Head-dibs

Drink a toast to innocence Drink a toast to time Remembering the eloquence Of another auld lang syne Ready for a new month in a new year!

  Adler and Wolff suggest in their “Great Books” introduction to the Old Testament book of Job (Britannica, 1959 V.1), that the purpose of this wisdom literature is not to answer accusations of God’s justice or injustice toward the righteous and wicked. Instead, the account seeks to answer the question of appearances; that is, of apparent justice or injustice toward those who appear to be righteous or wicked. Is God capricious? Is divine justice the same as human justice? Must God reward or punish now, or does He reserve the right to wait? What do we truly deserve from God? Do we truly see as God sees? What’s wrong with submitting to God’s will without fully understanding it? Spoiler alert: the answer to every question is found in Job 40:2. A few observations: We are privy to information Job does not have: God limits Satan to “touch all he has” (1:12) along with his body short of taking his life (2:6), two wagers that Satan designs to tempt Job to curse God to His face (1:11; 2:5)....

 

  Plutarch described Caesar as “a spare man, had soft and white skin, was distempered in the head and subject to an epilepsy” who “used war as the best physic against his indispositions.” He dictated letters while on horseback, is thought to be the first to communicate in code and sailed into the Atlantic with an army for war. When sheltering during a storm, he gave up his place to make room for sick men. Caesar occasionally led battles on foot, saving his horse for parading after the battle. He piled up the dead into rivers to make them passable. “[A]nd the people’s fondness for Caesar gave an additional luster to successes achieved by him.”  General Pompey’s (son-in-law of Caesar, former statesman of the Roman Republic, turned enemy) rivalry culminated in the Battle of Thessalia, or the so-called “Battle of Pharsalas” (in Greece), signaling end of the Roman Republic and the crises of the beginning of The Roman Empire. While Pompey’s assassination occurred in Egypt, Caesar wo...

  While on a small ladder in my closet looking for Christmas decorations a couple weeks ago, I found two small wooden boxes sitting on a high shelf. I parked them there and forgot about them. The contents of each box contain memorabilia from teenage and early adulthood such as photographs, awards, newspaper clippings, and so forth. One particular item caught my eye so I fished it out: a monogrammed brass bookmark. While I can’t exactly recall from whence it came, I gladly return it to use as I continue my reading adventures. 

  “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” (Proverbs 25:2)

  I finished reading a translation of what we call “The Cyrus Cylinder” (500’s BC) and got excited. Here’s the key section: “[By his] exalted [word], all the kings who sit upon thrones throughout the world, from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea, who live in the dis[tricts far-off], the kings of the West, who dwell in tents, all of them, brought their heavy tribute before me and in Babylon they kissed my feet. From [Babylon] to Assur and (from) Susa, Agade, Ešnunna, Zamban, Me-Turnu, Der, as far as the region of Gutium, the sacred centers on the other side of the Tigris, whose sanctuaries had been abandoned for a long time, I returned the images of the gods, who had resided there, note to their places and I let them dwell in eternal abodes. I gathered all their inhabitants and returned to them their dwellings.” (From Fragment B, sections 28-32. Based on Mordechai Cogan's translation.)  This is amazing because not long after the decrees were “published,” the Je...

 

 

  "You are afraid of dying. But, come now, how is this life of yours anything but death?" (Seneca, Moral Letters, 77.18)

  Leo Tolstoy had an idea: collect wisdom from “the best and wisest people” such as Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, Socrates, Matthew Arnold, The New Testament, and others, and compile into a single book for short, daily “devotional” reading. Peter Sekirin writes, “This was Leo Tolstoy’s last major work. . . . preparing three revised editions between 1904 and 1910. It was his own favorite everyday reading, a book he would turn to regularly for the rest of his life.” Tolstoy arranged the collected wisdom of the ages with some of his own writing by topic.  His book was banned by Russia from 1912 until 1995, when it was republished . . . In Russian. The first English translation was made in 1996. I’ll be supplementing my daily reading this next year with Tolstoy’s “Daily Calendar of Wisdom.”

