Even More Coincidences

I'm not entirely sure if anybody even reads these anymore but I needed to share this. Like Karen I had a small coincidence when I got home too. So I got home and I have some reading that I plan on doing as I assume every English major does during break, but once I got to my room I decided to go through my bookshelf just to see what was on there. When my family moved into this house we moved a lot of old books onto the bookshelves in my room, and I never really bothered with very many of them. As I'm going through those books a name caught my eye, it was Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but the book was The Idiot. So I continued to look through my bookshelf and I see another Dostoyevsky book, and this one is The Brothers Karamazov. I'm sure you all remember listening to Dr. Sexson talking about the three greatest stories of human suffering: The Book of Job, King Lear, and The Brothers Karamazov.

I found this book and was absolutely shocked. I lived in this room for 6 years of my life, and never really knew that I had anything of worth on there. So i'm reading the book to see if Dr. Sexson was right. So far so good. I guess I would suggest that everybody go through your book shelves to see if you find anything worthwhile.

Merry Christmas and toodle loo.

Dr. Sexson's Cool New Look

So I was just wondering if anybody else noticed that half of Dr. Sexson's collar was flipped up today? Personally i'm jealous because I know that I can't pull it off. I mean come on we've all seen that one guy who walks into a party and has his collar popped. Usually we immediately make a judgement to not interact with that person, because they're likely to be one of the dumbest people you've ever met. I would like to point out that not only did Dr. Sexson pull this look off, but he was able to pull it off with just one side flipped, an ability that I would have thought next to impossible. Anyways, I would just like to congratulate and thank Dr. Sexson on making what we all thought uncool cool.

A flurry of blogs

Now that I'm finally fully participating in the blogs, and especially since the end of semester is coming, I'm seeing a flurry of blogs from almost everyone, and enjoying all of it. I only wish that I had not been so unsure of blogging and the affect it would have on my class experience. At the beginning of this class I felt that I would only be summarizing what I've read in the Bible. While I didn't read much of the Bible, I now realize that it could have been more, and that I wish I had participated more within my blog. I regret to say that I never feel like I can truly put my thoughts into words the way I want it to be, and this scared me a little away from participating (it still scares some). That's still no excuse, and I would like to apologize to and to thank everybody in the class. Most importantly to Dr. Sexson. I truly wish that this were a two semester class or something that we could continue with past this semester. Oh well, what I do plan on doing over the Christmas break is to read a little bit of everyone's blogs. I hope to see many of you in future English classes.
Good Luck and God Bless.

On the Concept of Belief

One thing I've noticed is that within the Bible there doesn't seem to be much questioning of the existence of God. I don't believe though, that the point of these books is to prove God's existence, but this question is probably one of the most prevalent questions of our time.

Does God exist? my answer- I don't know.

I consider myself an agnostic, I don't believe there is sufficient proof for the existence of some being higher than us, and I just can't bring myself to have faith in something I cannot see or even ever know. For me this means that I'm open to the possibility of God, that my scientific and truth seeking mind cannot allow me to believe that a God can exist. As Robert Langdon says in the famous book and movie Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, "God did not bless me with the gift of faith." I like to use this statement for myself because from time to time I have people ask me if I believe in God, because this statement puts a very good light on not believing. I just couldn't keep saying that I believed when in reality I wasn't entirely sure that I did, and I'm still not sure, but at least I'm not claiming something that isn't true anymore, at least I'm not lying to myself.

Personally though I believe the issue is much bigger than straight up belief. I think we have to question why the concept of God was created in the first place. And that of course was to explain the origins of our surroundings. In order to explain the how and why of existence. But now we have scientific evidence that refutes the stories used to explain these things, and even more we have received more answers on the how of existence in the last 300 years than ever before, and we are continuing to gain answers about the human anatomy, the brain, the universe, and about physics as time progresses. But these studies don't give an answer to the why of existence.

What is the why of existence? Is it just something that randomly happened in the universe as scientist's might claim? Is it because we are supposed to experience all the quirks of life as a precursor to something bigger? Is it for our experiences alone? Is it so that we might find definition for ourselves individually or as a group? Why? Why? Why? Why? I honestly don't know, and I don't think I want to know. But maybe that's where God exists, is in our inability to know this ultimate question. For me, I can't bring myself to believe for no other reason than that I have no answers. I'm not strong enough to convince myself.

