He died of what he saw there: Vengeance as a theme in the writings of Patricia A. McKillip

Other aspects of McKillip's work are also considered on this page.

Originally written, as a web page, which was not part of this blog, on May 2, 2008 (Links checked May 11, 2011). The latest version of that web page is here.

This post considers most of the fantasy writing of Patricia A. McKillip, with some reference to that of Jack Vance.

"I write fantasy because it's there. I have no other excuse for sitting down for several hours a day indulging my imagination. Daydreaming. Thinking up imaginary people, impossible places." Patricia McKillip (1948 - ____) US science fiction writer
In "Faces of Fantasy," by Patti Perret. (source: http://creativequotations.com/)


Darko Suvin, in "Considering the Sense of 'Fantasy' or 'Fantastic Fiction': An Effusion," in Extrapolation 41:209-247, 2000 describes much fantastic literature as parable. He says: "For the parable consists of a narrative body as 'vehicle' and an intended meaning as 'tenor,' as a way of intimately relating art to truth or narrative and metaphoric imagination to conceptualized, normative doctrine." (p. 211) I can only speculate about McKillip's intent, but some of her narrative body seems to have, as a significant part of its tenor, that vengeance is dangerous to the avenger, and good characters, although they may be tempted to seek revenge, draw back from it.

Vengeance in The Forgotten Beasts of Eld:
Any discussion of McKillip should start with The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, (New York: Avon) Published in 1974, this book has deservedly remained in print ever since. The book is deep, with many characters, some magical, some normal, some human, some not so. The themes are love and vengeance. Sybel, a beautiful enchantress who is the daughter and granddaughter of wizards, lives in isolation on Eld Mountain, with her collection of magical animals, including Cyrin, the talking boar. Out in the world at large, the house of Sirle and Drede, king of Eldwold, are at war. Norrel, one of the seven Sirle lords, fell in love with Rianna, Drede's queen, a relative of Sybel, and Rianna with him. The two armies fought, and Norrel was killed, as the Sirle lords lose the battle. Coren of Sirle, full of hatred for Drede, brings Tamlorn, Rianna's child, to Sybel to keep. Sybel knows nothing of keeping a child, but agrees to take Tamlorn.

While Coren is at Sybel's house, Cyrin tells him a cautionary tale: "The giant Grof was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there." (p. 70) This, and a gradual falling in love with Sybel, shows Coren that he had been nursing a desire for revenge toward Drede, and that it was destroying him.

Sybel raises Tamlorn until he is in his teens, then agrees to let him live with his father, Drede. She has been calling for one last animal, a great crane, the Liralen. It does not seem to respond, but a ghostly creature, the Blammor, having power to use the evil within people against themselves, appears. Drede and Sirle are still enemies. Drede finds a wizard, more powerful even than Sybel, and asks him to destroy her freedom of choice, so she will be his queen, with her animals serving him through her. The wizard calls Sybel from her house to Drede's city, where he is about to take her will from her. He momentarily succumbs to lust for Sybel. As he does, she calls the Blammor, which kills the wizard. Drede comes in to claim Sybel, and finds the wizard dead. He guesses what has happened.

Sybel agrees to marry Coren. She has come to love him, but her main motive is to use the Sirle war to destroy Drede. She does not want Coren to know how much she wants revenge, so hides her plot from him. In a moment of panic, she even removes some of his memory, not unlike Drede's wizard might have done to her.
Sybel calls all of her animals to her at the house of Sirle, Cyrin last. The boar speaks, telling Sybel the same tale that he once told Coren. Sybel, unlike Coren, does not give up her revenge. She proceeds with her plans for war. The night before the war is to begin, with neighbor armies called magically by Sybel, paid for by her dragon's gold, however, she gives it up. That night, in a nightmare, she sees the Liralen, the beautiful magic bird that she has been looking for, dead with a broken neck. She sees what a desire for revenge has done to her, and tells all her animals that they are free--they don't have to participate in the war, and goes back to her mountain retreat.
Seven days later, Tamlorn comes to the mountain. His father has died of fear, and the Blammor. The armies of both sides have been led magically away from the battle by Sybel's animals, and he is now king. Shortly thereafter, Coren comes to find Sybel. He forgives her, after she explains how she nursed a desire for revenge, even stronger than her love for him, but gave that up on the night before the battle. They forgive each other. Suddenly Sybel realizes that the Blammor and the Liralen are one and the same, and the Liralen appears, and carries the two of them back to happiness at the Sirle house.

I am not the only person to realize that vengeance is an important part of McKillip's plots. Says an author who reviewed The Forgotten Beasts of Eld for Amazon: "McKillip's thoughts on revenge are intertwined with the 'Riddle-Master' trilogy, 'Fool's Run,' and 'Song for the Basilisk.' Here we see how hatred and its offspring, vengeance, might destroy a person from the inside out and destroy what they most care for." Indeed.

Vengeance in the Riddle-Master trilogy:
This splendid trilogy consists of three books, The Riddle-Master of Hed (abbreviated RH), Heir of Sea and Fire (HS) and Harpist in the Wind (HW), all published in New York by Ballantine, in 1976, 1977, and 1979. They have been re-published, as a single volume, with a new introduction by McKillip, as Riddle-Master (New York: Ace, 1999). The best summaries/reviews of these books that I have found are by Geoffrey Prewett (Riddle-Master, Heir, Harpist). There is a concise, but accurate summary of the trilogy here. The author likes the first two books, but not the third, and says why.

In Tree and Leaf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), Tolkien proposed the term eucatastrophe for a great change that brings about ultimate good. His own Lord of the Rings trilogy is an example, of course. The Hed trilogy is, like Tolkien's, about the ending of an age. At that ending, many good things are lost, but evil is averted.

McKillip certainly can't be accused of lacking imagination, or of making the rules of her fantastic worlds explicit. They just are, and the reader will grasp most of the rules by reading. As an anonymous reviewer of her Song for the Basilisk put it:

In most of McKillip's novels (Winter Rose, etc.) and short stories, this veteran author, a World Fantasy Award winner (for Forgotten Beasts of Eld, 1975), uses words in precisely the same way her mages do, to shape images and create fantastic visions where none previously existed. Sometimes the images are grotesque and violent, but more frequently they are ethereal and exquisite. (Publishers Weekly, August 10, 1998 p. 373)

Another writer put it this way: Have you ever started on book two or three (or later) of a series that doesn't s[t]and alone well or at all? If it's a good series, you enjoy the book, but you spend a lot of the time confused, because there are references to things that happened earlier in the series and you have no idea what those things are. 

That's how I felt when reading The Riddle-Master of Hed, despite the fact that it was the first book in the series. McKillip gives absolutely no explanation of anything, expecting the reader to infer what and who things and people are from the context of the book. Things like descriptions are almost completely left out, even when they're central to the plot.

The last writer still said that she liked the trilogy. Here's why, in the words of yet another blogger:

Words seem ironically inadequate to describe the skill with which McKillip spins the English language into magic. Lyrical is one word that is often used in reviews, but it's so much more. Most of McKillip's work deals with magic, and if there is any true magic in the world, I would suspect it would be found in her use of language. I could luxuriate in work written by McKillip regardless of the story, simply to enjoy her use of words. 

I agree.
The Hed Trilogy is about a land in an unspecified place. This land, at the time of the narrative, appears to be overruled by the High One, with six land-rulers under him. Most of the land is in one of the six areas ruled by the land-rulers, but there is wilderness that does not fall under them. In part of this wilderness is the city of Lungold, where, centuries before, Ghistestlwchlohm, perhaps a wizard himself, perhaps more than that, built a school for wizards, who came to him to learn. He betrayed them, and no wizards have been seen since. The High One hasn't been seen for a long time, either, but that is to be expected. He lives in Erlenstar Mountain, which is also not in any of the areas ruled by the land-rulers, and is also isolated. His harpist, Deth, travels around the land, acting for the High One.

The reader eventually learns that land-rule is a special knowledge of, and bonding with, the area and all the rocks, streams, plants, people and animals that are there. In An, Mathom, the land-ruler, also has special knowledge of, and some control over, ghosts of the past. One of those ghosts, Peven, was once king over one of the three portions of An. Each land-ruler has a land-heir, who becomes land-ruler when the former one passes.

In Caithnard, a city on the sea, is the College. The College is where Riddle-Masters are trained, and, if they are skilled enough, eventually become teachers themselves. Riddles are not just puzzles, as in Tolkien's The Hobbit. They are apparently some sort of supernaturally revealed wisdom, with special morals. The overall theme of the College, of riddles, and of riddle-mastery, is to seek the truth, regardless of the consequences.

Hed is an island, the smallest of the areas with a land-ruler. It has never had a wizard, or a riddle-master, until Morgon, son of the land-heir of Hed, a young man who was born with three stars on his forehead, has a desire to attend the College. He goes there, and learns a great deal, but one riddle that he doesn't try to answer is who he, Morgon, really is. His parents come to see him in a boat, and are drowned, so Morgon becomes land-ruler of Hed. His brother, Eliard, is his land-heir.

Morgon goes to Peven's castle, and wins a riddle-game with Peven, a dangerous thing to do. His prize is Peven's crown. Morgon doesn't know it, but Mathom has also promised his daughter, Raederle, to whoever wins the crown.

RH begins with Deth visiting Hed. This leads to Morgon and Deth sailing to the College, where one of the masters is Ohm. Then the two of them sail to An, so that Morgon can seek Raederle's hand in marriage. On the way, the sailors all disappear, and the ship sinks. This is Morgon's first experience with the shape-changers, who are trying to kill him. Morgon is washed ashore, but has lost his memory. Eventually, he recovers, in the house of Heureu, land-ruler of Ymris. There he is given a harp, made long ago, with three stars on it, that no one but he can play. Heureu's wife, unknown to Heureu, is a shape-changer, and tries to kill him again. The upshot of these events is that Morgon decides to go to Erlenstar Mountain to ask the High One who he is--what is the significance of the stars on his face?

