Song: This Man by Jeremy Camp || Lord of the Rings

A song today... it's been a while since I've posted lyrics, and after a long long long post, I think it's time for a short one. This song, although simple, is very deep at the same time.

This Man
Jeremy Camp

In only a moment truth was seen
Revealed this mystery
The crown that showed no dignity he wore
And the king was placed for all the world to show disgrace
But only beauty flowed from this place

Would you take the place of this man
Would you take the nails from his hands
Would you take the place of this man
Would you take the nails from his hands

He held the weight of impurity
The Father would not see
The reasons had finally come to be to show
The depth of His grace flowed with every sin erased
He knew that this was why he came

Would you take the place of this man
Would you take the nails from his hands
Would you take the place of this man
Would you take the nails from his hands

And we just don't know
The blood and water flowed
And in it all He showed
Just how much He cared

And the veil was torn
So we could have this open door
And all these things have finally been complete

Would you take the place of this man
Would you take the nails from his hands
Would you take the place of this man
Would you take the nails from his hands,
from his hands, from his hands, from his hands...

---

And here is a great explanation I found for those that consistently get the Lord of the Rings WAY wrong. It always ticks me off as Sam is my favorite character. So eat this:

Frodo Is Master, Sam Is Man

In response to the letter by Emily Stienson "Samwise and Frodo Aren't Gay; yes, I have had that argument many times with my friends. No, they certainly were not gay (J.R.R. Tolkien, a lifelong Catholic, would be shocked that people think so). But there is a quintessentially British class relationship known as "master and man." It is a relationship that no longer really exists in the modern world, but up to World War II there is a body of literature that depicts the relationship between a hero (usually but not always, upper class) and his faithful servant (usually, but not always, lower class). It was assumed that the lower classes were ignorant of, and possibly immune to, the "finer feelings," and that it was the duty of the upper class to provide examples for them to live up to. And it was the duty of the lower classes to demonstrate loyalty and provide a practical grounding for the hero. After all, you can't expect a hero to slay the dragon and also polish his own sword or think about such mundane matters as tonight's dinner. That's what the faithful servant was for.

Later, between World War I and World War II, this was twisted into the comedy routine of the bumbling upper-class twit and the (much smarter) servant. See Jeeves & Wooster or more recently Spamalot, with its hilarious number "I'm All Alone," sung by King Arthur as his servant visibly wonders, "What am I, chopped liver?" Arthur, of course, means that there is no one of his own social rank present to share and understand his (upper-class, kingly) feelings. In a class-based society, this counts as "alone," even if there are a hundred servants standing around.

Anyway, to return to the point, the relationship of "master and man" is not a gay one ... it is simply two people who would be best friends, if it were not for the limitations of their different classes.

And it is a symptom of our modern-day cynicism that we can't see deep friendship and respect between any two people without assuming that sex is involved.

Jessica S. Lucens
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue436/letters.html

The Assault Against the Family: Arm Yourself for the Battle: On Marriage

Tonight, at Connect: Young Adult Fellowship, we heard a speech by Chris and Rose Kreslins about Marriage and the family. I'm going to attempt to give a synopsis of it while it's still fresh, but it'll have my own spin on it since I, sadly, cannot recall the talk in it's entirety. It was a very deeply awesome talk.

Marriage isn't first and foremost about romance and passion. It is a calling.. it is a vocation. It is something that we have a privelage of having this gift of marriage, that two people, man and woman, can become one flesh.

How, ideally, should the order of priority within a healthy marriage come? I'll paint the picture as such. The Trinity is Three persons in One God... Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It's like a triangle. Put God at the top of the Triangle, and yourself and your spouse on each of the two bottom points. As you both get closer to God, you get closer to one another. Both the husband and the wife should place God first, and then their spouse, and then family, and then everything else fourth. In that, every family will find peace and true happiness.

But first, it takes a lot of clearing out.. a lot of getting rid of the garbage that you may not even know that you have. They say that when you get married, things about yourself come up that you didn't even know were there, and if those things are getting to you, or if suddenly your spouse is annoying or whatever, then there must clearly be something wrong from your past. Some wound that needs mending. As those wounds heal, you'll find yourself falling more and more in love with wife or husband, and with your children.

Chris mentioned a time when Rose went to a restaurant, like Subway, with her five kids, and the girl at the counter asked her: "Are those all yours?" She answered, "Yes!" and the girl said "Oh, you poor thing." Rose just shook her head and said "I love my children," with a smile. And you can tell. They've got a truly awesome marriage. And they're not the only big family that I know. My mom was the first of nine. My dad was one of five. My friends Angie, Danny and Ryan are three of seven. My friend Roy has five incredible and well-behaved daughters with a sixth child on the way. Janet and DJ have six children as well.