  The opening paragraph of Plutarch’s 47th chapter on Alexander should be the opening paragraph of the entire work, for here he states his intent for writing: to capture the character of historic figures, leaving exploits to other historians. Plutarch wants to give us the men themselves, not accomplishments.  Of all that could be said of Alexander, one letter Aristotle speaks volumes of his character. Alexander asks Aristotle to not publish his works because he wants to keep this knowledge to himself. “I would rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent,” writes Alexander. Aristotle tactfully responds (in so many words), “don’t worry. My writing style is useless for ordinary teaching anyway.” Alexander thought Homer’s “Iliad” was such “a portable treasury of military virtue and knowledge” that he kept a copy under his pillow with a dagger.  On few occasions could someone close to Alexander speak against his arrogance with no recourse, but the greatest and pe...

Finished reading Plutarch’s “Numa Pompilius,” who was buried with his books. While Lycurgus received “divine blessing” over his reforms at the close of his life, Numa Pompilius subdued the perversions of early Rome by utilizing divine authority from his awkward start. Plutarch writes how, as Pontifex Maximus (the chief priest) he “sacrificed often and used processions and religious dances, in which most commonly he officiated in person . . . At times, also, he filled their imaginations with religious terrors, professing that strange apparitions had been seen, and dreadful voices heard; thus subduing and humbling their minds by a sense of supernatural fears.”  As the interpreter of divine law, Numa Pompilius established several orders of priests and priestesses given to lifetime service, outlawed fathers selling their children as slaves, established a calendar of 365 days, rearranging the months into near approximation as we know them (October means “eighth month,” and December, mea...

  Plutarch (first century Greek philosopher/chronologer) lived in the golden age of The Roman Empire, a contemporary with Epictetus and the Apostle Paul. Plutarch’s “Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans” was the source material for Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” and “Antony and Cleopatra.” This reading compares and contrasts the lives of four ancient leaders: Lycurgus, Numa Pompilius (the second king of Rome after Romulus), Julius Caesar and Alexander. I’ve finished the first reading in “Lycurgus” in Dryden’s translation of Plutarch’s “Lives” from an undated Modern Library publication (there is a cryptic note penciled in the table of contents, gifting the book on October 19, 1951).   Plutarch highlights four contributions of Lycurgus, “the lawgiver of Sparta,” such as the establishing a Senate of 28 members to strike a balance between absolute monarchy and absolute democracy; and, addressing arrogance, envy, luxury and crime head-on by redistributing land and wealth among the ...

Wondering why I’m posting what I’ve finished reading? The primary reason is that I’ve noticed that if I report what I am going to read or am currently reading, I never finish. I’ve been more successful in saying after the fact. That’s about it. Keep moving forward! Finished reading: “The Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians” and “The Acts of the Holy Spirit”

 

“ Read books that make you mad,” was often heard from a former colleague. I don’t get angry reading Aristotle, but he is worth understanding. Aristotle gave me a few head scratchers in Book 1 of “Political” or “Politics” (translated by Benjamin Jowett):   First, for the modern reader, the opening paragraphs redefine “king” as a personal ruler over a household, a family leader. Where the citizens rule, there we find the state.  Second, Aristotle holds the state was created prior to the individual, for “when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all. . . If he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and savage of animals. . . Justice is the bond of men. . . “  Third, he divides the family into three groups: master and slave, husband and wife, father and children, noting that “where the relation of master and slave between them is natural they are friends and have a common interest, but where it merely rests on law and force the reverse is true.” Here he explains...

I  got so wrapped up in Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” that I read three books too many. I was only supposed to read Book 1! I’m so silly. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? Reading Too Much

Finished reading Genesis, Paul’s Letter to the Galatians and the logical gymnastics that is Book 3 of Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics,” an exploration of Virtues starting with Courage and Temperance.  

