On Power

I was reading Mark 5:24-34 today for devotions. It's the story of the woman with a flow of blood, who reaches out to touch Jesus and is healed the moment her fingertips brush his robe. As I was reading, I was struck by verse 30 which says, "And Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that power had gone out of him, turned around in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my clothes?'"

I was just very intrigued that Jesus knew that power had gone out of him, as if power was an actual thing. I looked in my Greek lexicon, and the word used (dunamis) appears to have a very concrete meaning.

So, I must ask the question. Could it be that power is not just some theoretical idea, or some vague thing used to describe a state of being, but is in fact an actual thing, capable of being shared and used properly or improperly? And if so, how do we share this thing called power (or alternately, strength or ability)?

The scope of effects this has is mind-boggling.

Some Poetry for the Day

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare? -

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

~William Henry Davies

Oh, for a draught of Keats

Written on the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left prison

What though, for showing truth to flatter'd state,

    Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet as he,

    In his immortal spirit, been as free

As the sky-searching lark, and as elate.

Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?

    Think you he naught but prison walls did see,

    Till, so unwilling, thou unturn'dst the key?

Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate!

In Spenser's halls he stray'd, and bowers fair,

    Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew

With daring Milton through the fields of air:

    To regions of his own his genius true

Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair

    When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell

O Solitude, if I must with thee dwell,

    Let it not be among the jumbled heap

    Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep, -

Nature's observatory - whence the dell,

Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell,

May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep

    'Mongst boughs pavillion'd, where the deer's swift leap

Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.

But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee,

    Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,

    Whose words are images of thoughts refin'd,

Is my soul's pleasure; and it sure must be

    Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,

When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

Confessions of a Diehard Classicist

I can hide the truth no longer - I'm a diehard classicist. I have studied Greek three years and Latin two. I am going to major in Classics at my University. I have one (growing) shelf filled with ancient works. Homer and Hesiod, Plato and Aristotle, Euripides and Aristophanes. Caesar and Cicero; Vergil, Horace, and Ovid. Every time I open a Greek or Latin text my hands begin shaking and my heart literally skips a beat.

But I have still more to confess. My Mac is named Isokrates (Socrates for the common man:-); my iPod is named Euterpe (the muse of Music). My car's name is Eurynome (consort of Zeus, goddess of the Ocean, and mother of the three Graces). My hair stylist's name is Diana.


If loving the ancient languages more than life is a crime, then I confess myself to be the greatest criminal I know.

Words Aptly Spoken

18

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Our share of night to bear -

Our share of morning -

Our blank in bliss to fill

Our blank in scorning -

Here a star, and there a star,

Some lose their way!

Here a mist, and there a mist,

Afterwards - Day!

~Emily Dickinson

To Homer

Standing aloof in giant ignorance,

    Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,

As one who sits ashore and longs perchance

    To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.

So thou wast blind; - but then the veil was rent,

    For Jove uncurtain'd Heaven to let thee live,

And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,

    And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;

Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,

    And precipices show untrodden green,

There is a budding morrow in midnight,

    There is a triple sight in blindness keen;

Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel

To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.

~John Keats

By Emily Dickinson

11

(67)

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed.

To comprehend a Nectar

Requires Sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host

Who took the Flag today

Can tell the definition

So clear of Victory

As he defeated - dying -

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

Burst agonized and clear!

14

(76)

Exultation in the going

Of an inland soul to sea,

Past the houses - past the headlands -

Into deep Eternity -

Bred as we, among the mountains,

Can the sailor understand

The divine intoxication

Of the first league out from land?

Some thoughts from Chapter 3 of Norms & Nobility

It is only just to begin this post with David Hicks's chosen epigraph, so with that I shall begin.

Rigorous teachers seized my youth,

And purged its faith and trimmed its fire,

Showed me the high, white star of Truth,

Then bade me gaze and there aspire.

~Matthew Arnold

Now, to David Hicks.

"To begin with, [the Socratic teacher] possesses two outstanding traits. First, his temper and behavior are governed by ideas: his life maintains that perfect balance between thought and action, theory and practice that makes him seem to his students the very incarnation of his lessons. Second, he has a broad and penetrating curiosity and a delightfully dialectical mind, eager to devise and test a hypothesis, quick to challenge ideas and observations, but slow to accept an aitia (a first or final cause, an incontrovertible ground), even though, like Democritus, he would rather discover a first cause than be king of the Persians."

This idealized teacher, Hicks explains, is the opponent of the Sophists, who accepted the world of experiences and taught his students merely what do to do in order to "get along". He shows that, though the Sophists mocks the Socratic teacher for questioning appearances, only the Socratic teacher can save the appearances, who can save those appearances depth. He then goes on to portray the other idealized classical teacher - the Isocratic teacher. 

This teaching method is less dependent on the "idiosyncratic genius of the individual teacher", and it's goals are more practical and positive, but less philosophical. The Isocratic teacher "uses a great tradition of learning in the arts, letters, and sciences to excite in his students a vision of those enduring values and truths that underlie the world of appearances". And as his focus is different from that of the Socratic teacher, the Isocratic teacher has a different battle with different opponents. This opponent is, as Hicks terms it, "the romantic school of child psychology", the school which believes in the perfect child. They argue that childhood is a time for enjoyment, freedom, and entertainment; they do not "concern themselves with an ideal of how children ought to behave because they have no vision of what their students ought to be as adults".