How do they do it? Love and compassion, prayer, a little hard work, the grace of God. Rose mentioned how for a while she'd get angry at the littlest things.. and a priest told her it was because she wasn't doing things out of charity or love, to be ready to serve. Such as helping the neighbor with groceries or to show her love for her husband even when she's mad at him. She was amazed by how well it worked and how much more grace she was given.

Some people think that after they get married, they'll wait a couple of years and then have children. But when you take the vows, you are supposed to be committing yourselves to having children, and raising them right. Why not just put off the marriage those two years then? Because you want to see if it'll work? Should you be marrying your best friend? It's not rocket science to know if it'll work. Don't rush in, pray about it, and realize that marriage is worth more than what you think and isn't just about romance or what you can get about it...it's about what you can give as well.

They took us back through the history of the family, and what happened. Back before the industrial revolution (which J.R.R. Tolkien hated for a number of reasons), families worked together, and would grow what they needed, and the family would run the business together. The father would work at home, and the son would watch the father and eventually work with his dad and then take over. Families did things together. The average size of the family was seven kids. The average age of the population was 13. Can you even imagine that?

Right now, the average age is something like 2.3 kids per family. And don't give me that bull about over-population. Sure, some parts of the world are struggling with it, but we're not. "Saying there are too many little children is like saying there are too many little flowers."

The key thing here, is that the mother and the father were both home all the time with their children. Then the industrial revolution. They build machines that can work faster, and people want what they make, and the factories are built and people are told that they will get paid to work in them, so it spreads, and for the first time ever, fathers are leaving the home to go work, and leaving most of the parenting to their wives. The family businesses are now disappearing.

The next logical step: women are having a hard time raising the children on their own: let's find a way to control the number of children that we have, for the sake of management and convenience. Yes, let's decide not to do what God asks of us and decide we know how many kids are the right number for us. Oh, and let's not forget public school. Let's let someone else teach and raise our children. Granted, many families need to do that.. I went to private school myself. Same concept.

So here we are, things have changed for the worse. Families are confused, people are confused, society is confused. The stuff we see on tv these days used to be considered pretty hard core stuff, not even forty years ago. It's created a mess of confusion as people grow up.

There is, however, a growing trend happening, as more and more families are homeschooling their children. More and more mothers and fathers are starting their own businesses or finding other ways of being with their kids more, and it's starting to shift back to a method that works. Building a fortress of faith and love, that the grace of God runs in so thick that you can just see how much love there is. The barriers are swept away and everything is just vibrant and alive. That's not to say that all families have the means to be able to do this, but family should always come before work, and not the other way around.

Recently, I was talking to someone about this, and they saw it as a negative thing for a dad to be home with the kids all the time. But now, having heard this talk tonight, I understand why that is never a bad idea within a strong Christian marriage.

Marriage is not something to take forgranted. It truly is a vocation. They also recommended reading Marriage: A Path to Sanctity by Javier Abad and E. Fenoy, before getting married. I'm going to pick up a copy myself, and I'll probably write about it after or as I'm reading it.

The book description is as follows: Your marriage can be a path to sanctity and heroic virtue — here’s how. Based on Scripture, documents of the Magisterium, and the works of trustworthy spiritual guides, this is a compact, complete, and inspiring guide to the nobility and beauty of Christian marriage. Authors Javier Abad and Eugenio Fenoy examine marriage as a vocation, the nature of spousal love, the true nature of responsible parenthood, chastity in marriage, and the sanctification of matrimony. They also take on the hard questions: contraception, sexuality, and more — making this a complete guidebook for married couples and those preparing for or thinking about marriage.

The talk ended with this reading from the Bible, and I will end with it as well. I'm sure there is something that I missed. The talk went for over an hour and was all phenomenal stuff, and all very plausible. I only hope that I did it justice, and I'll probably update when Erin (who took notes) writes up her weekly summary of the evening's talk.

Ephesians 5: 21-33

²¹ Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.

²² Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. ²³For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. ²⁴As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.

²⁵Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her ²⁶to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, ²⁷that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. ²⁸So (also) husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, ³⁰because we are members of his body. ³¹"For this reason a man shall leave (his) father and (his) mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." ³²This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church. ³³In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband.