  Finished reading Ruth (Old Testament) and Book 2 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. This one hurt my brain a lottle that I nearly cried in logic when all he had to say was “men are good in but one way, but bad in many.”

Judges (Old Testament) Book 1 in Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” Sophocles’ last line of “Oedipus The King” is “we must call no one happy who is of mortal race until he has crossed life‘s border free from pain.” Where Sophocles (497-406 BC) ends, Aristotle    (384-322 BC) begins, searching the subject of happiness in “Ethica Nicomachea.” His exploration asks if happiness is the result of what we do, or of who we are? Is happiness the result of having a good time or from living a good life? Is happiness dependent on goods (circumstantial) or self-sufficient in what is good (contentment)? Is happiness an activity or a state of being? The philosopher reasoned that virtuous completion determines happiness and is only measured at the end of life. 

  Finished reading Sophocles’ third and final Theban play. Actually, it’s the first. Though “Antigone” brings the cycle to a close, it was the first written and performed. One might say that Sophocles was the ancient father of the prequel, producing “Oedipus The King” after “Antigone.”   This is the tragic account of a daughter-sister of Oedipus burying the body of her disgraced brother, Polynices, against the will of Creon, the king of Thebes, her uncle (in its complicated way). To quote Creon, this is a “story with a great deal of artful precaution. It’s evidently something strange.”  In this third (and first) tale, Teiresias the blind prophet, makes a curious observation (if you will), that points the way out of tragedy, that “all men fall into sin. But sinning, he is not for ever lost hapless and helpless, who can make amends and has not set his face against repentance.” Though his advice goes unheeded and the characters meet their tragic end, one wonders: must our en...

  The tragedy continues! The words of Marcus Aurelius nearly 500 years later describe the play well: "Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what's left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?"

 

 Difficult doing this video while trying not to have an asthma attack. So much I wanted to say but could barely get out what I did on this masterpiece of drama, suspense and tragedy. “  THE THEBAN LEGEND The place called Thebes lay in the central plain of Boeotia, part of the narrow tongue of land joining the Athenian country to the more northerly mainland. Here, under the guidance of the Oracle of Delphi, a city was first founded by Cadmus, son of Agenor and brother of that Europa whom Zeus courted in the likeness of a bull. Misfortune befell him even before his city was established, for all the trusty companions who should have been his first citizens were devoured by a fierce dragon which inhabited a neighbouring glen. But Cadmus was a match for the dragon and at one stroke laid him dead. Again the word of Heaven guided him, and he was instructed to sow the dragon's teeth in the ground prepared for his future city; from which seed there instantly sprang up a tribe of giants...

Finished Reading Book 2 where we learn that “necessity is the mother of our invention” (the invention being The State, the testing ground for justice); that a class of dedicated warriors are required to defend the state; that the foundation of education consists of gymnastics and music, including literature; and that poets should be censored for misrepresenting God, who should be represented as He truly is and cannot change.

A few days ago we finished binge watching the show “Suits” and the last three days I’ve had the song “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay stuck in my head. Thanks for that, Harvey Specter. Actually, that song as the closer was the perfect fit for the character. Anyone who knows me needs no explanation when I say when I heard the first notes of the song, I almost wept. And the song has been playing royalty free in my head for days.   Each month I try to focus on a concept or theme and the last five years December’s theme is “Mortality.” As Coldplay continues to reverberate in my head, it became evident how the song and the theme complement each other. “Live Life” is how the title translates, and why not? The song captures victories and losses, heartache and acceptance. It’s a song that captures the fragility of life, and being ok with that. “I don’t always have to be on top.” There are times when you must strike while the opportunity is hot, but everything eventually cools off and grinds to a...

  Shakespeare’s Sonnet 97 “ How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December's bareness everywhere! And yet this time remov'd was summer's time, The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime, Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease: Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit; For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And thou away, the very birds are mute; Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.”