The journey is a long one, through all the lands of the land-rulers except An. In Herun, where the Morgol rules, she tells Morgon that she suspects that Ohm, one of the Masters of the College, is Ghisteslwchlom. In Osterland, Har, the land-ruler, teaches him how to change into an animal. In the form of an animal, he finds one of the wizards, who has been hiding in animal form for centuries. That wizard tells Morgon that Ohm is the one he has been hiding from, and dies. In the depths of Isig mountain, the land that Danan rules, he finds the graves of the Earth-masters' children. These children, though dead for millenia, have been awaiting the Starbearer. They give him a sword, with three stars on it.

When Morgon finally gets to Erlenstar Mountain, he finds, to his horror, that Ohm, or Ghisteslwchlom, is sitting in the High One's seat. Deth has brought him there, in a monstrous act of betrayal. RH ends at that point.
In HS, we learn that Morgon has been held in captivity by Ghisteslwchlom for months. Ohm has tried to capture Morgon's mind. Occasionally Morgon hears Deth harping in the background. Morgon finally escapes. When he does, he is bent on killing not Ohm, but Deth, supposedly his friend during his long journey to see the High One, but his betrayer. Also, the land-rule of Hed has passed to Eliard, who thinks that means that Morgon has died.
Through the books, we gradually learn more about the shape-changers, and the Earth-masters. Apparently the High one was an Earth-master, and the Earth-masters and the shape-changers were originally one and the same, but the High One and the other Earth-masters wanted to use their tremendous powers, over land, sea, animals, and plants, to heal and preserve. The shape-changers wanted to use these powers unchecked, without regard for the other beings in their world. As one of them says, "Not compassion, but passion . . ." characterized the shape-changers. (HS, p. 115) So they fought, over a thousand years ago, and the war is not over.

Raederle has a major role in HS. We learn that one of Raederle's ancestors was a shape-changer, but that she doesn't want to yield to that heritage. And we learn that Morgon is beginning to see that his thirst for vengeance is destroying him. "I am so blind with hatred I can't even see my own land or the people I loved once." (HS, p. 163) The College, and the land-rulers, sympathize with Morgon, but are not sure that revenge is right. "Is there a riddle on the master lists that permits the wise man to revenge?" (HS, p. 152) asks Har, a riddle-master as well as a land-ruler, of the College. The implied answer is that there is none. Raederle knows that there is a person of power coming through An, bent on vengeance, and that he is pursuing someone. She makes a bargain with the ghosts of An to protect the pursued, thinking that Ghisteslwchlohm is pursuing Morgon. But Morgon has become such a creature of vengeance that he is pursuing Deth, and thus Raederle makes this mistake. As HS ends, Morgon confronts Deth in the house of An, and raises the sword with three stars to kill Deth, but he does not. He lets the sword drop to the floor, and lets Deth walk away. 

HW begins with Morgon learning the land-law of An, and, using it, taking a ghostly army to Hed to protect it from the shape-changers, who have lived in the sea since the war. Then Morgon and Raederle make the long journey to Lungold, hoping to get answers there. On the way, Raederle yields to her heritage, and changes shape, so she can fly there as a crow with Morgon. On the way, the shape-changers try to kill Morgon again, and Morgon again meets Deth, but doesn't kill him. When they get there, the remaining wizards of the realm are present at the destroyed school for wizards, burying their dead. Morgon freed them when he broke free from Ghistestlwchlohm. There is a battle at Lungold, between the wizards and Morgon, against the shape-changers, but it is inconclusive.
As HW proceeds, Morgon learns the land-law of the other areas. He and Raederle meet Deth again, not as himself, but as one of the ancient wizards. Morgon realizes that he loves and, somehow, trusts Deth. The three of them proceed to King's Mouth Plain, where the ruined cities of the Earth-masters are, and where sits Wind Tower, which, legend says, has never been climbed. All of the land-rulers are there, too. Before the final conflict, the ending of the age, the eucastrophe, Morgon climbs the tower, where Deth is waiting. Morgon realizes that Deth is the High One. Deth tells Morgon that he has been hiding from the shape-changers, as a wizard, and then as the High One's harpist, and that Morgon is his land-heir. Ghistestlwchlohm kills Deth with Morgon's sword, and that act destroys Ohm. Deth welcomes death, believing that Morgon is ready to become his heir. Morgon, now taking the power of the winds, drives the shape-changers to Erlenstar Mountain, not killing them, but binding them there. He is now the High One. Raederle wants to know what Morgan has done with the shape-changers, fearing that he has destroyed them. He tells her.

Morgon, then, as the trilogy progresses, has had opportunities to kill Deth, but does not take them. He has had the opportunity to destroy the shape-changers, but does not do so. He withdraws from vengeance-seeking. Ghistestlwchlohm, on the other hand, kills Deth, the High One, and is destroyed. The lesson is clear--don't take vengeance.

I have posted, on my blog, a summary of the Riddle-Master trilogy, and an essay on "Christian themes in Patricia A. McKillip's Riddle-Master Trilogy." (I do not claim that McKillip is a Christian. She may be, she may not be.)

Vengeance in Song for the Basilisk:
Victoria Strauss mentions vengeance in her synopsis of Song for the Basilisk. (Ace, 1999) So does Jackie Cassada, in a one-paragraph summary in Library Journal, Sept 15, 1998, p116. It's there, alright, but, as with other McKillip tales, it's not quite so simple as to be that easily summarized.

The Basilisk is a terrible man, a practitioner of poisoning. He is leader of Pellior, one of the four houses of Berylon, and has tried to minimize two of the other two houses, and entirely eliminate the house of Tourmalyne. He didn't succeed. Caladrius, of the house of Tourmalyne, survived a fire, meant to kill his whole family. A relative took him to the school for bards, far away from Berylon. He remained there for over 30 years, producing a son, Hollis. After discovering a flute made of bone, which has dangerous powers, Caladrius feels drawn to Berylon. Hollis follows him.

The Basilisk has three children, an ineffectual son, Taur, his heir, Damiet, a woman whose life centers on how she looks, and Luna, who seems to follow her father in many ways. The music scores of Tourmalyne house have been moved to Pellior, and a librarian is wanted. Caladrius, incognito, takes the job. Hexel is hired to write an opera for the Basilisk's birthday. (There's a lot of music in this book.) Damiet has fallen in love with Caladrius, who has not encouraged her. She is a poor singer, but Hexel, who has never heard her sing, writes the opera with her as the lead. The opera is about the destruction of Tourmalyne house, and a mysterious survivor who returns to Berylon. The performance of the opera is sensational, in several ways. Damiet doesn't sing well. Some Tourmalyne survivors, carrying swords under their robes, have joined the chorus. One of them is Hollis. Caladrius, in the audience, plans to play his flute at the finale. Instead, Hollis plays, hoping, like Caladrius, that the piping will kill the Basilisk. It doesn't. Their vengeance, or self-defense, is thwarted.

The Basilisk, confined to bed, orders the city blockaded, intending to destroy the last Tourmalyne survivors. His son gives an order in his father's name, and his father, enraged, disinherits him, making Luna his heir. This is what she does:

She looked at Caladrius. . . . "I think," she said softly, "that Pellior House has tormented Tourmalyne House enough." She turned back to the captain of the guard. "Let Lord Tourmalyne and his son go free."
. . . noises came from the Basilisk, who, struggling to rise, stared blindly at his daughter, his face purple, a vein throbbing furiously above his brow. He tried to speak, produced only a long, inarticulate word that ended in a moan. He stiffened in amazement, one hand groping at his heart. The blood receded in his face; it grew paler and paler as he struggled for one last word . . .
The physician, with a sudden exclamation, felt for his heartbeat. . .
"He's dead, my lady," the physician said incredulously.
"What killed him?" Damiet whispered. Luna lifted a finger, touched her father's motionless hand; she could not seem to speak.
"Kindness," the physician guessed blankly.
Luna looked silently at Caladrius, the mask of her smile fraying at last to reveal the strength behind it, the bitter love and weariness.
He bowed his head, blind himself now with unshed tears.
"Thank you," he said. "My lady." (pp. 298-9)

If Luna's refusal of vengeance is foreshadowed in the book, I, at least, didn't see it coming. However, now that I have read Basilisk more than once, there is a clue. Early in the book, the Basilisk sets Luna the task of preparing a "gift" for her brother Taur's mistress, a glass rose that contains poison that will kill her. The poison doesn't do so, but it turns the mistress into an old woman. Luna, who doesn't seem to make any mistakes, tells a henchman that the Basilisk will not be pleased that the mistress isn't dead. Then, near the end, after the Basilisk is dead, Caladrius sees Luna give an old woman a rose. He asks her if it is a poison. "'This one heals,' she said enigmatically . . ." (p. 303) McKillip, too, is enigmatic, and it is left to her readers to decide if the old woman is the mistress, and the healing is going to give her back her youth.
Vengeance in other works by McKillip:
Yoon Ha Lee, in a five-sentence summary of The Tower at Stony Wood, which is apparently no longer available on-line, mentions that a man surrenders his vengeance. (I mention the length not to criticize Lee, but to point out that vengeance, or surrendering it, was important enough to Lee that it was included in a five-sentence summary.)
Fool's Run (New York: Warner Books/Popular Library, 1987) is a science fiction novel about many characters, including Aaron Fisher, a policeman whose wife was killed in a mass murder by Terra Viridian. She has been tried and sentenced to a satellite orbiting prison. For seven years, Fisher has been looking for her twin sister, Michele Viridian. He finds her, without knowing it, when she joins his favorite band, which is going to play for the prisoners. His motivation is complex. He wants to understand the death of his wife, he wants to find his wife again. He says that he didn't want revenge, but that was probably only partly true:
"Revenge?"
"No."
"Then why?"
"She--nothing made sense. Why she was killed. I just wanted to understand why. I loved--I loved her." (p. 148)
Terra breaks out of the prison, taking the band, and Fisher, with her. She is on a quest to fulfill a vision about an alien being, which is why she killed over a thousand people. The vision is fulfilled, and she dies. Her last words are an "I'm sorry" to Fisher, who has not tried to avenge his wife.
Moon-Flash (Berkley,1985) is also about earth. There is no vengeance in the book. The story is about primitive people living in a future world, and some of them discovering that there is more to the world than their immediate surroundings. It is, in other words, about our modern dilemma of the effects of technology on our environment, and on ourselves. It is a beautiful book, but I won't give away the twist at the end.
 
