality to account for is acute shortages in sources of water. “It is man who has the power to create; it is nature that commands to a large extent” said Harold Mackinder in 1904.

The main problems cannot be summarized in population explosion.  Modern problems are exacerbating the conditions. First, just in China and India the number of middle class “well off people” are four times the combined numbers in the USA, Europe, and Japan. These newly created classes in the last two decades demand equal standards of living that the developed nations have been enjoying for a century. Consequently, water has to be diverted from agriculture to urban centers that are fast increasing in numbers and in size.  Huge investments are being spent to building dams, diverting rivers, and constructing thousands of miles of water canals.

Second, most rivers are heavily polluted from mass industrializations, a process that has been going on for many decades. Fertile lands are deteriorating as they are irrigated with toxic and highly saline water.  Third, climatic changes are affecting rain delivery in sufficient amount. Deserts are expanding and sub-terrene water sources are dwindling in numbers and quantities.

Fourth, the USA and Europe are planting agro-energy products that are transformed into non-fossils sources for energy. The EU is shooting for a 10% sufficiency by the year 2010 from these agro sources.  Thus, vast fields of wheat and corn are being converted to agro products rich in sugar contents. This policy might resolve EU internal problems in the short run in several ways: first, instead of subsidizing agriculture for competitive exportation the EU could invest in land development in the large States of Poland and Ukraine; this alternative might enhance the internal food trade with adequate return for the poorer EU member Sates; second, the constant stream of law suits against infringements on Global Free Trade will be reduced; and third, experiments on alternative energy substitutes will be encouraged.

Fifth, the USA and the EU are leasing fertile lands overseas not to produce edible condiments for the famished population but products for their energy substitutes.

Political end games

The main power in the coming decades will reside in the States who control the sources of the major rivers.  China has conquered Tibet because three main rivers take their sources from the Himalaya mountain chains; mainly the Mekong (that flow into the South East), the Indus (that flow in Pakistan), and the Brahmapoutre that flow in India and join the Ganges River.

Thus, if China decided to use water as weapon it can disturb all the States from Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Viet Nam. China has already built 86,000 dams along the Blue and Yellow Rivers that take sources on the western plateaus; China has not consulted with the South East countries and has already built four mega dams on the Mekong, including two huge lakes that will take about 10 years to fill in order to generate hydraulic power.

Turkey controls two huge rivers: the Euphrates and the Tiger that flow in Syria and Iraq.  Turkey has been building dams on these rivers without consulting with the southern neighboring States.  Ethiopia is in control of the Nile if it wishes to.  The US has been building dams along rivers that flow into Mexico.

China, Turkey, Russia, USA, and Brazil control sources of major rivers.  Latin America has enough water, except Argentina. The main struggle in the medium-term is who will control the Nile, the Niger, and the Congo Rivers in Africa.

There are four basic alternatives for securing water that can be used concomitantly. First, desalination of Oceans and the towing of icebergs will do for a while but cannot resolve a long-term problem in water shortages.  Second, genetically modified seeds that can withstand many kinds of “natural enemies” may diminish the need for pesticides and herbicides and increase production. Third, leasing or acquiring vast “fertile” lands by foreign agro-businesses in the under-developed States that have shortages in trained manpower for land development, or lacking the technological investment capabilities, or suffering from outdated modern institutions. Four, enacting policies for large displacement of people from mega-polis to near water sources; that alternative will save on huge investment of supplying water to big urban cities and in order to recover sub-terrain naps and natural ecosystems.  This essay will focus on the second and third alternatives.

Genetically modified seeds

Antitrust laws are so far not being applied to the six industries for organically modified seeds that share scientific discoveries and have sole monopoly of 90% of organic seeds.  Monsano, Dow Agrosciences, BASF, Syngena, Bayer, and Dupont have deposited more than 500 patents on genes “adapting to climatic changes”: they are figuring out how to profit from degradation of the environment.  In 2008, Monsato has increased by 35% the prices on organically modified seeds that it has exclusive rights to produce and distribute.  Monsano and Dow Agrosciences are associated to produce in genetically modified wheat seeds that can withstand 8 kinds of “natural enemies” of mainly herbicides and insecticides in year 2010.  Thus, 87% of modified seeds used around the world bear the label Monsano.

The multinational oil companies of BP, Shell, Chevron, and Cargill are linking up with companies of nano-sciences of agro-technologies to transform biological matters such as (agricultural harvest, forests, algae…) into industrial sugar. Sugar is then converting into chemical products and nano-products with high added values. Chemistry linked to oil products could now be adapted to vegetable carbon.  Entire countries such as Madagascar and Angola are now being leased to cultivate modified breeds of harvests.

The scientific counselor to Barak Obama, John Holdren, is encouraging the application of geo-engineering to fighting atmospheric changes.  Among such engineering techniques is sprinkling the atmosphere with nano-particles of sulfates to veil the sunrays.  Monster farms of phytoplankton are created to absorb or capture CO2.

The UN views these geo-engineering projects as purely speculative in nature with unknown risks for collateral damages. A joint Indo-German oceanographic Institute discarded the decision of the Conference of the UN and carried on its project: it “fertilized” a large zone in the Antarctic Ocean by dumping tons of iron sulfates; the microscopic unicellular algae were meant to grow in abundance and capture CO2.  The zooplankton ate the algae and the experiment was not conclusive; this temporary failure is encouraging other multinationals such as Climos Inc. or (Planktos Science) to resume these kinds of projects under the name of “eco-restoration” for substantial financial returns.

Leasing or acquiring vast “fertile” lands by foreign agro-businesses

If you have lands with no water, if you have water and no fertile land, if you have accumulated enough in your Sovereign Fund then the way to go is to invest in foreign fertile lands for agricultural “self-sufficiency”, which means import food at much lower prices.  Japan, South Korea, China, India, and Saudi Arabia are leading these kinds of joint ventures. Many under-developed States with vast “fertile” lands are leased or acquired by foreign agro-businesses.  So far, 30 millions hectares (the size of 30 Lebanon or the size of the Philippines) are already in use for mass agricultural production. China, rich in water and fertile lands, is leading this policy of “getting out of the borders” since 2004.

Africa is the prime target continent because it has four large and long rivers such as the Nile, the Congo, and the Niger Rivers and the lands are barely worked.  The Sudan, Mozambique, and the Democratic Congo are prime targets in the medium-term.

Vast fertile lands are left unproductive for lack of investment and manpower.  Theoretically, we should have win-win situations but the facts are that the contracts of the multinational agro-businesses are not transparent; there are no clauses on specificities that might benefit the population either in technology or land development.