Many people would then question what is the point of life, and I would tell them to experience the ups, downs, and in betweens. To observe and to create. To strive and to relax. To wish for everything and to receive nothing. To see pain in another person's eyes and to try to comprehend that pain by relating it to those times when you yourself have experienced pain. To try to define yourself in the best way possible. And finally to ask the questions pertinent to life so far as they have an answer, because the questions that don't have answers will only give you a headache, much like what I have now.

Oops

So I thought for one more good blog post I would attend Catholic Mass and see if I could get something good from it. I had heard that every Wednesday in the SUB that they have service at 5:30, and I hadn't been to a service since the weekend before I came back to Bozeman. As I'm getting to the room I notice there's a little sign on the front of the door that says "There will be no service tonight. See you next semester." My plan has been foiled. And for what reason? Dead Week. I honestly don't see what's so dead about it, I mean I see more people in the library this week than any other week in the semester. Oh well, kudos for trying right?

The Priestly Benediction

So I was looking up fun little things online about certain popular prayers within the bible and I was looking specifically at The Priestly Benediction which goes:

May the Lord bless you and keep you
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace
Numbers 6:24-26

So I looked up this prayer on wikipedia and found out that the actor Leonard Nimoy who originally played Spoc in the popular tv series Star Trek had grown up in the Jewish tradition, and he remembered when he was a boy his father making the hand signals for the Priestly Benediction, which he decided a single handed version would be perfect for the hand signal he would use when giving his Vulcan Hand Salute, which included the famous line from Star Trek "Live long and prosper." So for all you Star Trek fans, just remember that "Live long and prosper" and especially the hand signal that goes with comes from a verse in the Bible. Just makes you wonder how many other little things like that have been influenced by the Bible.
Food for thought.

Song of Solomon

So here's a link to a video of a choir singing one of the many versions of the song Set Me as a Seal Upon Your Heart. I couldn't get the link to attach for some reason so if you want to hear this song you'll have to copy and paste it. I remember performing this song in my high school chorus and thought I could share this with everybody. Don't worry though I went to the trouble of finding the best version on youtube. What I didn't realize until this class was that the lyrics for this song came straight from the Song of Solomon, this gives the song a little more significance to me now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb6uY-y9HRI&feature=related

My Commentary on My Paper (I Know This Title is Just a Little Self Pretentious)

So anyways I had a wonderful time writing this paper and it has been a journey of ups and downs of discovery. The thing of it is is that this semester, while being extremely enjoyable has been one of the most thought provocative and difficult times of my life. With a total of 18 credits and between the advanced concepts covered in 3 of these classes(Biblical Foundations in Literature, Literary Criticism and Theory, and Peer Leadership), I have come across ideas that before my college career I had never even dreamed of. And learning some of the things that I have learned has been hard to grasp and I must now learn how to make a proper application of this thought. Because of this paper I have begun to do this, for this was still one of the most unresolved questions in my life was how to apply this knowledge of skeptical wisdom without totally debunking it for extremely low reasons that would only add to the multitude of misunderstandings. And I know now that with this start I can continue my application of these thoughts I have come across. Finally I feel I must point out that for this paper my ideas on the concept of wisdom and applying it appropriately were out to here (imagine my arms spreading as if I were holding something large and round, such as a barrel), but that my ability for relating them to you the rest of the class, whether through my paper or my presentation, were somewhere in here (now imagine my hands as if they were holding something smaller, maybe a basketball or soccer ball). And with that I leave the interpretation up to you.