Fool's Run and Moon-Flash are clearly about earth. Many of McKillip's books may be, or may be about some alternate world, or about some indefinite time in our world's past. They are apparently based on the middle ages, or something like the middle ages. That is true of the Hed books, and of Forgotten Beasts. The same things are also true of Winter Rose (Ace, 1997). It isn't necessarily about our earth, and is not of our time, and it has no main character driven by revenge. Both of these books are about someone being lost in an alternate, magical world, and someone who isn't sacrificing so that they can be rescued. In Sea, a prince is trapped in a sea-monster's body. In Winter, Corbet Lynn is trapped in the world of the queen of the wood. Solstice Wood (New York: Ace Books, 2006) uses the same setting as Winter Rose, but is set in the present, which is unusual for McKillip. It doesn't have vengeance as a main theme, either.

The Changeling Sea, (Ballantine, 1988) one of McKillip's most beautiful books, is all about magic, losing and regaining, and love. It does have a character out for revenge, but not on a person. Peri, short for Periwinkle, is a young woman, the daughter of a fisherman, in a little fishing village, apparently in one of McKillip's alternate worlds. Her father has drowned. Her mother withdraws from everthing. Peri has befriended an old woman, who has disappeared, leaving her cottage behind. Peri takes to living there, because she doesn't want to see her unresponsive mother. The old woman must have been something of a witch. Peri, based on things she has seen the old woman do, and especially based on her hate for what has happened, casts a "hex" on the Sea. She tries to bind the Sea's magic, and its ability. She later learns that it worked, and, on p. 139-140, unhexes the sea, and takes back her hate. There's more to the book than this, of course, but one consequence of Peri's withdrawal from vengeance is that her mother becomes normal.
 
The Book of Atrix Wolfe (Ace, 1996) has much the same theme as the two works mentioned in the previous paragraph. It is about an alternate world, and someone, actually more than one someone, who is trapped. However, it also has the capacity for revenge as a possibility, which, finally, is rejected. Atrix Wolfe is a great mage. He believes that the ruler of Kardeth will not only destroy Pelucir, where he holds siege, but that he will go on to capture and control Chaumenard, home of the mages. Mages have rules. One of them is that they not participate in wars. Atrix Wolfe believes that the need of the moment, and of the mages, overrides this rule, and casts a spell which creates the Hunter, a fearsome being who ends the war in front of Pelucir Castle by destroying most of the participants.

Twenty years later, there are still ghosts in Pelucir Castle. Talis Pelucir, brother of the king, who was born at the time of the battle, is summoned from the school for mages in Chaumenard. He has the ability to find Atrix Wolfe, who has been hiding, not practicing magic, as a healer of animals. He also has the ability to find, and read, a book which Atrix Wolfe wrote after the terrible battle.

Jack Vance is accused of not paying much attention to most of his plots, and of creating cardboard characters, and the charges have some truth. He is, however, noted for his prodigal imagination, almost creating a new culture, with exotic customs, on every page, in some of his works. In Wolfe, not only does McKillip create characters that have substance, but she has also created an exotic culture, and, unlike Vance, dwells on it intermittently throughout almost the entire book, adding more substance as she goes. That culture is that of the kitchen of Pelucir Castle. The foods, the fires, the wide array of servants, filling many niches, are portrayed carefully. One niche is pot-scrubber. Saro (presumably rhymes with sorrow) fills that niche. She can't speak, but she can move through the kitchen almost invisibly, and she does her job, because it is the only thing she knows, or so it seems. She was found on the woodpile the night of the battle, and named because she must have been some one's sorrow.

As the book progresses, Talis discovers that the Queen of the Wood is trying to trap him, because she wants to find Atrix Wolfe. Her consort and her daughter have been snatched from her by his terrible spell, trapped, in different ways, in a world alternate to the Queen's. Talis is told, by the Queen, that her consort has become the terrible Hunter. The Queen doesn't know what has happened to Saro, who, of course, is the daughter, trapped in a body that no one but Talis pays attention to, unable to speak. Saro is rescued, and Saro and Talis are apparently going to live happily ever after, as the book ends. But, near the end, the Queen, who believes that she will never have her consort with her again, because he has been so terribly changed by Atrix Wolfe's spell, decides that she doesn't really want to kill Atrix Wolfe for this terrible deed, which, after all, he did not forsee. She is right about her consort--he comes back to her for a little while, then turns into a tree--but he does not take vengeance on Atrix Wolfe. This, my reader, is a marvelous book.

McKillip has created another alternate world, or perhaps two of them, in her related works, The Sorceress and the Cygnet (Ace, 1991) and The Cygnet and the Firebird (Ace, 1995). In the first, she begins with Corleu, supposedly a common man, part of a group of migrating people called the Wayfolk. Corleu's group gets lost, going nowhere, and no one but Corleu realizes it. The Wayfolk have songs about the constellations, and their constellations are also the emblems of the Holders, richer folk who do not migrate. By the time the book has ended, the constellations have come to life in Ro Holding, and Corleu has played a significant role in rescuing Ro Holding, and his own people. Astor Ro, the Holder of Ro, and her three daughters, Nyx, Iris, and Calyx, and her niece, Meguet Vervaine, have been introduced, and play a major role in the drama, as does Hew, the gatekeeper of Ro. Nyx is a mage, living in a swamp, trying to learn whatever magic she can in whatever way. Meguet is the protector of the Cygnet, the emblem of Ro Holding. Hew, also from the swamp, is more than an ordinary gatekeeper--he has powers to protect Ro Holding, as does Meguet, who is not an ordinary soldier.
 
McKillip evidently knew that she was onto something when she created the family of Ro Holding, because she brought them back in the second book. (Corleu is restricted to a few lines.) There Ro Holding is challenged by a firebird who becomes a human, Brand, at night. In the process of trying to help him/it, Nyx and Meguet travel, by magical means, to Saphier, a kingdom ruled by a mage, near the Luxour desert. It is not clear whether Saphier and the Luxour are physically close to Ro Holding, or even if they are in the same time. Traveling through time by magical paths is a major theme of the book, as are dragons. At the end, Brand is human again, and Nyx and Meguet have saved Ro Holding by averting an attack by soldier mages from Saphier. These summaries, of course, do not do justice to these works. Neither of them have vengeance as a major theme, although Brand began by wanting to kill the mage he thought had enchanted him, but discovers that it was his father, the ruler of Saphier, who did it.

In the Forests of Serre (New York: Ace, 2003) is a book that I read three times, trying to get a handle on the book. I believe that I finally did, and it's not McKillip's fault that it took me so long. It's about the heart. The word, referring to the seat of the emotions, is used over and over again, and two of the main characters give up their hearts for something else, and regret this.
I don't see how I can summarize the plot, or even describe the characters (there are nine that I would consider main characters) in anything like a post length that's reasonable, even for me. So I'll just summarize the book this way:
McKillip has again written a book with excellent use of language, describing a marvelous forest, wizardry, and a cold castle. The Princess Sidonie decides that she doesn't want to marry Prince Ronan unless he re-claims his heart. He gave it away because his first wife and child died. After numerous trips, by several characters, into and through the forest, all is well. Everyone who should have a heart does, and the two really can fall in love and be married. Vengeance doesn't play a significant role in this book.

Alphabet of Thorn (New York: Berkley, 2004) is a fine book, but I couldn't find vengeance in it. I would say that it does have a plot, though, more than some of McKillip's work. The book is a coming-of-age story. Nepenthe is a translator for the library of Raine, an institution that is large, old, and full of lots of books. Her name is Nepenthe because she was a foundling, and foundlings are named in alphabetical order by the librarians. Tessera, a mousy young teen, has suddenly become queen, due the the accidental death of her father. And Kane? Kane is a powerful sorceress, legendary, because some of her exploits are thousands of years old. Her exploits are to help her cousin, and lover, Axis, to conquer yet another kingdom. Kane appears to others as a man, but is a woman, who found her life in Axis when they were both young children. So she disguises herself, and has herself given to Axis on his wedding day. What Axis wants is to conquer yet another kingdom.
 
Finally, Axis and Kane run out of kingdoms, so Kane discovers that she can bring Axis's army through time. Axis asks her if she wants anything else. She wants a child by Axis. But she cannot raise a child while supposing to be a male warrior mage, so she leaves her baby, who becomes Nepenthe, at the library for the librarians to find, and has no more contact with her, except for a message, hidden in a book, with an alphabet constructed of thorns, in the secret language Axis and Kane have used between each other.

When the book unfolds, Axis is ready to conquer another kingdom, and Kane will lead his army to Raine, in the time when Nepenthe has grown into a young woman, fallen in love with a young wizard, and fallen under the spell of the book with the alphabet of thorns. She is almost done translating it. Tessera comes of age by discovering that Axis's army is coming, and figuring out how to defeat it --she will hide her entire kingdom by magic. Nepenthe comes of age by deciding that she will reject the parents she has never known, to live her life in Raine. And Kane? Kane decides that she will leave Axis, and live with her daughter, in a world where she knows no one, and doesn't know the language. So Axis goes back with his army, and the rest of them start their lives, as mature individuals. I'd like to know how it all came out, but suppose that McKillip won't tell us.