Most of the contracts are barely three pages long and contain no precisions on investors’ obligations toward investing in infrastructures, durable management of the natural resources, or the training of the local peasants for developing small parcels of land and applying the technology.  The President of Earth Policy Institute, Lester Brown, “Essentially, the technologies used by these agro-investments are meant for massive commercial production and not adaptable to the concerned small local farmers.  There is basically no transfer of technology or training. Thus, what the foreign investors are acquiring in lands is not going to feed the local population as we might hope.

Let us consider the case of the oil rich Arab Gulf States: rice is their main staple and it has to be imported in totality. These States imported a third from India and then India had to curtail its exportation of rice due to climatic problems in order to feed its citizens.  These States imported 10% from Thailand (the first exporter of rice in the world) but then Thailand doubled the price of its rice to $1,000 the ton.  How the Arab Gulf States were to counter this difficulty?  Their Sovereign Funds could be invested in rice fields in Thailand and that what they started to do. You could have a win-win situation: there are vast lands in Thailand that are not cultivated; increasing rice production should not hurt Thailand since rice prices are increasing and Thailand needs to secure oil provision.

Instead of purchasing 10% of its need in rice from Thailand, then the Arab Gulf States might increase it to 40%. One happier story: Thailand needs to establish a rice warehouse in the Arab Gulf to distribute rice at affordable prices.  Things should look pretty promising.  Joint-ventures in agro-businesses where Sovereign Funds invest the money and the Thai peasants got to work in jobs they are proficient in should not raise so much fuss: should it? The problem is that internal politics in Thailand want a scapegoat: Arabs buying lands in Thailand; or rice production is a strictly national occupation and should be 100% reserved for citizens (as if the Arab is going to relocate to plant rice in Thailand!); or Thailand is not Africa and we are a developed nation.

Another case is Madagascar, a vast Island in East Africa.  The standard of living has fallen below the one in 1960.  Why Independence pride has to be highly correlated with miseries in the former colonial States?  Major deforestation is the norm in Madagascar: people need to cook their meals! The South Korean Daewoo wanted to lease 1.3 million hectares for 99 years. What it is with this taboo of 99 years lease of lands? Does every investor has in the back of his head to let his grand child witness his greatness and pray for his great spirit? The deal fell apart after the President of Madagascar, Marc Ravalomanana, fell out of power. Apparently, not much transparency and communication were accompanied to that deal. In the meanwhile cattle thieves “dahalo” are on rampage. Even the tiny Maurice Island acquired lands (10,000 ha) in Mozambique for the island food sufficiency. Ramakrishna Karuturi (the king of rose production in 4 millions hectares) is leasing the hectare for two dollars a year in Ethiopia! Now, there can be no doubt that the Ethiopian government had received a fat bribe for such a lousy deal.

The Congo with Capital Brazzaville is half the size of France with barely 4 million citizens concentrated in the capital and the other city Pointe-Noire on the coast. This African States was a French colony and is rich in minerals and uranium.  It cultivates potatoes.  South Afrikaners who lost 30% of their agricultural lands for redistribution programs to the black citizens want to acquire or lease lands in this Congo; the Agri SA (South Africa) has 1,700 agro-businesses interested in producing soja, sugar cane, and corn. Ten million hectares were literally offered to the Afrikaners (a land stretching 500 by 200 km, twice the size of Switzerland) and its location is not yet decided upon; maybe entire virgin forests might be burned for agriculture. The Agri SA is promising to build agro villages with ready made houses contracted to Israeli firms.  What if the deal demanded that thousands of Congolese be trained to develop and grow lands after two years of working in the Afrikaners’ lands?  This deal is a striking political and ecological scandal because the terms of the deal are fishy and not communicated to the citizens.

Kazakhstan is practically a continent in size and barely 1% of the land is privately owned.  This rich and newly independent State imports 40% of milk, 30% of meat, and 45% of fruits and vegetables. The population is mostly rural. The States lease lands for 49 years.  The State of Kazakhstan has set aside 35,000 square-kilometers to lease to foreign investors but only China is interested. The main States vying for foreign fertile lands are:

South Korea has acquired a total of 3 millions hectares (three times the superficies of the State of Lebanon); it is growing fields in Russia (500,000 ha), Sudan (700,000 ha), Madagascar (1.3 million ha), Mongolia (300,000 ha), Philippines (100,000 ha), and Indonesia (25, 000 ha).  The Korean agency for international cooperation (State owned) is creating private and public enterprises to invest into agro-businesses by loans or direct governmental investments. Leases of fertile lands are for 60 years and an extension of another 40 years. In return, Korea will extend technologies and development planning.  It appears that South Korea is projecting unification with North Korea and the flooding of North Korean refugees soon. South Korea is interested in the “krai of Primorie” in Russia with 2.5 millions of arable land.

China has invested for a total of 2 millions hectares.  It has 1.25 millions in South East Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Laos), in Mozambique (800,000 ha), in Australia (45,000), and in Cuba (5,000 ha). China acquired (80,000 ha) in Russia for just $22 millions.

Japan has acquired a total of one million hectares in Philippines (600,000 ha), USA (225,000 ha), and Brazil (100,000 ha).

India has acquired a total of 1.7 millions hectares in Argentina (600,000 ha), Ethiopia (370,000 ha), Malaysia (300,000 ha), Madagascar (250,000 ha), Indonesia (70,000 ha), and in Laos (50,000 ha).  The Indian government has extended loans to 80 agro-businesses to purchase 350,000 ha in Africa.

Saudi Arabia has invested in Indonesia (one million ha), Senegal (500,000 ha), and in Mali (200,000 ha).  The Arab Emirates has invested in Pakistan (325,000 ha), and in Sudan (400,000 ha). Egypt has invested in Uganda (850,000 ha).  Libya has invested in Ukraine (250,000 ha), and Liberia (5,000 ha).  Qatar invested in the Philippines (100,000 ha).

Global Resolutions

Africa is the remaining poorest continent with vast fertile lands and plenty of manpower to exploit for agro-business enterprises. Africa is targeted to be exclusively the world’s food basket in this century. The UN, the EU, economic superpower States, and private institutions and organizations need to step in to plan, organize, administer, inspect, and enforce appropriate deals for the best management and control of food and water resources.

Since the citizens of independent States that have experienced colonialism are weary of camouflaged colonialism in other forms then their governments are circumventing land laws by enacting laws of mixed private enterprises with lease or acquisition contracts that are not transparent to the public. The UN has to step in and write standard contracts leases that preserve peoples rights to training, sustainable resources, technology know-how, human dignity, right to work, right to share in the management and decisions at community levels, and that these contracts supersede what any other two parties agree on that lack the standard rights and responsibilities.  It is unconscionable that “privatization version” to colonizing Africa infiltrate from the windows. The fact is State funds are loaning money to their own agro-businesses to invading African fertile lands. This neo-colonial pact among State and agro-businesses has to be made clear and restrictions be implemented by world communities.  Territories are changing hands and are no longer under the control of the people and peasants.