My Paper - Applying Wisdom

Applying Wisdom
Throughout this semester in Biblical Foundations of Literature we have explored many intriguing and thought provoking subjects of what is found in the Bible and how people interpret it in the literary world. When I came into this class I had no idea the influence it might have on me as I progress through my college career. The topic that struck me the most though was the one on wisdom. I liked this topic best because it was one that throughout this semester I have encountered numerous times. The time that it became a prevalent and continuous thought in my mind though was when we covered it in this class. I remember the day when Dr. Sexson read the line from Ecclesiastes, “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, all is vanity.” This line according to him was the perfect representation of skeptical wisdom. He proceeded to tell us that that line means that everything is pointless or a simple breath of air or fog, as derived from the Hebrew word hebel. At first I had a hard time accepting this concept, I remember walking away from class that day running over and over again the topics we covered and trying to make sense of it. This topic has sent me on an inward, thoughtful search to learn how to define wisdom in my own life, and once discovered to learn how to use wisdom in order to lead my life in the best way possible. If this is possible at all, I still don’t know, but as many people do, I have found a way to accept the answers I have discovered and plan to attempt the type of happiness that has culminated in my head from various readings and realizations.
To begin the explanation of my discoveries and my own personal thoughts on how to live a wise life I feel I must first define wisdom. The dictionary.com definition is, “The ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting; insight.” The word insight in this definition gives a feel of stepping away from a situation and evaluating it for what and how it is. This is a thought that I will come back to, but first I feel I must continue to clear up some misgivings that many people apply to the word wisdom. The first and foremost misunderstanding of the word is in the separation of wisdom from knowledge. Each time this argument has come up it seems to me that the same conclusion is reached, and that is that wisdom is what comes from experience, and knowledge is what comes from the study of a subject or skill. This is a very basic review of an argument that I have experienced twice in this semester, both coming from being a peer leader for the US 101 Freshman Seminar class. The argument came from a discussion of the Apology section of Plato’s Euthyphro, in which Socrates claims that he is wise because he is aware that he knows nothing. The easy thing to latch on to is that Socrates knows nothing, but in reality the most important part of his statement is that of his awareness. He is aware that he does not know the specificities of certain practices, and that is where he is wise.
I came across this argument around the same time that we covered wisdom in our class. While I have had Socrates’ Apology before this semester, it had never occurred to me to continue to question the process of awareness and the play it has in wisdom. Again I think my investigation was prompted by our discussions on this subject. At this point though, the sense of wisdom as knowing that there is nothing to look forward to as covered in Ecclesiastes still did not make sense to me. I continued to question though and I started to think about that topic of insight. I feel that insight is directly caused by being aware of situations. Not aware as in the sense that a person is conscious in that situation, but aware in the sense that they know why it is happening and how that came to be. This type of awareness allows a person to be insightful.
Around the time that I was beginning to think about the relationship between awareness and insight, for my US 460 Peer Leader class (which goes along with being a peer leader for US101) I had to give a presentation on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s The American Scholar. In this speech he gave in 1837 he challenges how American culture (workers, scholars, and everyday people) at that time would become what they do, because they didn’t understand or weren’t aware of other proceedings within the country as a whole. A famous quote from this speech is, “The priest becomes a form; the attorney, a statute-book; the mechanic, a machine; the sailor, a rope of a ship.” What Emerson suggests that people begin doing is easily broken down into three steps; to investigate, to study, and to take action. He called for an awareness of other types of work, while still knowing one’s own field. This three step plan lends itself beautifully to being aware of situations and being able to use that insight gained from awareness. Investigate the situation, study why it is that it happens, and then take an appropriate action to what one finds.
Where this left me though, was with how to take action on the wisdom that I have begun investigating, and have studied in this short period of time. I still did not know what I should do, because that type of wisdom still did not quite make sense. It was about here that I discovered a book in the library called Me by Mel Thompson. This book is a part of The Art of Living series, and I randomly found it on the display shelf. What caught my eye about this book was that it claimed to be an exploration on the idea of the self. In this, Thompson claims that we are more than a materialistic set of neurons as many recent philosophers have argued, and also more than just a soul occupying a physical body. He sees that it is a mixture of both of these claims for in our awareness of ourselves the materialistic view becomes obsolete, and in the fact that Alzheimer’s disease can take away our memories and change who we are, the dualistic view becomes a poorly thought out claim as well. What hit me the most about his argument was not this part, but rather that life is a set of random happenings that will constantly shape each of us. People strive to become one thing and they often times find once they get there that they are dissatisfied. Thompson claims that we must accept this constant and unavoidable set of chances and changes within ourselves, because a stagnant existence is not something that we can experience. Whether or not we find that we have reached our desired station in life, we will experience something new that will change us, for better or worse.