The Isokratic teacher, on the other hand, recognizes "that children want to be brought up...The healthy child wants to become an adult, just as the mature adult wants to be an adult." Hicks goes on:

"Isokrates' avoidance of this romantic fallacy suggests, paradoxically, that he regarded education with the mind of a child. Of towering importance to the child are not the playful, innocent moments remembered by the adult who nears death, but the hard-won progress he makes as a child toward his image of adulthood. He measures his greatest achievements and most agonizing defeats against this image. When his teacher holds out to him only an image of how 12-year-olds ought to think and act, his hope of growth wavers, and he becomes restive and inattentive...Where Isokrates made demands of the child, the modern teacher seeks to make concessions."

Ask yourself, then, what sort of teacher you wish to be. The Sophist, or the Socrates? The Romantic, or the Isokrates?

Four Lines

That's all it took. In four short lines, Emily Dickinson sums up whole philosophies of life and thought, a feat far beyond my own skills.

Poem 8 (59)

By Chivalries as tiny,
A Blossom, or a Book,
The seeds of smiles are planted -
Which blossom in the dark.

~Emily Dickinson

The Word and Existence

God spoke the word, and out of nothing the object came into being. So in the classroom, the simple word valor and the fact that the teacher utters it with reverential passion might enliven the student's mind and through the imagination shape his character.

~Norms&Nobility, David Hicks

A Sampling of Books Every Teacher Should have their Students Read

1. Norms & Nobility - David Hicks

2. Economics in One Lesson - Henry Hazlitt

3. The Intellectual Life - A. G. Sertillanges

4. Climbing Parnassus - Tracy Lee Simmons

5. John Adams - David McCullough

6. Arguing About Slavery - William Lee Miller

7. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

8. The Divine Comedy - Dante

9. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

10. Persuasion - Jane Austen

11. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

12. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

13. Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens

14. A History of the Peloponnesian War - Thucydides

15. King Lear - William Shakespeare

A poem by Dickinson

221

(543)

I fear a Man of frugal Speech -

I fear a Silent Man - 

Haranguer - I can overtake - 

Or Babbler - entertain -

But He who weigheth - While the Rest -

Expend their furthest pound - 

Of this Man - I am wary -

I fear that He is Grand - 

~Emily Dickinson

On Myth

Life is full of moral imperatives that defy our reason and our simplistic systems of punishment and reward and our theoretical models of vale-preferences...But myth assures mankind that certain values transcend reason to give human existence meaning within an unchanging frame of reference, while ensuring unity among the members of the community concerning these values. This unity of values is the hallmark of culture. Without this unity regarding the imponderables, civilized actions become impossible, and man is cast upon the shabby mythology of his own random dream-wrolds and is at the mercy of state and natural religions.

~David Hicks, Norms&Nobility

Watch out world....

This blogger has a driver's license.

From the Prologue of The Four Cardinal Virtues

To define the obligations of man is certainly a legitimate, even estimable, and no doubt necessary undertaking. With a doctrine of commandments or duties, however, there is always the danger of arbitrarily drawing up a list of requirements and losing sight of the human person who "ought" to do this or that. The doctrine of virtue, on the other hand, has things to say about this human person; it speaks both of the kind of being which is his when he enters the world, as a consequence of his createdness, and the kind of being he ought to strive toward and attain to - by being prudent, just, brave, and temperate.

~Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues

A poem

Or at least, it is meant to be. I do hope this does not come across as excessively uncouth of me, and that is effect is not depressing. It was written in a moment of great internal suffering, but by the end a light shone on my path.

Contemplation of a Personal Sin

My demon passed me by this day,

A blurry face yet presence real;

He paused to laugh a circle round me,

Then disappeared into my mem’ry.

His power I had thought repressed,

His countenance a shadow’s shadow.

But today his pow’r was strongest yet.

He has no raving tongue, nor mouth

Agape with dripping blots; he stood behind 

As if a friend, or harmless bystander. 

But he commands whene’er he wills, 

And is stronger now then e’er before. 

What frightens most is simply this:

My own face wound in his malicious is.

How could a stranger and myself be one?

Yet he combines myself with evil foe.

I am the dreamer who wakes with fright,

And also the nightmare which frightens so.

I am the robbed and robber too.

I am the house divided which cannot stand - 

My demon and myself, both one and separate.

Dear God, the highest one, beyond myself,

Let me suffer pain, let me die at once

That he may pass away forevermore.

My demon’s face is mocking me,

He dares me try to strike him dead.

I tell him I’ll not do the deed,

I cannot, but my Father can.

A Definition of Poetry (if that's even possible)

"[In poetry] there is always the communication of some new experience, or some fresh understanding of the familiar, or the expression of something we have experienced but have no words for, which enlarges our consciousness or refines our sensibility."

~T.S. Eliot, 'The Social Function of Poetry'