The UN has to set up a special fund to purchasing organically modified seeds that have proven not to constitute health hazard; it has to limit the exclusive life duration for exploitation by multinationals that are escaping antitrust laws.

The UN is burdened by countless military conflicts that are interrelated with people seeking better life conditions for survival. An independent branch in the UN needs to be established that would link the causative factors that are generating constant conflicts among neighboring States.  Fair share for water resources is a right that supercede which country control the sources of the rivers.

We hope that the world community will pressure these investors to grow food slowly: resuming the old practices of mass production techniques will ruin the remaining land with fertilizers and pesticides.

"Peace treaty": Paris, 1919

“Peace treaty”: Paris, 1919; (Nov. 14, 2009)

I watched a documentary on the French channel TV5 this Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009. The documentary was relating and commenting on the five months that dragged on before the most lousy “peace treaty” was finally signed to end WWI.  The chiefs of the main 5 nations who won in the First World War sat around in Paris to discuss how to partition the world.  The government chiefs were: USA (Wilson), Britain (Lloyd George), France (Clemenceau), Italy, and Japan.  Germany had ceased fire; the Kaiser, “Emperor Guillaume”, is settled in the Netherlands.  Turkey is declared defeated as ally to Germany.

Every delegation from all over the world, when allowed, was given 10 minutes to expose his case and demands.  Ho Chi Minh (from Viet Nam) was refused an appointment; he will later defeat the French in 1954 and then the US forces in 1973. Wilson wanted to discuss establishing a world organization of State of Nations to prevent further military escalations; the other four leaders were trying hard to convince Wilson that they are not against this idea but there are more urgent matters to resolve at this junction.  The four other leaders wanted to redraw world’s borders; cartographers spent 5 months redrawing borders.  Wilson wanted the people to decide and vote for their destiny; the other four leaders tried hard to educating Wilson on pragmatic procedures.

In the meantime, Communism was spreading everywhere in Europe and the USA; the “Spanish flu” had decimated 20 millions in Europe and America (it was called the “Spanish flu” simply because it was the Spanish press that divulged this scourge that States were trying to keep under cover.  Soldiers were returning from the war front at the pace of 100,000 each month; I see one-legged soldiers hoping around in a baseball game and their companions laughing and having good time. Soldiers were returning home to experience famine, miseries, and desolate institutions to taking care of business.

The world’s “five leaders” are smoking cigars and pipes and looking mightily serious. Lloyd George wanted 300 billions in gold for war reparation from Germany; his financial counselor, the famous Keynes, is steadfastly suggesting agreeing on 10 billions for material damages on the ground that Germany could barely pay even that amount; Lloyd George had plenty of time to get practical at this stage.  Wilson does not want any reparations and the other four leaders are fuming because it was not the US that lost millions of dead and injured soldiers and civilians in the war. Clemenceau wants to recover the Alsace and Loraine in addition to La Sarre region, rich in goal production, in Germany to exploit for 15 years in war reparation.  The Italian President just wants a port on the Adriatic Sea as an advanced post to check any resurgence of hostility but he is adamantly refused his wish.

A Germany delegation of over 110 individuals arrives in Paris to deal a peace treaty. The train is made to stop first in Verdun where 450 thousand soldiers on both sides died. This delegation is typing reams of legal papers claiming that they are not the only culprit for starting the war. The vanquishers have no time to read the German side of view: they want Germany to admit that it is the sole bad party and that it had lost the war. The Germans are upset: why discuss a peace treaty if the other party has already made his mind?  The German delegation refused the humiliating peace deal and the war was on the verge of resuming.  The German sank their merchant marine in order not to be captured by the allies. Clemenceau is furious because he could not convince Lloyd George to jointly board these ships to avoid sabotage.

By now, Wilson is totally worn out and more hawkish than even Clemenceau. In the last 5 days before the refusal of Germany to sign the humiliating peace treaty Lloyd George had second thoughts: if Germany is completely humiliated then any demy-god would take power and start another war. Lloyd George also needed to do trade goods with a strong Germany. What Keynes suggested as reasonable reparation of 10 billions in gold is fine with Lloyd; Germany does not need to admit that it lost the war. The problem was how to convince Wilson after manipulating him for five month on pragmatic politics. Wilson is adamant: Germany has to understand that it lost the war; period! Then the German Chancellor resigned and another peace delegation arrived in Paris and signed the treaty in Versailles. Wilson could go home to face major downturns.

The Italian President lost the election and could not attend the peace signing ceremony: Mussolini was on the rise. The American Congress refused the plan of Wilson for establishing the Society of Nations. China and Japan were not satisfied; Japan will invade China in 1935 and capture Korea as a colony.

While the leaders in Paris were discussing dividing the world into mandated colonies Wilson’s concept of people deciding on their future destiny by vote went down the drain as the months eroded his determination into “pragmatic” attitudes. Clemenceau got just what he asked La Sarre. Poland recaptured a region in Germany with the Dantzig port.

The Middle East people want independence from Turkey that lost the war. No problems.  Hussein of Mecca has many children. One of them by the named of Faissal is appointed King to Syria and Lebanon. Another by the name of Abdullah is appointed King to Jordan. A third is appointed King to Iraq, I think: I am confused.  Wilson sent a delegation to gather field intelligence on the wishes of the people. Clemenceau and Lloyd George had another plan: they partition the Middle East between them.  France is to have mandate on Syria, Lebanon, and “Antaquia” in Turkey that Syria claimed to be part of its lands.  England is to have mandate on Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine. There were barely 5,000 immigrant Jews in Palestine at the time.

Clemenceau sent a French army to depose King Faissal and govern his “mandated people”. Mount Lebanon is split from Syria and more lands are attached to Lebanon so that it might have the illusion of agricultural “self-sufficiency”.

Share Jesus Without Fear

This contains updated portions of a book  review I wrote for one of my classes at Liberty.

 

Author Information

William Fay is an author, evangelist, and an internationally syndicated radio host.[1] His life before Christ consisted of being the president and CEO of a multimillion-dollar company, having ties with the mob, owning one of the largest houses of prostitution in the United States, racketeering, bookmaking, and gambling.[2]  It was through the influence of many people in his life, especially that of friend Paul Grant, that he eventually came to faith in Jesus Christ.  In 1987 he graduated from Denver Seminary and since 1981, he has taught a no-argument approach to witnessing leading others to share their faith.  Fay has also written a pamphlet How to Share Your Faith without an Argument, which has 3.5 million copies in print.[3]

Content Summary

                In Share Jesus without Fear, author William Fay leads believers past the pressures that they often place on themselves, as he shares the purpose and function of sharing their faith, as well as giving them the knowledge of how to share.  Often times Christians place the pressure of conversion upon themselves.  However, through his own testimony and those who took the time to share Jesus with him, Fay points out “success is sharing your faith and living your life for Jesus Christ.”[4]

            Pointing out that only five to ten percent of Christians have shared their faith in the past year, Fay expounds on how many Christians have chosen the sin of silence.[5]  This sin of silence has not only impacted the lives of Christians, but also the lives of local churches.  Fay continues as he divides Christians into two groups, those who talk about the lost and those who talk to the lost.[6]  Fay’s desire is for Christians to overcome their fears and seize each opportunity to share, because how things are now is not how it was meant to be or how it should be.