A couple of interesting quotes:
"Epics are never written about libraries. They exist on whim; It depends if the conquering army likes to read." p. 68.
"We don't choose our passions." p. 70 (Nepenthe, about her passion to translate the book.)
"History moves in great, messy shifts of power, in choices made as though by too many people building a house, where one misplaced stone in the foundation slips under the weight of another stone near the roof. . . ." (Laidley, a librarian, to Nepenthe.) Alphabet of Thorn (New York: Berkley, 2004) pp. 296-7.
Ombria in Shadow (New York: Ace, 2002) is a dark work. There isn't much vengeance in it, although the evil Domina Pearl is finally defeated in the end. There's a lot of murky stuff, unresolved. Even a second reading left me unsure what had gone on, although sure that McKillip had created a world that somehow drew me in. Ombria is a large old city. Is there really a shadow city? If so, can you only get to it by some sort of magic, or is it just old and forgotten? Are Domina Pearl's guards alive, and, if so, are they human? What is Domina Pearl? What is on her black ships? These are some of the questions I can't answer.
It is often true, in McKillip's books, that parentage is obscure, or that parents have died untimely deaths. That's especially so in Ombria. Mag is told that she is a creature of wax, but she isn't. Whose child is she? Kyel Greve, the child prince, has lost both mother and father. Ducon Greve's mother is dead, and his father is unknown. Lydea's mother has died. These four are more or less normal, and they are the characters who, with help from Faey, the sorceress Mag works for, finally destroy Domina Pearl.
One theme throughout the book is art. Ducon Greve and Kyel communicate through sketches. Ducon sketches a lot of things, in fact, this is his main occupation, seemingly.
Something that's usually found in McKillip's writing, but not in this book, is trees and forests. Not only in In the Forests of Serre, but in most of her other works, there are trees and forests. Not so in Ombria. There are weeds growing on the dock, and a patch of sunflowers near the palace gate, but that's about it. I missed them.
Od Magic (New York: Ace, 2005) is a book that reminds me, although it's much shorter, of course, than the Hed trilogy, although there is no noticeable vengeance. Od is a female sorceress. She started a school for wizards in Numis centuries ago. As in the Hed books, the school has gotten rather restricted. Real events, real powers (as in the Hed trilogy, formless, hidden, and undefined) exist. McKillip uses the word power. Much of the book is about freedom -- King Galin expects the school for wizards, which is in part of the palace, to abide by his rules, and to study nothing else. His daughter, Sulys, a traveling trickster, his chief wizard, Yar, and Od, herself, bring him to his senses. I would say that this book certainly has a plot, and some notable characters. Although there's no forest, per se, there is close attention to the things of nature, and it is clear that paying such attention is related to being the best wizard, or person, that you can be. Perhaps this book is as good an introduction to McKillip's work as any, if The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is not available. These books, written over a quarter century apart, by a master, or mistress, of the craft of fantasy, are splendid, if you can stand McKillip's murkiness about power.
As in most or all of McKillip's work, there are young people who have lost one or both parents in Od Magic. Another interesting tidbit is that the school for wizards has a door which only appears to a few people. In the book, 19 years separate the most recent entrances. (There are other ways of getting in, but they don't appear unless you really want to do real magic.) This is a reminder of the door to the school for wizards in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books, of the door to the train to Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books, and, especially, of Christ, the only true door to the narrow way. (John 10:1-7)
Magic will spring up where it wills, King, and in a lifetime you couldn't make enough laws to stop it, any more than you can put out all the night fires in Numis with a breath, or contain the wind within four  vengawalls. Trust your wizards; let them come and go. What they find outside these walls and bring back to you may be worth more than you can imagine. Od speaking, pp.311-12.
Harrowing the Dragon (New York: Ace, 2005) is a collection of short stories by McKillip. The longest of these is the second, "A Matter of Music," which was originally published in 1984. As in Basilisk, musical performance is a major feature of the culture, and of the plot. There's a long-standing feud between the Daghian and the Jazi, two of the music-oriented groups in the story. The Jazi allow a Daghian leader to live, although it takes some musical persuasion.
I hope to consider more of McKillip's work as I continue to work on this page, and as more becomes available.
Comparison with Vance
As concerns vengeance, there is a contrast with the writings of Jack Vance. In Vance, the sympathetic characters take revenge--not necessarily a gruesome, terrible revenge, but an administering of punishment, whereas in McKillip, they may give it up entirely. In The Forgotten Beasts, both Coren and Sybel give revenge up entirely. In the Hed trilogy, Morgon has the chance to take vengeance on Deth, but doesn't. Another character destroys Deth, and is himself destroyed in the act. Although Tourmalyne House has been aggrieved more, Pellior House has some claim to vengeance, too, but Luna renounces it. In other words, Vance's characters usually follow the Old Testament's "eye for an eye" (Leviticus 24:19-20), while McKillip's may take the New Testament "vengeance is mine (God's)" (Romans 12:18-20) approach.
Both writers consider the effect of vengeance on the avenger. However, Gersen finds himself empty and without purpose, when the destruction of the five Demon Princes is complete. Sybel renounces vengeance before it is completed, because she sees that dwelling on it would destroy her. To a lesser extent, the same thing happens to Morgon.
 
To put all this another way, the examination of vengeance is central to some of McKillip's work, whereas I would argue that, even in the Demon Princes books, it is not central to Vance's work. A number of authors have pointed out that Vance is really a stylist, using baroque language. Others say that what Vance is really up to is the invention of strange cultures. As Tom Shippey's title puts it, "People are Plastic: Jack Vance and the Dilemma of Cultural Relativism." (in Jack Vance: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography, Edited by A. E. Cunningham. Boston Spa and London: The British Library, 2000, pp. 67 - 84). Vance's central features, his cultures and his style, happen to be found often in stories of vengeance. McKillip has been, at least some of the time, interested in exploring the effect of vengeance on the would-be avenger.

Aside: McKillip's names.
McKillip is good with names. Most of the names of her characters (and locations, and, in one case, a species of animal) are close to those in normal North American English usage, but few of them are commonly used in our culture, if at all. Some of them stick in my mind: Raederle, Atrix Wolfe, Nyx Ro, Caladrius, Lungold, Ombria, Vesta, for example. Sometimes the names are puns, that confuse other characters who hear them: Deth and Saro are understood as Death and Sorrow, at least sometimes.

Thanks for reading. Read McKillip. A post on Christian themes, not just rejection of vengeance, in McKillip's writing is here.

Sunspots 431

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Humor: (or, for some of us, deadly seriousness) 10 myths about introverts.

Politics: Wired has an article about officers who believe that there is systematic incompetence at the highest levels of the military.

Science: In case there was any doubt, an article in Answers Research Journal, from Answers in Genesis, one of the leading Young-Earth Creationist organizations, concludes that "we can have confidence that the universe really is as large as astronomers claim."

In case there was any doubt, and I know that there is, NOAA has issued a report on the effects of climate change. The US had the warmest year ever recorded, and world-wide sea level was higher than ever previously recorded.

The American Geophysical Union, a large association of scientists who study the earth, including climate, has placed the blame squarely on us: "Human-induced climate change requires urgent action. Humanity is the major influence on the global climate change observed over the past 50 years."



Image source (public domain)

Books about the holocaust for young people (and others)

I recently read two books, aimed at "young people," but certainly worth reading by others. Both of them are about the holocaust, the execution of millions of Jews and others by the Nazis, in Germany, during World War II.

The two books, and their authors, have Wikipedia articles, which indicates their importance, and which you, the reader of this blog, can consult, if you wish to know more about the plots than I plan to give away.

Milkweed, by Jerry Spinelli, follows the life of a boy, perhaps eight years old, who doesn't know anything about his parents. However, Mischa befriends a girl, younger than he, and follows her, and her parents and uncle, into the Warsaw Ghetto. There are several interesting features of the book. They include the prevalence of children, orphan children. There are lots of them, and somehow some of them survive. Another feature is the ubiquitous lice that get on people in the ghetto, and leave their eggs in hair. Another is that the Nazis are called jackboots, and some of their marching is described. There are instances of deep villainy, and also of selfless generosity. A minor character decides that he will become a Lutheran, rather than a Jew, because he hopes that this will deliver him from the horrors visited upon the Jews. The title comes because Mischa and his friend, Janina, see a milkweed plant, growing in the stark, bare, ghetto. They come to associate the seeds, with their fibrous parachutes, floating on the wind, with angels.

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, is notable for several things. One of them is the narrator, who is the angel of death. He (I guess he, not she) is not intrusive, but has the power to be anywhere, especially where people are about to die. The story is about a girl of 8 or 9, Liesel Meminger. She is placed in foster care by the German authorities. She, nor her parents, are considered as Jews by the Nazis, but there are Jews around them, and the book is mostly about interactions of various kinds between Liesel and her foster parents, and Jews. Another is that the story begins before the second World War. Yet another notable feature is the effect of the bombing of German towns by the Allies. The book gets its name because Liesel picks up a book, a handbook for gravediggers, that was inadvertently dropped at a funeral. Eventually, her foster father teaches her to read from this book. In various ways, including theft, she obtains a few other books, and there are also two brief books, handwritten, and illustrated, by characters in the course of the novel. The author is trying to point out the importance of words -- Hitler's, or those of other people -- on those who read or hear them.

There are a some characters who surprised me by their good hearts, and self-sacrificial acts.

One warning -- there are a lot of German words for excrement in the book.