Here was where I started to really latch on to and understand what to do with Ecclesiastes’ message. I finally understood why everything is but a breath, for if we are just experiencing random chances, we cannot truly know everything that there is to know, we will just find over and over again that there really is nothing to look forward to. To use a cliché, it seems the message is one that tells us to live in the moment. To really live in the moment, for we can’t know what will happen to us no matter how hard we try to shape our lives so that things will happen in a predictable way. With our insight and awareness, we can take what we know and what we have experienced to live situations anew, whether good or bad.
I finally came to a conclusion to lead a life of continuous and constant change and to be aware of why it is that I must live this way. Once I discovered this I began to look back on what I have been learning throughout this semester and one topic came to mind. In my Literary Criticism class, we have studied many critics and their different approaches to literature. When I began looking back I remembered a conversation about T.S. Eliot’s essay Tradition and the Individual Talent. In this Eliot claims that all of art is one great big entity, and that each artist cannot escape from the traditions set forth before their existence. Also that nothing truly new can be created, for in all likelihood somebody has probably done the same thing before that artist even existed. He claims that we cannot escape this, but each and every time somebody creates something new, while it may not be entirely new, they are adding to the tradition and causing the entire entity of art to change. In a sense all of art would ripple with the effects of this new work.
When I thought back on this it began to make sense with what I had discovered, while nothing I experience is new, it is in actuality constantly changing the entire experiences of all others. For what I experience may have been slightly different from what somebody else experiences, much the same way that art may have the same conclusions but is reached in a different way.
To continue with Eliot, I feel I must include his insistence in interpreting literature on leaving the author out of this process. He claims that in order to make something worthwhile the artist must surrender themselves to emotions and whatever creative work they are making. In a way to leave their thoughts out and to let the feel of the moment create what it is that an artist is making. He calls this his Impersonal Theory, and because of an author’s surrender, we as critics have to leave him out of the interpretation.
The question now becomes how do I apply this to my study of wisdom, and how does this affect how I must lead my life with a sense of constant change. I believe the argument now becomes leading life with thought verses leading life with emotion. These are very basic terms on what it is that I am trying to portray, but are the only words in which I know how to explain it. The struggle leads into trying to live by emotions, for situations experienced with emotions, whether good or bad, are the ones that people remember the most, and the ones that will ultimately continue to change a person. Thought on the other hand just gets in the way of experiencing something. This is not to say that thought is bad, because without it humans would not be self aware, and I would not be able to come to the conclusion of leading life with a sense of constant continuous change. Northrop Frye touches on this subject in his book The Great Code, especially in the section on wisdom that we specifically talked about in class. He says that, “Here we finally see the real form of wisdom in human life as the philosophia or love of wisdom that is creative and not simply erudite.” How this applies to my argument is that a creative and emotion filled existence is one that will be more meaningful to a person than one lead by knowledge and erudite pure thought. Again I do not think that we can totally escape thought, but rather that we must balance our thought with our emotions, in order to experience situations in the right way.
Now I know that in this paper I have kind of gone away from the influence that the Bible has had on my investigation and the interpretation of wisdom that is found there, but I would like to point out that it was this first discussion of wisdom in the Bible that started me out on this type of search to not only define wisdom but learn ways of applying it to my everyday life. I believe that my discoveries are valid and can be used in a proper way, but whether or not I am right is arguable, and I will not after this experience be closed to any new ideas on the matter. That would only contradict what it is that I have claimed. That is that after a complete and total understanding of what wisdom is a person can then use the knowledge that everything is but a breath, to lead a life of constant, continuous change with a well balanced mixture of emotion and thought.