            To assist the Christian in moving beyond silence to action, Fay gives the believer five “share Jesus questions” to help lead into a conversation in which a Christian can share their faith.  All the while, Fay reminds the Christian that they cannot fail.  He wants the believer to understand that the power behind what is taking place is the power of God and the power of the Word of God.  Ultimately, the Scripture is the foundation, for “God’s Word penetrates and changes hearts toward His Son.”[7]  With that in mind, Fay leads the believer through seven verses of Scripture that he recommends they have the lost person read out lout.  In addition, there will be times when the believer faces different questions and objections.  Therefore, Fay provides the believer with “conversational joggers.”  These are to assist the believer in opening the door to conversation, or keeping the conversation going.

            Following this, Fay encourages the believer to use five specific questions, invoking a “yes” or “no” decision, for there is a decision between life and death that must be made.  If a decision is made to put their faith in Christ, Fay guides the believer in what to do next in directing them in some foundational beliefs and to a local body of believers.

            As Fay brings the book to a close, he directs the believer in developing the friendship between themselves and non-believers as well as teaching how to pray for them.  On a more personal level, Fay wants the believer to understand that sharing your faith is a part of being obedient to God and “it is time to choose obedience and grasp the fullness of a Christian life.”[8]  Furthermore, he states, “God will hold us responsible for the sin of silence for not sharing with those people he has placed in our lives.”[9] 

            Every Christian with a desire to be a better servant of Christ and better witness should read this book.  They will find it encouraging and empowering.  Whether one has been a Christian for five minutes or fifty years, they would greatly benefit from reading this book.  Furthermore, this book could have great impact in the local church if taught and applied.  Currently, we are teaching the video series “Share Jesus Without Fear” and it has been a great blessing.  I believe that as we work thought this, it will move many believers beyond the sin of silence to obedience.  I strongly encourage you to read the book and/or, if you can get it, watch the video series.

[1] Meet Bill Fay. Retrieved January 22, 2009, from  http://www.sharejesuswithoutfear.com/templates/System/details.asp?id=27043&PID=139110

[2] William Fay. Share Jesus Without Fear (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1999), 1.

[3] Ibid., 195.

[4] Ibid., 3.

[5] Ibid., 6.

[6] Ibid., 8.

[7] Ibid., 41.

[8] Ibid., 144.

 [9] Ibid., 142.

A World Without Ice

The world including the sea level, climate, and landscape has been shaped by the power of ice for billions of years.  And now, as we’ve pushed co2 concentrations well beyond historical ranges (at least the range of the last 800,000 years), ice is becoming harder to find.  There’s even the potential that earth may become ice free in the near future.  I never really thought much about ice and it’s importance in my life and the lives of others, and most of my interactions with ice involve ice cubes and freezer burn. And, although some people may never even interact directly with ice, “one quarter of Earth’s population will within another decade be attected significantly by lesser snowfall and glacial ice loss.  That number translates to two billion people–and most of them live in Asia.”

“A World Without Ice” is a new book by Henry Pollack that examines geological, biological, and human history and how it has directly and indirectly been shaped by ice.  This historical context (from billions of years ago and even into 2009) creates a foundation that prepares the reader for not only to understand the importance of ice in our earth’s system but also the huge and immediate threat posed by the current climate crisis to humans and all species on earth.  Pollack is a scientist, has been a professor for more than forty years at the University of Michigan and was a member of the Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007.   read on for more on the book, the opportunity to send in questions for the author and the chance to win a copy of the book!

Pollack writes in a really accessible way making this book especially good for folks who have little background in science or with global warming to gain a general understanding of global warming in the context of the power and importance of ice to our earth.  He doesn’t go into much depth about global warming until the end of the book, but he makes the connection to global warming in every chapter.  Additionally, he addresses the “trenches of [climate] denial” multiple times throughout the book and very succinctly refutes the main points that are made by the “climate contras” who continue to fight against any action on global warming.

Although I knew a number of the statistics and points about ice and climate from conferences, speakers, media and science articles about climate change over the last eight years, Pollack kept my attention with his thoroughness, first-hand stories, historical context and interesting facts and connections that helped me fill in gaps in my knowledge of ice and global warming.  Here’s one of the many first-hand stories:

I have been to Palmer Station four times over eighteen years.  When I first visited in 1991 there was a big Adelie [penguin] population on the islands around Palmer–noisy, smelly, coming, going.  But on my most recent stop, in early 2008, the Adelies were largely gone.

Pollack talks about his studies on the temperatures of the the upper thousands of feet of the earth’s crust, which I feel I’ve heard very little about.  And, I was intrigued to learn that he and other scientists have been able to track past atmospheric temperature changes through temperature measurements at different depths in the ground.  These measurements are compared with what the expected temperature would be without any change in climate and then the differences show past atmospheric temperatures slowly propagating down through the earth.  For example, “The Little Ice Age can be “seen” in the temperatures 500 feet down in the Greenland ice sheet, and the warm plateau of the mid-Holocene at depths between 1,500 and 2,500 feet.”

Pollack touches many times on the importance of “Cinderella Scientists,” the often under-appreciated people who grudgingly take regular measurements for years on end that specifically track how earth is changing locally and on a global scale.

One interesting example he uses of a group of these “Cinderella Scientists” were the Jesuits who established and kept up meteorological and later seismographic stations around the world beginning in the seventeenth century.  Although unfortunately (I think on many levels), their work was thwarted because they were early advocates of “liberation theology” and the European royalty and other authorities had the Jesuits recalled from their remote outposts.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book, but I have a few qualms with the last chapter.  This chapter includes quick overviews of technologies to reduce our emissions, and I think it is imperative to start with efficiency and conservation as he did.  He fails, however, to mention the extremely destructive, dangerous and dirty practices of mining for either uranium (for nuclear power) or coal (to burn in this case with carbon sequestration), although he mentions the destruction of mountaintop removal mining earlier in the book.  And, although he mentions the “very high capital costs of construction” for nuclear power plants, there is no mention under carbon sequestration about the high capital costs for this technology.  I mention this because I think we have limited resources, especially in this recession, and we need to invest in the cleanest and most cost-efficient technologies (taking ecological costs/externalities into consideration) being aware of and working to reduce all impacts of any “solutions.”