The Book Thief has been adapted as a film, which is supposed to be released this year.

Both books have a lot of wild running around by children, with some injuries, lots of defiance of authorities (some of which are illegitimate, but some not) and some narrow escapes.

For a recent post on another aspect of World War II in Germany, the (real) life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, see here.

Thanks for reading.

Do your cells belong to you? Maybe they do. Henrietta Lacks descendants recognized as having rights

Henrietta Lacks was a poor black woman who had cervical cancer, and eventually died of it, in 1951. Some cells from this cancer, taken without her consent, have been used in research for decades. It has been estimated that laboratories have many tons of cells derived from Mrs. Lacks. Some of those cells have been found in cell cultures supposed to have been free of them. The cells are known as HeLa cells, and I was taught, when in graduate school, that they were from a Helen Lane. Not so.

I have previously posted about this situation, especially about a book on the story, by Rebecca Skloot, entitled The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The Lacks story has ethical, medical, racial and other interesting aspects.

There is recent news. The Lacks family has now been given some voice in the use of the cells from their grandmother. See here and here for news stories on this matter. It's about time!

Prayer and Missions, by E. M. Bounds, part 3

It is all right to urge men to give of their means to the missionary cause. But it is much more important to urge them to give their prayers to the movement. Foreign missions need, today, more the power of prayer than the power of money. Prayer can make even poverty in the missionary cause move on amidst difficulties and hindrances. Much money without prayer is helpless and powerless in the face of the utter darkness and sin and wretchedness on the foreign field.

This is peculiarly a missionary age. Protestant Christianity is stirred as it never was before in the line of aggression in pagan lands. The missionary movement has taken on proportions that awaken hope, kindle enthusiasm, and which demand the attention, if not the interest, of the coldest and the most lifeless. Nearly every Church has caught the contagion, and the sails of their proposed missionary movements are spread wide to catch the favouring breezes. Herein is the danger just now, that the missionary movement will go ahead of the missionary spirit. This has always been the peril of the Church, losing the substance in the shade, losing the spirit in the outward shell, and contenting itself in the mere parade of the movement, putting the force of effort in the movement and not in the spirit.

The magnificence of this movement may not only blind us to the spirit of it, but the spirit which should give life and shape to the movement may be lost in the wealth of the movement, as the ship, borne by favouring winds, may be lost when these winds swell to a
storm.

Although E. M. Bounds died in 1913, this book was first published in 1925, by an admirer of the author's life. Bounds was known for praying from four until seven each morning.

This post is one of a series, taken from The Essentials of Prayer, by Bounds. Found through the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, here. The Essentials of Prayer is in the public domain. The previous post in the entire series on the book is here. Thanks for reading. Read this book, and, more importantly, practice, prayer. 

Thanks for reading.

Moses had a temper

Moses had to flee Egypt, because he took it on himself to punish an Egyptian who beat a Hebrew. The Bible doesn't say that Moses did this in anger. Perhaps he didn't. It also doesn't say that God told Moses to do this. It seems that Moses's first encounter with God took place later. (Exodus 3)

Exodus 11:8 says that Moses left Pharaoh's presence in anger. This was near the end of the plagues that God sent on Egypt, and there was reason for the anger--Pharaoh had promised to let the Israelites go over and over, and had recanted every time. God himself was angry with Pharaoh.

In Numbers 20:10-13, the Bible describes Moses striking the rock at Meribah, to bring out water for the Israelites. He may have been angry at this time. He didn't give God glory, according to this passage, and didn't believe in God's power.

Having a temper isn't necessarily sinful -- Jesus got angry at the people having a flea market at the temple, for example. But a selfish anger is sinful, and even Moses got caught by that.

Thanks for reading.

Are there any natural desires?

Are there any natural desires? The, er, natural response is to say, well, of course there are. Duh! Hunger, thirst, and sex come to mind.

An essay in First Things argues that there are no such things, or, rather, that they are tamed and channeled. For example, as the author says, ". . . The desire to know and see God is a configuration we can nurture or oppose."

The essay does deal with other desires, including hunger, and the very notion that there might not be any natural desires has brought out a number of interesting comments, as would be expected.

Thanks for reading. Read the essay.

Sunspots 430

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

The Arts: (and Animal Behavior) National Public Radio reports on a Thai orchestra. The members are retired work elephants.

Christianity: Ken Schenck points out the flaws in both communism and capitalism.

Computing: You probably know (and do) all this, but just in case, Gizmo's Freeware has published "Twelve Things You Need to Know About Internet Privacy."

Education: The Pew Research Center has published a study of how modern digital tools impact the writing of high school students.

Health: Two reports on dieting, from National Public Radio:
Fasting for two days can help lose weight.

How to get off the diet plateau.



Image source (public domain)

Let Party Names No More

    Let party names no more
      The Christian world o'erspread;
    Gentile and Jew, and bond and free,
      Are one in Christ, their Head.

    Among the saints on earth
      Let mutual love be found;
    Heirs of the same inheritance,
      With mutual blessings crowned.

    Let envy, child of hell!
      Be banished far away:
    Those in sweet fellowship should dwell,
      Who the same Lord obey.

    Thus will the Church below
      God's purpose ever prove;
    Where streams of endless pleasure flow,
      And every heart is love. - My source is here. This source says that the words were by a Benjamin Beddome, who died in 1795, which makes this public domain. The words may be sung to the tune usually used for "Blest be the tie that binds," and other tunes with appropriate meter.

Two articles on the danger of (only) Young-Earth Creationism

I recently read two articles on the danger of Young-Earth Creationism. What, you may ask, is this danger?

As Carolyn Arends put it, in Christianity Today: "If we've misread Genesis when we've taken it as a scientific account, and if it turns out God has used millions of years and evolutionary processes to make this world, then we've asked our children to believe something untrue as part of accepting the gospel. Couldn't that lead them to leave the church, when the cognitive dissonance between the empirical data and what we're asking them to believe becomes too great?"

The answer is that yes, it could. 

The other article is by a Christian geology professor, who was raised as a Young-Earth Creationist. As he went through college and graduate school, he saw that what he learned in geology was just not compatible with a recent age of the earth. He says that he has also ". . . seen students break down into tears as they stood on an outcrop of rock and saw evidence that contradicted what their church had taught them."

There is another danger, which neither author mentioned. That is that non-believers, who know some geology, will say, aloud, or to themselves: "Well, if the Bible teaches that the earth is only a few thousand years old, and it really isn't, why should I believe what the Bible teaches about sin and redemption?" Or, as a pastor in a university town put it, wondering why so few science majors attended his church, "the evangelical posture towards modern science has missional consequences."

I am not a geologist, but I have read some geologists, Christian geologists, who are convinced that there is no way that the rock layers and patterns on earth can be naturally explained, other than by many, many years of geological activity.

Glenn Morton, who had a career as a petroleum geologist, after receiving training from a YEC graduate institution, describes how he "was almost through with Christianity," after he found that the Young-Earth geology he had been taught did not work. He asked other professional geologists with YEC training if they had used that training in their work. They had all found the same thing -- YEC geology doesn't describe the way things really are. They weren't using YEC geology in their profession, because it didn't work.

It is possible that Young-Earth Creationism is correct, in spite of the geological evidence, and that God created the world with the appearance of great age. But if that were true, it would raise other questions.

Is Young-Earth Creationism definitely false? I can't say that, because I don't know for certain that it is. But better bible scholars than I have said that the Bible does not need to be interpreted as supporting that view. Read Arend for a brief discussion. Young-Earth Creationism should not be presented as the only valid Christian view on origins. Doing so runs the risk of driving away some of our youth, and of unnecessarily cutting off some unbelievers from the gospel.

Thanks for reading.

Prayer and Missions, by E. M. Bounds, part 2

The craftiest wile of Satan, if he cannot prevent a great movement for God, is to debauch the movement. If he can put the movement first, and the spirit of the movement in the background, he has materialised and thoroughly debauched the movement. Mighty prayer only will save the movement from being materialised, and keep the spirit of the movement strong and controlling.

The key of all missionary success is prayer. That key is in the hands of the home churches. The trophies won by our Lord in heathen lands will be won by praying missionaries, not by professional workers in foreign lands. More especially will this success be won by saintly praying in the churches at home. The home church on her knees fasting and praying, is the great base of spiritual supplies, the sinews of war, and the pledge of victory in this dire and final conflict. Financial resources are not the real sinews of war in this fight. Machinery in itself carries no power to break down heathen walls, open effectual doors and win heathen hearts to Christ. Prayer alone can do the deed.

Aaron and Hur did not more surely give victory to Israel through Moses, than a praying church through Jesus Christ will give victory on every battlefield in heathen lands. It is as true in foreign fields as it is in home lands. The praying church wins the contest. The home church has done but a paltry thing when she has furnished the money to establish missions and support her missionaries. Money is important, but money without prayer is powerless in the face of the darkness, the wretchedness and the sin in unchristianised lands. Prayerless giving breeds barrenness and death. Poor praying at home is the solution of poor results in the foreign field. Prayerless giving is the secret of all crises in the missionary movements of the day, and is the occasion of the accumulation of debts in missionary boards.

Although E. M. Bounds died in 1913, this book was first published in 1925, by an admirer of the author's life. Bounds was known for praying from four until seven each morning.

This post is one of a series, taken from The Essentials of Prayer, by Bounds. Found through the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, here. The Essentials of Prayer is in the public domain. The previous post in the entire series on the book is here. Thanks for reading. Read this book, and, more importantly, practice, prayer. 

Thanks for reading.