Links related to this blog:
Connect
Chris and Rose Kreslins
Marriage: A Path to Sanctity

Catholics ARE Christians... nuff said

Posted this in a forum, just wanted to post it here:
Let me start by saying that this will be my only post in this thread as I will say all that I feel that I need to say here, very shortly.

1: Catholics ARE Christians....regardless of what anyone may tell you, if someone says otherwise, then they clearly do not know anything about the Catholic Church and need to be re-educated. This isn't slander, it is the truth.

2: Catholics put the Bible together, yes, the very book that you're all quoting to say that Catholics are wrong, well, we put it together.. even Martin Luther attested to that

3: History reveals early Christians doing an early version of the Mass: Letters from around 100 AD that clearly describe what can only be compared to the Catholic Mass have been found. Don't ask for them, I don't know where they are, just that they exist. You might be able to find out about them at PhatMass.com

4: Christ wants UNITY and to continue this argument without honestly looking at things from both sides and remaining ignorant and continue to argue based on rumors, hearsay and misconstrued slander against the Catholic Church would just be ridiculous. So please, get yourselves educated on Why Catholics Do That

5. Read anything by Scott Hahn, G.K. Chesterton,or even, yes, J.R.R. Tolkien. All of them are smarter than I am, Chesterton and Tolkien are probably smarter than most of us combined. Chesterton and Tolkien were GREAT influences on C.S. Lewis. Yes, he read them, and was great friends with Tolkien. Perhaps we can all take something from their examples.

6. Arguing in a Forum goes Nowhere: because there is enough stuff already out there on both sides. If you truly wish to argue against something like Protestantism, or Catholicism, or Mormonism... go to the source and learn about them first. Do not make assumptions and accusations about things that you know little to nothing about. No matter how much you think you know, I guarentee you it is not enough.

Thank you

If you would like to contact me, you can reach me here or here.

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Lost Season 2 Speculation

Alright. They've announced the titles of the first three episodes of Season 2 of Lost. Lost is currently my favorite show on television, so bear with me as I pull out the analyitical side of this blog, and talk about my theories as to what exactly is going to happen, based on the entirety of Season 1, and the mere titles of the episodes. Granted, I could be far off, as Lost is a very very twisting show, but we shall see. And beware, there are season ONE spoilers in here.

Episode One:
"Man of Science, Man of Faith" written by Damon Lindelof
9/21/2005

Speculation: Jack is a doctor, the Man of Science. Locke is the Man of Faith. I believe that this episode will focus on the struggles between these two characters. Both are alpha males, but in many different ways.

Jack has no agenda, seemingly flying by the seat of his pants and rushing into things and making judgement calls on things without really thinking them through, most of the time. He makes many many assumptions and, while he believes he's in the right most of the time, sometimes he's wrong and ends up hurting more people than just himself. This is a character without real direction. All we know is that he's a leader, and that he wants what is best for the people on the island.

Locke is a man of Faith. He's a somewhat eccentric character that quietly became a favorite of fans of the show. He was paraplegic, but by a miracle he is now able to walk again. What I'd like to know is, what made him paraplegic? "Walkabout" was a great episode featuring him, that revealed this problem, and the next episode (that featured flashbacks of Locke) he could walk. This is a man that believes that they are all there for a reason, that there is some big reason for all of this, and that it is some sort of supernatural force that is responsible for it. Locke is borderline fanatic, and I hope that he does not cross that line, as it could very well destroy the character that they've built up so well. I hope that he doesn't turn out to be a villainous character.

Episode Two:
"Adrift" written by Steven Maeda & Leonard Dick
9/28/2005

Speculation: Adrift will probably feature the survivors still afloat on the remains of the raft: Michael, Jin and Sawyer. Their adventure at sea ended in disaster, and the aftermath, I have a feeling, will be shocking for these characters, as where they end up isn't where they are going to try to get to. I think they're going to ain for returning to the island, but come in on the other side and run into more survivors.

Episode Three:
"Orientation" written by Javier Grillo-Marxuach & Craig Wright
10/5/2005

Speculation: In the aftermath of the bouts between Jack and Locke, the people of the island will begin to separate..orienting themselves with the views of either Jack or Locke. This split is a very dangerous thing for the people there, as it causes definite division in the ranks and clique mentality. The only resolution that I can think of, would be if something big happened that required them all to work together, and also required the use of all the skills that they have, including the doctor and the hunter...Jack and Locke.

Well, there you have it..my theories based on the first three episode titles. I took the safer route by just talking about the essenses of the story and staying away from as many specific plot points as I could. We'll see what holds up, though, when the show comes back.