In terms of citizen action, Dr. Pollack is focused on the ballot box as one of the most powerful tools that citizens have to make change.  While I agree that this is powerful, I think that, especially given the immediacy of our climate crisis, there is a dire need to go beyond the ballot box and use direct action to stop new coal and other fossil fuel plants, tar sands extraction, mountaintop removal to help us get to 350 ppm of co2 that we need for a stable climate as soon as possible!

In short, this is a very thorough and yet accessible book about global warming especially the role that ice has and is playing in the warming of the planet, and I would definitely recommend it.  Check out the book website.

Post comments below with any questions you have for Dr. Pollack and I will work on getting a response from him and posting a follow up piece later this month.  The first person to answer this question correctly (or the first person who gets really close) will receive a free copy of the book from TLC book tours.

Henry Pollack talks about estimates of the per capita rate of energy consumption in terms of horsepower (hp), which helps me in visualizing this use of energy. For the average global citizen this rate is 3.5 hp.  “What is the per capita rate of energy consumption for the average American in hp?”

how to give away your faith by paul e. little

Author: Paul E. Little

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Copyright: 1966

Genre: Evangelism

Recommended: Yes, with a minor qualification

Paul Little says in the preface that he wrote this book “with the prayer that many may learn a ‘more excellent way’ of introducing others to our Lord.”  The main emphasis in the book is practical instruction and Mr. Little says many of these “ideas…have come out of face to face interaction with Christian and non-Christian students on secular campuses and in Christian schools in the USA and abroad.”  (Let me remind my readers that Mr. Little published this book in 1966).  The emphasis on his interactions with students as being one of the chief inspirations of the ideas/suggestions presented in his book is important and I think the cause for the one area in which I disagreed with him.  But first a little (get it?) more about the book.

Paul includes nine chapters:

1. The Essential Foundation
2. How to Witness
3. Hurdling Social Barriers
4. What is our Message?
5. Why we Believe
6. Christ is Relevant Today
7. Worldliness: External or Internal?
8. Faith is the Key
9. Feeding the Spring

My favorite chapters were the chapters that focused on the larger Christian life: chapters 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9.  I thought his two weakest chapters were the two chapters where he discussed evangelistic techniques (though they were not very weak, only weaker).

Some of the highlights:

In chapter one Paul emphasizes our need to have a real, true, and personal relationship with Christ.  Christianity cannot be a mere environmental happenstance (born into it or supported by others around us), we cannot just ooze into it, and it is NOT merely a list of facts.  It must be real and alive, we must be born again, we must love God as our Father.  Awesome.

In chapters two and three Paul describes practical actions we can take to be better evangels.  He says evangelism is one of “the keys” to a healthy relationship with Jesus Christ, it is “vital” to our spiritual health.  Awesome.  Sing it brother.  He then goes on to mention seven steps we can take to do evangelism well (he seems to take more than a few ideas from Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Dale, coincidentally, took some of his own ideas from Scripture).  I did not like this section much, because it seemed to be divorced from scripture to a certain extent, divorced from the “whys” and “hows” in scripture and instead seemed to focus on pragmatism as a guiding light.  This is shown when he says about a couple he and his wife were attempting to share Christ with, “we didn’t fit their stereotype of Christianity.”  This was in a section in which he was emphasizing that we should be careful not to offend non-Christians with our behaviors.  This is true (we should, within bounds, not offend), however he also seemed to be falling into the trap of worrying too much about what non-Christians think about us as we engage with them and I think this is because he had previously (in life, not the book) focused on spewing forth the message and not on caring about the individuals he was evangelizing to.  His past error causes him to over correct and, I think, causes him in this section to rely on whether or not non-Christians find certain behaviors or messages offensive to show him how to do evangelism.  But as Christians we must always put God’s judgements above the judgements of others.  He seems to flip it here, a little, but thankfully he does not follow that mistake through the entire book.  We do need to be inoffensive in our actions and to be careful in what we say, but we should be careful not to run into falsehood when we are running away from another falsehood.  We need to love Christ as our God and not our neighbors as our gods.  Love for our neighbors will come when we love Christ rightly, we must not attempt to love our neighbors before we love Christ.  That is humanism, not Christianity.  And it will not be true love if we put the neighbors before the God.

Nevertheless, Paul emphasizes on centering our message on the Gospel, who is Christ.  In chapter four Paul emphasizes that we need to believe in Christ and enter into a committed relationship with Him.  Paul uses marriage as a metaphor: we can believe in a girl or boy, but until we actually marry the girl or boy we will not be married.  We must be in a devoted relationship with our LORD, not merely believe in Him (because even the demons believe in the true Christ).

Paul goes on in subsequent chapters to say: our focus must always be on Christ, Christ is our foundation for believing (death and resurrection specifically), only God can save us and make us who He wants us to be, we must glorify God in all our life (we cannot compartmentalize Him), in Christian liberty we must always be wary of our motives, we must not flaunt our Christian liberty in front of weaker Christians, and etc.  Good exhortations all.

In the final chapter Paul encourages Christians to develop their inner lives by reading the word and spending time in prayer.  Solid.  These are the two foundational concepts that when lived consistently with the aim of building a stronger relationship with our Father will do what it sets out to do.  We must not be legalistic about these practices (doing them to try to earn salvation or make ourselves look good in the eyes of men).  We must do it for our joy in God.  We must do it because we want to grow closer to God.  There will be times when we don’t want to, but we can still read and pray just so long as we do not do it for the eyes of men or to somehow earn our salvation.

All in all a pretty good primer on evangelism for the newbies.  If you’re looking for a more in-depth look at evangelism and a more explicitly rooted-in-scripture expository on evangelism then you will need to look somewhere else.  His book is rooted in scripture, to a great extent, but it is  not exhaustive.  It is a book for Christians who are just beginning to grow in the knowledge of their faith.  But it can still be a good and refreshing read for the more mature in knowledge.  A read that will encourage you to once again put yourself out there, meet non-Christians, befriend non-Christians, and then hopefully create opportunities to engage them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Author Bio: Paul Little worked for InterVarsity and was an associate professor of evangelism at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.  He died in 1975.

http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=3421

Technology Careers

The 2010 Academy Awards category for Best Animated Feature Film highlights the technology careers coming available for increasing numbers of artists and technicians in IT and graphics fields full of new animation techniques and equipment. Far from being only entertaining cartoons, these advancements can also be put to good use in military applications and in the medical arena as well. Animated features can lead to medical miracles and Mars colonization simulations in the future.   