Thoughts on Bonhoeffer

I recently read Bonhoeffer: pastor, martyr, prophet, spy, by Eric Metaxas. It was given to me, and I am grateful. It was a great book, but not for the faint-hearted, as it ran well over 500 pages. The book was well referenced. (Metaxas also wrote Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery. There was a movie based on that book. Bonhoeffer won the Christian Book Award for 2011.) Here's the Wikipedia article on Bonhoeffer.


Here's some of my reaction to the book, and to the life of Bonhoeffer, himself, but first, a brief biography and history lesson. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of eight children, born to an upper-class German family, in 1906. In the early part of the 20th Century, Germany lost the World War I, and was forced to agree to humiliating peace terms. They were a weak nation, politically and economically, ripe for taking over by a dictator. Bonhoeffer grew up knowing that he wanted to pursue theology, and did so, but also felt called to be a pastor. He served as pastor to expatriate Germans in Spain and the UK. When Hitler began to come to power, He claimed to be Christian, and many churches, and church leaders, were taken in. But he was using the church as one way to gain control over Germany. Hitler's Nazi party declared that Jews were an enemy, and that the Old Testament was not really part of the Bible, because it was Jewish. They also forced converted Jews out of the pastorate, and required pastors to swear allegiance to Hitler.

Bonhoeffer, and others, decided that they could not do this, and that much of the church, and its leaders, had sold out. They formed an association known as the Confessing Church, which emphasized the gospel, and refused to be governed by denominational leaders. Bonhoeffer became director of a illegal seminary for young Lutheran pastors-to-be, and exercised considerable influence on these young men.

Eventually, as Hitler and his Nazis did more outlandish, and evil things, Bonhoeffer, some other leaders of the confessing church, some disillusioned generals, and others, came to believe that Hitler must be assassinated, and Naziism overthrown. There were attempts to do this, but Bonhoeffer wasn't directly involved. Hitler survived a bomb explosion, from a bomb carried into the bunker where he was living. He had as many of the German underground as could be identified executed, including Bonhoeffer. Hitler committed suicide a few days later, before the Allies liberated Germany.

I learned several things that I had never heard from the book. One of them was that Martin Luther not only founded the Protestant church, but also, especially by giving Germans the Bible, a book to read in their own language, founded German national consciousness. He wrote some unfortunate contributions to anti-semitism, perhaps after suffering from dementia. 

I had already read Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship,  in which Bonhoeffer laid out what he believed to be the consequences of the Sermon on the Mount. (See here for a poster based on an important statement in the book, and here for a blog post about the book.) He was opposed to the idea of "cheap grace," because he thought that there was no such thing. Grace only comes with a serious commitment to following Christ as Lord. This biography forcefully showed that Bonhoeffer not only said this, but believed it, and acted upon it.

A few other thoughts:
1) Bonhoeffer never married. He was engaged to a young woman at the time of his death. Their letters to each other have been published, but I haven't read them.
2) Bonhoeffer was, indeed, a prophet, in that he saw what was coming, for Germany, and the church, when others did not. Prophets who predicted disaster were seldom honored in the Old Testament, and Bonhoeffer did not increase his popularity by prophesying the fall of Germany, or the deadly weakening of the church that would follow from not standing up to Hitler. However, according to the book, he didn't hate those who didn't see as he saw.
3) He was willing to work with the ecumenical movement, and, to some extent, that movement, in Europe at large, applied pressure to the Nazis. The ecumenical movement was not very popular with many evangelical Christians in the US, because it was seen as diluting the gospel of sin and redemption. Bonhoeffer didn't dilute these truths, but worked with ecumenical leaders.
4) Is the US in danger of falling to our own Hitler? Maybe, although I don't see it at present. It is unfortunately true that, when the church becomes too closely allied to some political idea, the church suffers, and its message is diluted, sometimes beyond recognition. What do you get when you mix politics with religion? Politics.
One the one hand, the Republican party in the US is often seen as the Christian party. That doesn't help Christianity, although it may help the Republicans. On the other, there are those on the other political side that want the church to uphold practices that the Bible calls sinful, such as homosexual activity. That doesn't help Christianity, either.
5) Political expedience can work in strange ways. The German underground, partly through Bonhoeffer, who had ties to church leaders in England, wanted the British to recognize them, and help them. But, according to the book, Churchill, the British war leader, felt that it was necessary to portray all Germans as Nazis, and hateful, in order to sustain enthusiasm for the war against Germany.
6) Bonhoeffer came to a couple of conclusions that I personally am not comfortable with, but perhaps he was right. First, he concluded that Hitler was so given to evil that he should be killed. Second, Bonhoeffer (and others) would have committed suicide to avoid betraying their families and others who were part of the German underground.
7) I guess the author had it right. Pastor came before martyr, prophet, and spy. Bonhoeffer served as unofficial pastor to his jailers and fellow prisoners during his last several months. He could not be a spy, or much of a teacher, while in prison. (Although he did write while imprisoned.)

Thanks for reading. We need more Bonhoeffers, and more books like this.

Note added June 10, 2014: See here for a chart, based on Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. 

Added October 23, 2015: I added "Eric Metaxas" as a tag, and this link to a post, by me, about recent writing, by Mr. Metaxas, on a much different subject, in which he is not an expert. Thanks for reading!

Sunspots 429

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Computing: National Public Radio reports that the NSA, which supposedly can look at lots of our personal e-mail and telephone calls, says that it is not able to search its own e-mails. Hmmm . . .

Gizmo's Freeware has updated its article on "How to Harden Your Browser Against Malware and Privacy Concerns."

Science: The New York Times reports on a study indicating that smokers continue to smoke because their self-control is not as good as that of non-smokers.

Sports: ESPN on why the national anthem is sung at baseball games. (Babe Ruth, and a player who ended up living close to where I used to, Fred Thomas, are mentioned in the article.)



Image source (public domain)

Prayer and Missions, by E. M. Bounds, part 1

Missions mean the giving of the Gospel to those of Adam’s fallen race who have never heard of Christ and his atoning death. It means the giving to others the opportunity to hear of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, and allowing others to have a chance to receive, and accept the blessings of the Gospel, as we have it in Christianised lands. It means that those who enjoy the benefits of the Gospel give these same religious advantages and Gospel privileges to all of mankind. Prayer has a great deal to do with missions. Prayer is the handmaid of missions. The success of all real missionary effort is dependent on prayer. The life and spirit of missions are the life and spirit of prayer. Both prayer and missions were born in the Divine Mind. Prayer and missions are bosom companions. Prayer creates and makes missions successful, while missions lean heavily on prayer. In Psalm 72, one which deals with the Messiah, it is stated that “prayer shall be made for him continually.” Prayer would be made for His coming to save man, and prayer would be made for the success of the plan of salvation which He would come to set on foot.

The Spirit of Jesus Christ is the spirit of missions. Our Lord Jesus Christ was Himself the first missionary. His promise and advent composed the first missionary movement. The missionary spirit is not simply a phase of the Gospel, not a mere feature of the plan of salvation, but is its very spirit and life. The missionary movement is the Church of Jesus Christ marching in militant array, with the design of possessing the whole world of mankind for Christ. Whoever is touched by the Spirit of God is fired by the missionary spirit. An antimissionary Christian is a contradiction in terms. We might say that it would be impossible to be an anti-missionary Christian because of the impossibility for the Divine and human forces to put men in such a state as not to align them with the missionary cause. Missionary impulse is the heart-beat of our Lord Jesus Christ, sending the vital forces of Himself through the whole body of the Church. The spiritual life of God’s people rises or falls with the force of those heart-beats. When these life forces cease, then death ensues. So that anti-missionary Churches are dead Churches, just as anti-missionary Christians are dead Christians.

- From The Essentials of Prayer, by E. M. Bounds. 

Although E. M. Bounds died in 1913, this book was first published in 1925, by an admirer of the author's life. Bounds was known for praying from four until seven each morning.

This post is one of a series, taken from The Essentials of Prayer, by Bounds. Found through the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, here. The Essentials of Prayer is in the public domain. The previous post in the entire series on the book is here. Thanks for reading. Read this book, and, more importantly, practice, prayer. 

Thanks for reading.

How ideas spread from person to person

A recent article in the New Yorker discusses, with examples, how ideas spread. The article, written by a medical doctor, describes how some healthcare ideas, like the use of anesthesia, spread very rapidly -- and that was in the nineteenth century. It also describes how some ideas, like being as sterile as possible when you are going to do surgery, spread much more slowly, and indicates some of the reasons why this might be so. Then it discusses some healthcare ideas which should be spread to third world societies, for their own sakes, and how difficult that can be.

The bottom line? For at least some medical changes, technological aids don't do much good towards getting people to change. It takes one-on-one demonstration, showing how to do something, and explaining why it's important..

The article is fascinating, but I can't help but be reminded of how the gospel should be spread. Using technology is OK, but what's really needed is one-on-one demonstration, showing how, and why it's important.

Thanks for reading! Read the New Yorker article.

Sunspots 428

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:
Christianity: God and Nature magazine reports on how and why a mature Christian couple changed their beliefs about the age of the earth.
Health: (or ethics, or sex) National Public Radio reports on the question of "Can Elderly Patients With Dementia Consent To Sex?"
Humor: (sort of) A photo of what happens when you try to drive in wet concrete.
Science: In case you didn't know it, there has been some doubt that Tyrannosaurus rex was really a savage predator, but might have merely scavenged on dead animals. National Public Radio reports on good evidence that it was, indeed, a hunter of other dinosaurs.


Image source (public domain)

How much does the Bible say we should spend on sunglasses?

There seem to be some things that the Bible makes clear -- we should do them, or we shouldn't. Examples: love your enemies; don't commit adultery. But there are all sorts of areas where we have to make decisions on our own. There's no scriptural guidance.

One example: how should we dress? I happen to belong to a denomination (it's not the only one like this) that has a history with some legalism in it. People believed that they should wear certain types of clothing, usually no jewelry, and their hair should be prepared in a certain way, especially when they came to church. We're pretty much over that now, thank God. But why was it so appealing to some, in the past?