Paper Topic

I have chosen the first option of what I know now that I didn't know before and the difference it makes, and with this option I am going to explore the concept of wisdom. Throughout this semester I have had the extreme luck of nearly all of my classes overlapping and covering subjects and topics that are very similar but put to use in many different genres and aspects of life. One of the most reoccurring is that of wisdom. What I am working on is exploring the different kinds of wisdom, the definition, and most importantly how we as humans and how I myself put this wisdom to use in everyday life.
This will all be ready by tomorrow the 3rd of December, because I present tomorrow being that my last name is West and we are going in backward alphabetical order. So much for getting things done ahead of time.
PROCRASTINATION STATION

Susanna

I especially enjoyed the story of Susanna in the Bible because they used real means of proving that the elders were in the wrong. The only instance of divine intervention was God's influence in Daniel's soul for him to recognize the wrong being done. Then after that he used investigation methods instead of divine power to discover who was in the wrong.

In relation though the poem of Peter Quince at the Clavier by Wallace Stevens, is one of music. I love how he sets up the entire poem with the statement "Music is feeling, then, not sound." And all throughout the rest of the poem he uses musical terms to describe the feelings of the characters in the story of Susanna. This I felt was a beautiful way to tell any story let alone the story of Susanna. Then at the end there are these three lines:

Now in its immortality it plays
On the clear viol of her memory
And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

In this way Stevens is giving credit to the beautiful story and how it shall live forever, and he does it in a way where he can relate it back to the musical terms that drove the entire poem. I don't know why but I felt that that was gorgeous.

Exodus

Exodus for me was very entertaining but also very different from what I had learned from going to church all my life. Growing up I had heard all these great stories about Moses showing up the Egyptians and leading the Israelites victoriously out of Egypt. But in all reality Aaron did most of the work. I mean just imagine this, so God comes down and speaks to Moses, and tells him how to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. But Moses claims that he doesn't speak well and that nobody will believe him. So God instead of telling him to just man up and do it says, ok we'll just use your brother Aaron to say what needs to be said. Next Moses and Aaron proceed to tell Pharaoh to "let my people go". Here is where the problem comes in. Let's say that you are Pharaoh and this guy comes up to you and says, "Hi I'm Aaron. So my God, who isn't your God, told Moses here to tell me to tell you that you need to let our people go." If I were Pharaoh I wouldn't believe that either, I mean he thought he was just calling their bluff. Unfortunately for him it was the wrong choice. We all know that Moses and Aaron despite having little proof of what they claimed would be backed up by God. Thus the Egyptians were ravaged by the plagues.

The second half of Exodus (from 20-40) was just as interesting if not more so than the first half. The part that really intrigued me was the rules for the making of the Ark of the Covenant and the tabernacle. My question is why are there so many regulations as far as on how it should be made and what should be done? What are the purposes for making sure that the curtain is the exact right length? I know that this part was probably written by the Priestly author, but still, how do the priests of the time come up with such regulations? And why are they relevant?

Also it's been a while since I read Exodus so I don't really remember all the stuff I wanted to talk about, and that's why this post is so short. In the future maybe I'll start blogging right after I read these things.

The Age of Men vs. The Age of Chaos

In Dr. Sexson's lecture today on the different ages of language and how it has been used in mythology and storytelling, he mentioned how we are in the Age of Men (demotic language). Where we are all scientific minded and we talk and think in the way in which we need proof of what we experience and see. He also eluded to the fact that we may be slipping into this new Age of Chaos which would break down language as we use it and start us back at the beginning which is the Age of Gods. Now whether Dr. Sexson intentionally or unintentionally meant to say that we are coming full circle and starting back at the beginning, I can't be entirely sure. I would like to point out however, that I don't think it can be entirely possible for us to come full circle in the way that Dr. Sexson eluded to in his lecture. I have two reasons for this belief. First is in the way in which we have been able to record our information ever since the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, which revolutionized the way in which the production of writings were distributed, whether or not it was before this Age of Men. Also in the last couple of centuries the advancements made in the speed in which information can be distributed through the various channels. The most influential and new channel being the internet, where anybody can look up almost anything they wanted within a matter of seconds. I believe that this availability of these writings to the masses allows for almost anybody with a sound mind to be able to become well versed in the jargon and scientific mindedness that has controlled how we use language ever since the Renaissance. For this reason, as long as people still know how to read and speak the language, I don't think we can leave the Age of Men unless our whole information system were destroyed, and anybody who knew how to set it up again were wiped out by some worldwide cataclysm (Apocalypse anybody?).

Secondly I don't think we can leave the Age of Men, because of the world of Academia that has been set up in most countries. The University system that many countries use to teach younger generations, is a way for the scientific, information, and skill minded people to transfer the knowledge of one area into another person's head. Then after that these people who now know the skills of a certain area can then start to ask questions and perform the scientific method in order to prove and advance their area of interest. With this set up I believe that the way we use language as an entire culture cannot completely slip into the Age of Chaos, without again some sort of God sent Apocalypse that brought the whole of civilization as we know it back to what we were and destroyed all the people who used language in the demotic style.