What are your top picks in this category for the 2010 Oscars? -

Top 5 Animated Features of 2009

 

“In the pause the waves gathered on the rocks below, and then Subramaniam spoke.”

Recently, for my English exam, as part of an essay about the parts of a story, I wrote that the exposition was the most orderable part of a story, as it can be anywhere, and everywhere. The example I gave then was Rabindranath Tagore’s lovely story ‘The Punishment’ in which bits of it are sprinkled all through the story. If I were asked now, I would give instead Vikram Chandra’s Love and Longing in Bombay (which is a collection of the things Subramaniam spoke) as the example, for it is a book in which the main part of the exposition is in the last story of five, a story which for that very reason is my favourite. The characters are of course introduced in the beginning, but all the important things are said (or, rather, implied) in that story. In keeping with Chandra, I will keep the really important part of my exposition of the book to the end too.

Each story in this collection is named after the Hindu (not Hindi) name for an emotion; Dharma, Shakti, Kama, Artha, Shanti. These names, they aren’t really for emotions (Dharma isn’t in any way an emotion); they are heavily nuanced concepts of human experience, and you’d better know that I have little idea of these nuances. They are part of that little but influential minority of the Hindu tradition that is written down. Actually, it’s only been written down comparatively recently, till then all the texts were known purely orally. Having said that, let me dive into a description of the stories, and some thoughts on them.

Dharma, in a gross over-simplification, means duty; rather an obligation to do something, and that something is pre-ordained, a function of your nature and that of your environment. In the beginning of ‘Dharma’, we are being narrated to by a young man who is feeling, and acting, a little disagreeable in a bar he has been taken to visit by one of his friends. This narrator will begin each story for us. Then, a man, a retired civil servant, named Subramaniam starts telling him a story, which begins like this (with the last sentence before this being the one in my title):

On the day that Major General Jago Antia turned fifty, his missing leg began to ache. He had been told by the doctors about phantom pain, but the leg had been gone for twenty years without a twinge, and so when he felt a twisting ache two inches below his plastic knee, he stumbled not out of agony but surprise. It was only a little stumble, but the officers who surrounded him turned away out of sympathy, because he was Jago Antia, and he never stumbled.

After this virtuoso display of character exposition, we see that this pain forces him to leave his job and go to his parent’s house in Bombay, where he finds what everyone around him is convinced is a ghost.  It is in the first meeting with the ghost that I first saw one of the hallmarks of Chandra’s writing: his gift for cinematic images.

The white blaze of lightning swept across the lawn, throwing the filigreed ironwork of the railing sharply on the wall, across Jago Antia’s belly,

Seriously? Jago has a belly? You just don’t imagine a guy like that below his chest (just in case, I mean the sort of person who ‘never stumbles’), and Chandra uses an opportune moment to show us that this guy has a belly, not even a stomach but a belly. In plain English, that means he’s showing us that Jago, despite everything, is vulnerable.

Shakti is power. I don’t know any better way to say it. This one’s about a woman who’s trying to climb her way ‘up’ Bombay’s Malabar Hill (something similar to Beverly Hills). It jumped easily – I’ll come back to this later – from the glee of narrating great politics to love story and back without straining at my credulity. This was my second-favourite story, and says something really nice about the title, and shows us some more of those images, but there’s nothing more to talk about here.

Kama is desire, in the sense of lust. This is widely agreed upon to be the best, and I can see why; it is rather extraordinarily written, but that is mainly because Chandra chose an extraordinary subject. It begins with the narrator lamenting about heartbreak. Subramaniam tells him a story to relieve him. The story is about a Sikh policeman trying to cope with a newly-found loneliness. We learn that he is a dandy, and a vain man who wants everyone to love him, but is forced to keep this impulse hidden in the depths in service of his job. Now, his wife, who in college was attracted to him for exactly that reason, is leaving him. And he’s investigating a murder. Sounds somewhat obvious, but, as I’ve already said, it is extraordinarily written, and extraordinarily thought out (watch out especially for the explanation for his having to hide that aforementioned impulse ‘in service of his job’). Since I have to provide a quote to back this up, I choose to filch from this review:

In the rearview mirror, Sartaj could see Kshitij’s shoulder, the line of his jaw, and he thought, it’s always hard on the serious ones. They were always tragic with their earnestness and their belief in seriousness. He remembered two boys who were the grandsons of farmers in his grandfather’s village near Patiala. He recalled them vaguely from a summer visit to the village, remembered them in blue pants and ties. There had been a celebration of their results in the seventh class exams, and he had tried to talk to them about the test match that everyone was listening to but had found them boring and uninformed. After that he had never seen them again and had not thought of them for years until his father had mentioned them during a Sunday phone call. They had been caught by a BSF patrol as they came over the border in the dunes near Jaisalmer laden with grenades and ammunition. They had tried to fire back but had been neatly outflanked and machine-gunned. The papers had reported the death of two Grade-A terrorists and had reported their names and their affiliations. There had been a grainy black-and-white photograph of sprawled, bloodied figures with open mouths. Sartaj had never heard of their organization but had no doubt it was a very serious one.

In ‘Kama’, I began seeing something even more extraordinary; there were images were being repeated, contrasted, used to make some sense of the scene in a way they never could have without that extra input of context. The filigreed ironwork, for example, is used as the background for a dubious confidence. There were many more, but I won’t mention them, in the interest of not spoiling the stories.

Artha is gain/wealth; I’m not completely sure which would be a closer translation. This, if you ask me, was the worst story of the five, despite a hilarious climax, because the end just wasn’t convincing. It, however, is brilliant in the fact that it takes up one more level of storytelling, with Subramaniam telling the narrator and his girlfriend Ayesha about a day in a train, when he was told a story, which itself was supposed to make a point, in the way Subramaniam’s stories do for the narrator.

And, finally, my favourite, ‘Shanti’. The word means peace, though I think but am not sure it is somewhat broader than the English word. For the first time in the book, our narrator (whose name is now revealed) meets Subramaniam outside the bar, and is taken home by him. This story is about a guy called Shiv who has just lost his brother and how he finds solace in a woman who has just lost her husband in the war Shanti, and exchanging stories with her.

All through the book, I had little bits of problem with the book, a phrase here and a comma there, but I’ll just – as a representative – point out one I found here: “Inside the door marked “Subramaniam” in brass letters, I bent to take off my shoes, and I could see the space was cool and large.” Is it just me, or does the togetherness of the last two clauses reminiscent of a hunchback? Sure, there are many ways for that to happen, but this is the first image you get, and it jars.