I don't know all the answers. One possible answer is that the Bible does say that we should dress modestly. But modesty is mostly a state of mind. It's possible to appear in public without being mostly covered, but with a modest attitude -- that is, without wanting to draw attention to yourself, or how you are dressed, made up, hair fixed, and otherwise ornamented. It's possible to cover yourself up rather thoroughly, but have a desire to show off your body, or your clothes, or your new watch, in a proud manner.

Another reason is that we like to conform. Even people who call themselves nonconformists like to conform.

But there's a third reason. Having a set of standards that can be followed, by anyone, regardless of the state of their relationship to Christ, is tempting. It tempts people to follow those standards, and not engage in the deeper walk that comes to us as the Holy Spirit draws us deeper and deeper into the attitude of conformity to Christ. And it tempts people to even think that there is no such conformity with Christ's attitude, but just a set of external standards. I'm not saying that those who did, or do, dress a certain way, and leave off some ornamentation, as part of their religious culture, cannot be also conformed to the mind of Christ. Some of them were, and some of them are. But it's too easy to think that conformity to a human standard is all that is expected of us, when it isn't.

What does all this have to do with the title of this post? Good question. Here's my answer. God leaves us to make decisions on all sorts of things, without explicit scriptural guidance? Why is that? Well, one reason has to do with the culture of Bible times. If Paul had spelled out what kind of sunglasses to wear, if any, and how much to pay for them, his contemporaries would probably have thought him crazy, and he wouldn't have understood what he was writing about, himself. But there's another, more important reason, spelled out above. If there was a 21st Century rule book on dress, and spending money, and how we can and can't entertain ourselves and eat, and it was comprehensive, we would think that we could redeem ourselves by our adherence to that rule book. But we couldn't. We can only redeem ourselves by accepting Christ's sacrifice for sin, and following Him as our Lord. Uncertainty on what to do in these matters should drive me to keeping a warm and living relationship with God, who can help me make such decisions.

Deciding how to spend money, what to wear, what to eat, and the like, should be informed by our relationship with Christ. We should pray, and try to think what He would do. And we should realize that we may get such matters wrong, or disagree with fellow believers about these things. (And we need to be tolerant of the behavior of other Christians.) Being wrong, or being different, should remind us that we aren't redeemed by following rules. We are redeemed by Christ's sacrifice!

Although I have spoken only of individual decisions on behavior, group decisions also should be made in this way. We should pray, and seek the mind of Christ, and Biblical guidance, if there is any, on important issues as groups of believers. And, when we do, we should recognize that different groups may come to different conclusions about ritual, doctrine, how a church building looks, church government, and many other things, without either one being sinful in their belief and practice.

Thanks for reading!

The universality of prayer, part 5, by E. M. Bounds

Prayer runs parallel with the will of God, “who will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”

Prayer reaches up to heaven, and brings heaven down to earth. Prayer has in its hands a double blessing. It rewards him who prays, and blesses him who is prayed for. It brings peace to warring passions and calms warring elements. Tranquillity is the happy fruit of true praying. There is an inner calm which comes to him who prays and an outer calm as well. Prayer creates “quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty.”

Right praying not only makes life beautiful in peace, but redolent in righteousness and weighty in influence. Honesty, gravity, integrity and weight in character are the natural and essential fruits of prayer.
 
It is this kind of world-wide, large-hearted, unselfish praying which pleases God well, and which is acceptable in His sight, because it cooperates with His will and runs in gracious streams to all men and to each man. It is this kind of praying which the man Christ Jesus did when on earth, and the same kind which He is now doing at His Father’s right hand in heaven, as our Mighty Intercessor. He is the pattern of prayer. He is between God and man, the one Mediator, who gave Himself a ransom for all men, and for each man.

So it is that true prayer links itself to the will of God, and runs in streams of solicitude, and compassion, and intercession for men. As Jesus Christ died for every one involved in the fall, so prayer girdles every one and gives itself for the benefit of every one. Like our one Mediator between God and man, he who prays stands midway between God and man, with prayers, supplications, “and strong cryings and tears.” Prayer holds in its grasp the movements of the race of man, and embraces the destinies of men for all eternity. The king and the beggar are both affected by it. It touches heaven and moves earth. Prayer holds earth to heaven and brings heaven in close contact with earth.

- From The Essentials of Prayer, by E. M. Bounds. 

Although E. M. Bounds died in 1913, this book was first published in 1925, by an admirer of the author's life. Bounds was known for praying from four until seven each morning.

This post is one of a series, taken from The Essentials of Prayer, by Bounds. Found through the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, here. The Essentials of Prayer is in the public domain. The previous post in the entire series on the book is here. Thanks for reading. Read this book, and, more importantly, practice, prayer. 

Thanks for reading.

King David on offering things to God

1 Chronicles 21:22 Then David said to Ornan, “Give me the place of this threshing floor, that I may build an altar to Yahweh on it. You shall sell it to me for the full price, that the plague may be stopped from afflicting the people.”
23 Ornan said to David, “Take it for yourself, and let my lord the king do that which is good in his eyes. Behold, I give the oxen for burnt offerings, and the threshing instruments for wood, and the wheat for the meal offering. I give it all.”
24 King David said to Ornan, “No; but I will most certainly buy it for the full price. For I will not take that which is yours for Yahweh, nor offer a burnt offering that costs me nothing.”
25 So David gave to Ornan six hundred shekels* of gold by weight for the place. 26 David built an altar to Yahweh there, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called on Yahweh; and he answered him from the sky by fire on the altar of burnt offering.

*text note - this was about six kilograms of gold.

1 Chronicles 29:11 Yours, Yahweh, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty! For all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, Yahweh, and you are exalted as head above all. 12 Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all! In your hand is power and might! It is in your hand to make great, and to give strength to all! 13 Now therefore, our God, we thank you, and praise your glorious name. 14 But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly as this? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you. 15 For we are strangers before you, and foreigners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is no remaining. 16 Yahweh our God, all this store that we have prepared to build you a house for your holy name comes from your hand, and is all your own.

- World English Bible, public domain

Thanks for reading.

Sunspots 427

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:
Christianity: Staci Johnson has a post on beliefs, and discusses the difference between a posture and a position.
Weekend Fisher considers Grace and the Trinity.
Henry Neufeld says that he is not an evolutionist, any more than he is a gravitationist.
Computing: Gizmo's Freeware has posted what they say is the best list of free security products in the world.
Philosophy: The Skeptical Zone discusses intelligence, as in Intelligent Design.
Science: Wired reports that the time of year when a baby is conceived (or born) influences how healthy the child will be.
National Public Radio reports on the ancestry of dogs. It turns out that some dogs in the Americas are mostly descended from dogs that were in the Americas before Europeans came here, bringing their own dogs.


Image source (public domain)

The universality of prayer, part 4, by E. M. Bounds

There is strong Scriptural warrant, therefore, for reaching out and embracing all men in our prayers, since not only are we commanded thus to pray for them, but the reason given is that Christ gave Himself a ransom for all men, and all men are provisionally beneficiaries of the atoning death of Jesus Christ.

But lastly, and more at length, prayer has a universal side in that all things which concern us are to be prayed about, while all things which are for our good, physical, social, intellectual, spiritual, and eternal, are subjects of prayer. Before, however, we consider this phase of prayer let us stop and again look at the universal prayer for all men. As a special class to be prayed for, we may mention those who have control in state or who bear rule in the Church. Prayer has mighty potencies. It makes good rulers, and makes them better rulers. It restrains the lawless and the despotic. Rulers are to be prayed for. They are not out of the reach and the control of prayer, because they are not out of the reach and control of God. Wicked Nero was on the throne of Rome when Paul wrote these words to Timothy urging prayer for those in authority.

Christian lips are to breathe prayers for the cruel and infamous rulers in state as well as for the righteous and the benign governors and princes. Prayer is to be as far-reaching as the race, “for all men.” Humanity is to burden our hearts as we pray, and all men are to engage our thoughts in approaching a throne of grace. In our praying hours, all men must have a place. The wants and woes of the entire race are to broaden and make tender our sympathies, and inflame our petitions. No little man can pray. No man with narrow views of God, of His plan to save men, and of the universal needs of all men, can pray effectually. It takes a broad-minded man, who understands God and His purposes in the atonement, to pray well. No cynic can pray. Prayer is the divinest philanthropy, as well as giant-great-heartedness. Prayer comes from a big heart, filled with thoughts about all men and with sympathies for all men.

- From The Essentials of Prayer, by E. M. Bounds. 

Although E. M. Bounds died in 1913, this book was first published in 1925, by an admirer of the author's life. Bounds was known for praying from four until seven each morning.

This post is one of a series, taken from The Essentials of Prayer, by Bounds. Found through the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, here. The Essentials of Prayer is in the public domain. The previous post in the entire series on the book is here. Thanks for reading. Read this book, and, more importantly, practice, prayer. 

Thanks for reading.

Sunspots 426

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: A fine review of a book I decided not to get, among the Amazon user-contributed book reviews: "Basically, my reaction to this book is this. Reading a book about the Bible is a lot like watching someone else play a video game. You can learn some things but you can't have the experience until you do it yourself."
"A . . . scholarship focus can set up a dangerous mindset that knowledge is the point of the Bible. When actually it is to get out and share the saving grace of Jesus with the world."


Science: Discovery reports that spider webs may attract prey because the webs, and the prey, are electrically charged.

Three National Public Radio reports on gut (that's a perfectly good biology word, meaning the apparatus between the mouth and the anus, by the way) bacteria and their importance:

Gut bacterial populations seem to be quite stable over long periods of time, and we may get much of that population from our mothers or other relatives.