I don't disagree that much of the populous does use language in a way that has been broken down as if we were in this Age of Chaos, as was displayed very humorously by Dr. Sexson in class today. My point though is that the people who use this language are the people who don't seek out the higher levels of writing and use of language that puts us in the Age of Men. One example of this is in the slums or projects of many overpopulated cities, where peoples' lives consist of nothing that would make them understand the different uses of language as we know it, and where the English language has become degraded in a way that would put that populous in the Age of Chaos. Therefore, in my opinion, we seem to have this split of people who use language in different ways. On one side we have this academic and scientific world where everything is ordered, despite the subjectivity of language, and on another side where there is a sense of chaos in language that theoretically, through Dr. Sexson's presentation of Giambattista Vico's ideas of the progression of language, could eventually lead back to the Age of Gods. The question then becomes can this separation continue to exist, and can it continue to progress in Vico's circle of language and myth? Can the constant advancement of science destroy and bring down our poetic use of words, and destroy this progression which Dr. Sexson has brought to our knowledge?

I honestly don't know. And if the rest of the class is confused by my argument, don't worry, because I am too. All this is just what I began to think about after Dr. Sexson's lecture today. Also, if somebody thinks I left something out or would like to add or expound upon this, please reply. I realize that I may have left something out, and that I almost completely failed to relate this to the Bible. And if anybody thinks this is wrong please tell me, because I would love to find out where I went wrong, and I'm not entirely sure that I have completely grasped the subject that I'm talking about anyways. If you feel the need, please prove me wrong and point me in the right direction. Ok then, enough rambling. Bye now.

Been a Bit Lazy and My Thoughts on Genesis

So I haven't particularly been participating in this whole blogging thing lately (mainly because of the fact that I lost my internet connection at home), but at the same time I have been reading much of the bible (almost through with Exodus). Hopefully I can be a little more engaged in this part of the class for the rest of the semester. I know I'm a little late to it but this post is for my thoughts on Genesis.

As far as the whole P and J thing goes I can't really tell on my own which parts are which author, the only real way for me to be sure is in the description beneath the chapters in which it gives a running commentary on the parts that are believed to be either P, J, and occasionally the E author. Without that commentary I might be lost as far as P and J, besides the fact that it is kind of noticeable how some of the parts of Genesis has much more narrative and others have more genealogies.

After reading Genesis completely through (for the first time in my life) I found some of it to be surprisingly humorous. Many of the stories have a quality that just makes me want to laugh sometimes. The most humorous of all are the Jacob stories, because he often times plays the trickster (which is seen in many of the ancient religions throughout the world). Jacob steals Esau birhthright in 25:29 and then his blessing in 27 and all because God and his mother just want him to be the right person for the inheritance and continuance of the Israelites.

Now I know that much of Genesis is not humorous at all, but for me it is quite interesting how the writers (whoever they are) were able to set up this inheritance for the people who were probably worshiping this God in a way that told a narrative story and gave lessons at the same time. While it may not be recognizable to us because we're reading it in the English language and not the Hebrew, many of the things that go on in Genesis have this teaching of a lesson quality and many times word play (only in the Hebrew) that allows for a narrative to be told and lessons given. One example of the Hebrew having more context is in 38:1-11, it immediately starts out with Judah, one of Joseph's brother, taking a Canaanite woman as a wife, and then them preceding to have two sons, Er and Onan, who were killed because they were "wicked in the sight of the Lord." This to me was absolutely apalling, and totally unjust, but then after reading the description beneath it became clear that Er was killed because his name means "wicked"(or something like it) in Hebrew and Onan was killed because he wouldn't perform his duties as a husband. While this still doesn't explain the justness in their deaths, it does explain that in Hebrew Er meant "wicked", which while reading an English translation that part would never have come through without the commentary below in our study Bibles. Er being killed was totally unexplainable until it was found out that his name meant "wicked". This whole play on words in the Hebrew language just isn't noticeable in the English language, and much of Genesis has these things which add to the story and explanation of why things happened the way they did. While these aren't necessarily the most important part to the narrative of Genesis I found it fascinating how the authors (in Hebrew) played with some of the words in order to make points or just make something more relevant.