After that, it quickly gets better, because of Chandra’s amazing ability to modulate his voice. However big a mistake he made, I quickly forgot, because I really believed in the character who was talking at the time. Just to illustrate this, I urge you to read the quote from ‘Kama’ followed by this one:

And then she told him the story of the most evil man in the world. Shiv listened, and the words came to him through the burning of his blood and the din of his pulse. The shadows drifted in the room and then she was finished. Then Frankie came in and said the train was near, and they walked down the platform, and Shiv held her attaché case in his right hand, and walked slowly behind her. They stood on the platform until the train came, and when the train pulled away neither she nor Shiv waved or raised a hand.

Now, ‘Shanti’, Shanti and Shanti. Truly it is this story which sets for the whole book a context, and fittingly one which is probably fictional, fictional in all three universes; ours, Subramaniam’s, and his story’s. I’ve read that this book often communicates a love for storytelling. From my previous experience of Chandra (Red Earth and Pouring Rain, the narrative of a monkey telling the story of a man who’s narrating the story told to him by a woman who’s seeing the story of the monkey’s past life through a bit of water), I understand what is being talked about there. I won’t say much, but this story provides a context for the book in almost every way.

A context is given for the telling of stories by Subramaniam. A context is, simultaneously, given for the fact that these stories are in a book, a frame story at that. A context is, in fact, given for the act of storytelling itself, this one in almost the same way as in Red Earth and Pouring Rain. A context is, finally, given for Bombay, a context in itself for all this Love and Longing, a love and longing which this book made me, too, feel.

Internet Marketing - How to Use an Internet Marketing Report

Author: Jason A Osborn
Source: ezinearticles.com

There is a lot of information, Email Search
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The internet marketing report is a great tool that can be used, Email Search
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Essentially you can write a report, Email Search
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The best way to use a free report is as a bonus for when someone buys your products or services. You are essentially using the report to add value to what you are trying to sell. If you are going to use the report as a bonus for an ebook the report should cover information that is not in the ebook but is complimentary to the book. You can also use the report as incentive to purchase on a certain day, take advantage of a special promotion, or simply keep your email lists active.

You’re losing out on thousands of subscribers and tons of money if you don’t know the easy techniques I use to build a profitable online business. I’ve written a FREE ebook showing you how to easily make money with article marketing and build a massive list. Get your FREE ebook here: http://www.MrArticleMarketer.com

Affirmations Don't Work, and How I Finally Got That They Do!

Author: Sandra Kumskov
Source: ezinearticles.com

If you’ve been around the EFT world for any length of time at all, you’ll know, Email Search
, it’s generally, Email Search
, believed that affirmations don’t work. Until now that is,, Email Search
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I like Sylvia Hartmann’s approach to life and healing in general, so when I received an email about her new book I thought I’d have a read of her sales page anyway, even though I’m fairly convinced that affirmations pretty much don’t work. Why they don’t work is that we all have subconscious but powerful limiting beliefs, or “yes-buts”, that trigger an internal argument or discomfort when we make statements that are clearly,, Email Search
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But, I trust Sylvia and I know, Email Search
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, to be more of the same old affirmation stuff, and I bought the book.

At just 40 pages “Power Affirmations” is a quick read in Sylvia’s very conversational easy-read style.

Now, I have read a lot about positive affirmations, because part of me wants it to be true that making clear statements about how I want to experience life, will be enough to make it happen. For at least fifteen years I’ve studied many books and DVDs about affirmations, attended lectures, listened to the audios, run a subliminal program on my computer, and in more recent years even joined a membership site or two, all in the, Email Search
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But I never did get it. Everything I discovered seemed, Email Search
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I also know I’ve got to “feel” the result I want, because charging it up with emotion makes the affirmation more powerful, Email Search
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But, Email Search
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She also taught a simple amazingly-powerful way to completely nix the yes-buts. I tried it and felt the most incredible shift in my energy, that was really, Email Search
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She also covers things I’ve not read elsewhere, like meta affirmations, Email Search
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If you’re looking for a book that gives you lists of affirmations about any particular subject, this is not the book, Email Search
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For just 40-some pages, this is an information-packed ebook. More importantly, it’s an action-packed ebook, with teaching and tools that actually work! At the end of Power Affirmations, all I can say about it is: I get it. Finally!

If you want to finally “get” how affirmations can and will work for you, and how you can powerfully transform anything about your life, get your clarity from http://www.affirmationsdontwork.info.

Booklove reviews Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story by Carolyn Turgeon

Booklove reviews

Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story
by Carolyn Turgeon

 

“Lil lives a quiet life, working each day in a dusty used book shop in Manhatten,  then returning home to her lonely apartment each night.  We soon realize, however, that Lil is not just any old woman.  Home after a long day of work, she draws a warm bath, undresses and sinks into the welcoming warmth.  “I was alone, finally, completely free.  I leaned forward and unclenched my back.  A pure feeling of bliss moved through me.  My wings unfurled . . .”

 

Read the complete review at Booklove!

A Million Miles In A Thousand Years : What I Learned While Editing My Life

I quickly became a Donald Miller fan after reading Blue Like Jazz.  I enjoy his conversational writing style, mixed with profound observations on faith and our human condition.  Since then I’ve read all his books.  When this book came out, I bought it and began reading it simply because it was Miller’s next offering.

A few years ago I began using a little phrase that I’d put together through several different life experiences.  “What makes the better story???  Do that!!!” This became a running joke and expression that I would use with close friends and family when faced with insignificant choices and other weighty decisions.  At times it would result in ridiculous experiences and in other moments challenge me to choose an uncomfortable, yet rewarding path.

It was a lot of fun reading this book because Don takes a look at our life through the lens of story.  He explores and uncovers what makes a good story in a book and on film, and how that contrasts with real life.  I found the book prompting me to ask the question what kind of story am I telling with my life?  Reminding me that I can choose to write a great story, to be a great character, to pursue life in all it’s fullness!  Or I can choose a less interesting and safe existence.  Every choice I make plays a role in determining my story.  It was a good reminder that always choosing what is safe, or comfortable, or popular can actually dull my story.

Pam and I have purposefully made decisions in our life to create memories with our kids…telling a better story.  We’ve realized that our kids will remember the things we did that were outside of the norm…beyond the expected.  One example was the year we decided to have Fruit Loops for Thansgiving Dinner.  Rather than focusing so much time and energy on the meal, we spent all our time playing and hanging out together.  Our kids still talk about that year, and we’re threatening to do it again someday.  Next time we’ll probably have Lucky Charms though.

Would I recommend this book…absolutely!  Miller’s honest and creative writing has a way that I’m sure can connect with most anyone.  I appreciate the way he openly wrestles with his faith and how it works in his life, but without jumping on the sometimes all-too-popular “let’s bash the church” train.  It’s a pretty easy read, and might even challenge some of us to get off the couch and live a better story.

Christianity: From total persecution to State religion: what happened?