Gut bacteria may produce a substance, after helping us digest meat, that increases risks for heart attacks.
Gut bacteria populations may cause some forms of malnutrition.



Image source (public domain)

Beauty and science: quotations from others

The quotations below are about the relationship between beauty and science. They were written, or said, by a variety of people, some overtly Christian, such as John C. Polkinghorne, some not, such as Einstein or Feynman. Most of the publications are secular, including those from Yale University Press and Cambridge University Press, Physics Today, and the New York Times.

Richard Feynman, Nobel laureate, wrote: “What is it about nature that lets this happen, that it is possible to guess from one part what the rest is going to do? That is an unscientific question: I do not know how to answer it, and therefore I am going to give an unscientific answer. I think it is because nature has a simplicity and therefore a great beauty.” “Seeking New Laws,” pp. 143-167, in Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, New York: Modern Library, 1994. Quote is from p. 167. I have read all, or nearly all, of Feynman’s popular writing, and seen no evidence that he believed in God at all.

The world, you might argue, does not need yet another subatomic particle. But even particle physics has not been about particles for a long time, physicists say. Rather it is about the relationships between particles, the symmetries that nature seems to respect, in short, about the beauty that physical laws seem to embody. Dennis Overbye, "After Triumph and Disillusionment, Wonder Re-enters the Story," New York Times, July 27, 2004

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing and life would not be worth living. . . . I mean the intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts and which a pure intelligence can grasp. Henri Poincaré, as quoted by S. Chandrasekar, "Beauty and the quest for beauty in science," Physics Today, July, 1979, pp. 25-30, p. 25. Source not given.

We live in a world whose physical fabric is endowed with transparent rational beauty. Attempts have been made to explain away this fact. No one would deny, of course, that evolutionary necessity will have moulded our ability for thinking in ways that will ensure its adequacy for understanding the world around us, at least to the extent that is demanded by pressures for survival. Yet our surplus intellectual capacity, enabling us to comprehend the microworld of quarks and gluons and the macroworld of big bang cosmology, is on such a scale that it beggars belief that this is simply a fortunate by-product of the struggle for life. Remember that Sherlock Holmes told a shocked Dr. Watson that he didn't care whether the Earth went around the Sun or vice versa, for it had no relevance to the pursuits of his daily life! John C. Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. pp. 2-3.

Thus, the perception of the world's beauty as a reflection of God's glory is incomplete without the awareness that underlying the beauty and wonder of earthly nature is the omnipresent, restless operation of electromagnetic phenomena. These phenomena can be seen as a reflection, an analogue, of God's indwelling. This very thought, in itself, possesses an inherent aesthetic value.

Moreover, the appreciation of the beauty that the EMI [Electromagnetic Interaction] contributes to nature is wanting without the realization that the mathematical equations that describe the EMI have a timeless beauty. The elegant symmetry of Maxwell's equations and the inspired simplicity of Dirac's equation bestow an abiding aesthetic flavor to the texture of the microscopic underworld. Dirac and Heisenberg among many other theoretical physicists have throughout their careers expressed how they have been guided by the criteria of beauty and simplicity in their work. - Lawrence W. Fagg, Electromagnetism and the Sacred: At the Frontier of Spirit and Matter (New York: Continuum, 1999) p. 120.

For the theist, the rational beauty of the physical world is not just a brute fact, but a reflection of the mind of the Creator. Aesthetic experience and ethical intuitions are not just psychological or social constructs, but intimations of God's joy in creation and of his just will. Religious experience is not illusory human projection, but encounter with divine reality. There is an integrating wholeness in the theistic account which I find intellectually satisfying, even though it must wrestle with the mystery of infinite Being.

The theist and the atheist alike survey the same world of human experience, but offer incompatible interpretations of it. My claim would be that theism has a more profound and comprehensive understanding to offer than that afforded by atheism. Atheists are not stupid, but they explain less. - John C. Polkinghorne, The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-Up Thinker. The Gifford Lectures for 1993-4, p. 70. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994

That seems even clearer to us when we recognize that it is mathematics which gives us the key to unlock the secrets of nature. Paul Dirac spent his life in the search for beautiful equations. That is a concept not all will find immediately accessible, but among those of us who speak the language of mathematics, mathematical beauty is a recognizable quality. It is hard to describe but easy to recognize -- like most other kinds of beauty. Its essence lies in a certain economy and elegance that leads to the mathematical property of being 'deep.'… Time and again we have found that it is equations with that indispensable character of mathematical beauty which describe the nature of the physical world. - John C. Polkinghorne, Beyond Science: The Wider Human Context. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 79-80.

I asked him once about a theory and he said, "when I am evaluating a theory, I ask myself, if I were God, would I have made the universe in that way." If the theory did not have the sort of simple beauty that would be demanded of a God, then the theory was at best only provisional. (Banesh Hoffman, "Working with Einstein," pp. 475-478, in Some Strangeness in the Proportion: A Centennial Symposium to Celebrate the Achievements of Albert Einstein, Harry Woolf, ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1980. Quote is from p. 476.) 

The Psalmist said:  1 The heavens declare the glory of God.
The expanse shows his handiwork.
2 Day after day they pour out speech,
and night after night they display knowledge.
3 There is no speech nor language,
where their voice is not heard.
4 Their voice has gone out through all the earth,
their words to the end of the world. (Psalm 19, Bible quotations from the World English Bible, public domain)

St. Paul said:  "For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity . . ." Romans 1:20a.

As far as we can tell, God created a universe that is understandable, and beautiful. Physicists, and others, have understood part of the way in which that universe is put together, and what they understand reveals a universe of pattern, of beauty, of, if you please, design. Hebrews 11:3 says that we understand that God created the universe by faith, and it is true that there is no scientific proof for God's creation, but, for those of us who look, even some who have not believed in a personal Creator, the evidence is there.

Thanks for reading. We live in a beautiful universe!

The universality of prayer, part 3, by E. M. Bounds

There is just this modification of the idea that one can pray everywhere. Some places, because of the evil business carried on there, or because of the environments which belong there, growing out of the place itself, the moral character of those who carry on the business, and of those who support it, are localities where prayer would not be in place. We might instance the saloon, the theatre, the opera, the card table, the dance, and other like places of worldly amusement. Prayer is so much out of place at such places that no one would ever presume to pray. Prayer would be an intrusion, so regarded by the owners, the patrons and the supporters of such places. Furthermore those who attend such places are not praying people. They belong almost entirely to the prayerless crowd of worldlings.
 
While we are to pray everywhere, it unquestionably means that we are not to frequent places where we cannot pray. To pray everywhere is to pray in all legitimate places, and to attend especially those places where prayer is welcome, and is given a gracious hospitality. To pray everywhere is to preserve the spirit of prayer in places of business, in our intercourse with men, and in the privacy of the home amid all of its domestic cares.
 
The Model Prayer of our Lord, called familiarly “The Lord’s Prayer,” is the universal prayer, because it is peculiarly adapted to all men everywhere in all circumstances in all times of need. It can be put in the mouths of all people in all nations, and in all times. It is a model of praying which needs no amendment nor alteration for every family, people and nation.
 
Furthermore, prayer has its universal application in that all men are to be the subjects of prayer. All men everywhere are to be prayed for. Prayer must take in all of Adam’s fallen race because all men are fallen in Adam, redeemed in Christ, and are benefited by prayers for them. This is Paul’s doctrine in his prayer directory in 1 Tim. 2:1:

“I exhort, therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men.”

- From The Essentials of Prayer, by E. M. Bounds. 

Although E. M. Bounds died in 1913, this book was first published in 1925, by an admirer of the author's life. Bounds was known for praying from four until seven each morning.

This post is one of a series, taken from The Essentials of Prayer, by Bounds. Found through the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, here. The Essentials of Prayer is in the public domain. The previous post in the entire series on the book is here. Thanks for reading. Read this book, and, more importantly, practice, prayer. 

Thanks for reading.

A poster on faith and trust, based on quotations from Morgan L. Busse and Eliza E. Hewitt

The poster above was inspired by a blog post by fantastic literature author Morgan L. Busse. She kindly gave me permission to use it in this way, and I thank her. There is also a quotation from the gospel song, "My Faith Has Found A Resting Place," by Eliza E. Hewitt, which song is in the public domain. The quotation says this:
My faith has found a resting place,
Not in device or creed;
I trust the ever living One,
His wounds for me shall plead.

I need no other argument,
I need no other plea,
It is enough that Jesus died,
And that He died for me.

The flowers in the background are lilacs, on a bush in Superior, Wisconsin, near the college, now university, where I obtained my bachelor's degree, for which I thank God. The photo that the background is derived from was taken in June, 2013.

I thank my wife for helpful criticism of earlier versions of this poster. Thanks to you for looking, and reading. Examine the basis of your faith, and I'll try to do the same.

* * * *

Added June 17, 2014: Busse has written again about the situation that apparently led to the statements used in the graphic.

Sunspots 425

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: My church, The Wesleyan Church, has a position paper on homosexuality. A good one. (Note -- it was published in 2010, so is not just a reaction to the recent Supreme Court decision.)

Health: The Guardian says that the source of pain in fibromyalgia has finally been identified. It's nerve fibers in the hand.

The LA Times reports on a "reverse vaccine" for diabetes. It helps prevent the immune system from attacking the cells that make insulin.

Science: Linguistic science, that is. Business Insider has published over 20 maps of the continental US, showing differences in pronunciation (or vocabulary) by region. Interesting.

Sports: (Sort of) The Telegraph reports on an unusual group of football matches, being played between robot teams, with the, er, goal, of being good enough to beat humans in a couple of dozen years or so. (that's the football that everyone besides some North Americans call football -- we mostly call it soccer)



Image source (public domain)