All in all, Genesis was a fun read and I look forward to eventually getting around to reading everybody else's blogs on Genesis.

In Memorium to my Great Uncle, Father Robert West

Before I begin putting my thoughts about the Bible down (because I'm actually almost all the way through Genesis), I would like to first put into perspective and pay my respects to a man who inspired me who recently passed away. My great uncle Robert West was the first born child of eight other boys and one girl in the family. He was born in the early 1910's on a homestead outside of Outlook Mt. This was a time and place of hardship for many, and yet even through that hardship he found a way to want to become a priest of the Roman Catholic faith, and is one of the reasons I still go back to that church today. While I do not know his entire story or how he came to be the person that I knew, I do know what he represented, and how he affected my life.

Throughout my great 20 years of life there were 2 Father Robert's that I knew and understood. The first was what I had heard through the stories of my other family members, and the second was the one that I knew in his later years after he developed Alzheimer's. To begin with I will start with my family's account of Father Robert. Apparently back in the day my extended family (of which there is a lot of), despite their living very far apart would manage to have a family reunion every summer. The extended family of which I would later become a part of would all flock back to the tiny town of Outlook Montana to spend time telling stories, singing songs, and generally reveling in the comfort of family, many times around a campfire. Now often times when you think of Roman Catholic priests you think of men stuck at the church praying all the time and not really active members of the community. While that generalization is maybe an over-exaggeration of what most people really think of pastors and priests, it does display some truth of what many people think. If anything though, Father Robert was almost the exact opposite of that very generalization. He was, for lack of better words, the life of the party. Father Robert was the one who would tell the best stories or sing the loudest Irish drinking songs. I have one memory of him from when I was very young and I was sitting on his lap. This was a similar family gathering, and all I can remember is that stories were being told, and everybody just seemed to be happy. Now I know that that sounds very mushy gushy familyish stuff, but in reality it's one of those moments that just stuck with me and truly inspires me to not only keep my sense of family about me but also to attempt to spread that sense of family to the people I surround myself with.

The second Father Robert that I knew was the one deep into the disease of Alzheimer's. Many people when they get Alzheimer's become scared and withdrawn. They forget who they are and what used to be important to them. They truly become a different person. About five years ago me, my dad, sister and grandma all took a trip to Richardton North Dakota, where Father Robert was living at the Abbey there. We made the trip because we knew that he was getting worse and worse every year and that we wouldn't have him for much longer. This was the point where I truly came to admire my great uncle, because before I had just kind of thought of him as another part of my very large family. When we went to see him I kind of expected to see an old man who was scared and confused because of his Alzheimer's, but instead we saw a lively old man who was delighted to see us and absolutely loved the fact that we were there. Even though he couldn't remember me and my sister's names, he still smiled at us and had huge hugs for us. Because it wasn't about knowing who we were or that we were family, it was about the fact that we were young and still had a lot to look forward to. In some way I believe that despite his Alzheimer's he was still able to take from a lifetime of teaching and representing happiness, and recognizing something wonderful such as two young teenagers, and be able have happiness in the fact that he could still get to observe and influence such young life. If you saw a picture of him, there was no way to know that he was the type of man who's good mood and happiness in life was absolutely infectious. All it would take though was a few minute's of his time for him to truly rub off a lifetime of happiness.

Now whether or not Father Robert drew this type of attitude from the fact that he was a part of the priesthood or not, I do not know. But what I do know is that in some way the Bible had to be some sort of contributor. Whether it was directly or indirectly doesn't matter for through him and others I learned a way of life that is happiness, and what more can you ask for.

On a side note, I would like to say that I know this story represents to a certain extent, my beliefs about religion and the Bible, and I would like to apologize to Dr. Sexson who explicitly asked us to keep this class and this blog academic. This blog post was more for me to remember my great uncle, whose funeral I was not able to make it to.

Here's to Blogging - My First Attempt

Hi!! My name is Craig West, I'm from the small farming community of Outlook Montana where I discovered my extreme delight in reading and was instilled with my values that I live by today. I am very excited about this class, despite my dread for having to read the ENTIRE Bible!! I believe that this class will continue to open my mind to the many ideas and thoughts of others that I learn from here in Bozeman, and allow me to grow in my own beliefs.