Christianity: From total persecution to State religion: what happened? (Nov. 2, 2009)

 

            By the beginning of the fourth century Christians in the Roman Empire were no longer persecuted as a sect behaving contrary to the Roman values.  The Christians have suffered one of the worst waves of persecutions from 303 to 311.  The father of Constantine persecuted the Christian mercilessly and Constantine witnessed the massacres. Constantine inherited England and France as co-Emperor, one of three other co-Emperors to the Roman Empire that dominated the Mediterranean Sea.

            This article is not about the fictitious story or not of Constantine seeing the symbol of the Christians at night or in a dream before the battle to capturing Rome from Maxence in 312. This post intends on explaining the moratorium on Christian persecutions as this sect reached the threshold of a minority of 10% of the total population.  At that period, the Christian was not born a Christian; he was not baptized a week or longer after birth.  A Christian had to prove that he believed in Christ as the Redemptor of our sins, that Christ resurrected from death and that God is the creator of man and the universe and that God is One and all powerful, and all our actions were to be offered in honor of Him.

            The intellectuals and educated leaned toward this concept of a unique God, an abstract God who is not emulated on earthly natural powers or actual planets and Sun: it was the cultural rage of the time.  The high ranked in the Roman caste system didn’t have to proselytize or proclaim their conversion; this task was relegated to the poorer Romans in the caste system so that the Christian religion spread its tenants with example of persecutions in arenas for the pleasure of the Romans.

            The four co-Emperors needed stability in their respective allocated Empires and they needed the Christians support in the highest administrative jobs.  If the Christians were about 10% of the total they constituted a much higher ratio in the Orient and in Africa.  After Constantine won the Orient he was left with only one co-Emperor Licinius in Africa.  Emperor Constantine who build Constantinople (later to be named the Byzantium Empire) converted to Christianity and was both pragmatic toward the vast majority of pagans and an intolerant Christian who wanted to unite all the Christian sects in his empire, a sort of centralized orthodox church with a dogma that suited a newly converted Emperor.

            Christianity was Not a new ideology to Emperor Constantine; that would be the case a century later. The people were born in the rituals to being “patriotic” to the Roman Empire and to obeying the reigning Emperor. The people were not dupe: not a single ex-voto (in Greek or Latin) to an Emperor (living or dead) was found; people asked and demanded from their Gods to be cured or saved from calamities.  The temporal sovereign was a need to safeguard the peace and continuity of the communities; as long as no new heavy taxes were imposed the Emperor could be labeled “The so good and beloved monarch”. The luxurious way of life of the monarch was accepted as a right that fit the position; the monarch didn’t have to abuse of pageantry to impress upon the people, it was not a sort of propaganda to remind the people of his role and power; it was simply a right attached to the position of power.  All that an Emperor had to do is to occasionally speak on the virtue of the existing rituals so that to clear the void and the silence in the kingdom.

            In 325 Emperor Constantine summoned all the Bishops to a conclave in Nicee (Turkey).  The conclave dragged on for four months and ended with a slight majority agreeing to a new abstract dogma of the Trinity of Father, Son, and the Virgin Mary, the Holy Ghost and the Credo.  The dissenting Christian sects were labeled “heretics” because they wanted to believe in One God and not bestow divinity on Jesus and much less on Mary.

            Ten years later Emperor Constantine defeated Licinius and became the sole Emperor to the Mediterranean Sea Empire. Persecution of the heretic Christian sects started in earnests and they had to flee to the eastern shores of the Euphrates River, a kingdom under the Persian Sassanide Empire.

            Apparently, Emperor Constantine was never defeated in military battles; if he were he might have had a second thought about his all powerful protector new God; at least he might have listened more seriously to the heretic Christian Unique God.  Two years before his death, Emperor Constantine defeated the Germans and wrote to the Bishops meeting in conclave in Tyr (Lebanon) “The Germans are converting to Christianity; they are convinced that our God cannot be defeated or vanquished.”

            Constantine died in 337. From this year to 400 Christianity could have easily lost its supremacy as the Emperor religion.  Emperor Julian reverted to paganism but died two years later; he could have easily converted the whole Empire to paganism which was the vast majority.  Several Christian Emperors were elected by factional armies not on religious ground but for many other reasons.  One main reason that Christian Emperors succeeded to the throne in the next 60 years was because the paganism was flexible, indifferent, and tolerant while the Christian Church was exclusive (once converted then you are sucked in) and it grabbed tightly at any rights it gained.  The minority Church used to the hilt the temporal power of the Emperors to affirm its positions.

            In 394, Emperor Theodosius managed to defeat the pagan German General Arbogast in Slovenia; it was a pure fluke of nature: a violent wind blew in the face of the combined more powerful Roman/Germanic army.  Arbogast had reigned in Rome and installed a figure head Emperor Eugene; he re-confirmed paganism in Rome and for six years paganism was master in the western provinces. Also, two years earlier to the definitive battle, Theodosius had banished all public pagan rituals in the Orient in reaction to Arbogast attempts to restoring paganism. 

            This military defeat had set the stage for the supremacy of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Thus, in the 5th century, the number of bishops jumped drastically; from around 6 to 50 in North Italy, from 20 to 70 in France (Gaule), and in North Africa the number tripled. The pagans transformed Christianity into paganism rituals of visiting every new sanctified Saint or shrines where miracles were invented and propagated.  Pictures and statues of Saints and the Virgin Mary proliferated much quicker than churches.

            When Islam conquered the Near East by defeating Heracles in the battle of Yarmouk then the heretic Christian sects (the true monolithic) converted to a religion that coincided with their belief system in One and Unique God and that accepted all the Jewish and Christian Bibles as forming integral part of Islam’s fundamental doctrine.  If the Byzantium Empire had selected the Christian heretic dogma instead of the Trinity Islam would have never emerged to fill this vacuum since the Prophet Muhammad was initially a convert to one of the Christian-Jewish sects in Mecca.

            There are two distinct civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea.  The main difference is in the transmission of rituals and traditions among the people.  The Oriental civilization accepts a temporal sovereign who appoints the religious clergy of bishops and Imam (a decentralized religion) and the western civilization was comfortable with the cast of the clergy using the temporal power to expand its dominion over the people (a centralized religious power in Rome); that was the case after the year 400 in pagan Rome. 

            The Christian religion emulated the trend of former civilizations and a major schism occurred in 1000 between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches based on the perception, power, and the rights of the temporal power. In fact, Emperor Theodoric of Constantinople exerted pressures on Pope Gelase 1st to submit to the temporal rights of the sovereign; then, the Pope created the theory of separation of the spiritual and temporal powers in order to appease the Emperor.

            While the Orient experienced a resurgence of the sciences and rational thinking in the 7th century, Europe was engulfed in the Dark Age till the 15th century because the Catholic Church prohibited any rational challenges to its authority.