A Sad Day

Today was a sad day in the life of a certain young and forgetful teenager.  Today, said teenager forgot something very important, and it will end up costing her dearly.  

Today as you all know is Tuesday.  And in the area in which I dwell, Tuesdays mean something.  

Now to those of you who might think you know where this is going, no I did not forget my Hobbes reflection essay at home.  Now that would have been a tragedy indeed.  But fortunately my paper is safe in the hands of Mr. Bartel.

No, in addition to papers being due, Tuesdays also mean something else...namely, street sweeping.  However, due to the pressing demands of Hobbes, Bach, and sundry other things in my mind, I had not remembered this.  Being the loving and serving daughter that I was, I decided to let my mom park in the garage when she got home.  But since she was not home yet, I parked on the street to wait for her.  

Yes, I was parked on the street when the street sweeper came.  Yes, I did get a parking ticket.  Yes, it will cost me precious dollars and cents that could have been spent on Dante or Chesterton or Bach or Rachmaninoff.  But today, I experienced a part of what it means to be an adult.  I made a mistake, and I need to pay for it.  I learned a lesson, and in that sense, perhaps today could be called a happy day.

3 things, or the relationship of Goodness Truth and Beauty to the three parts of man

Today in Foundations we talked about a lot of wonderful things, including Chesterton.  But the biggest by far was an amazing epiphany I had regarding threes.  Ever since Wheatstone I've been fascinated by sets of three...namely Goodness Truth and Beauty, as well as Hands Head and Heart.  I was particularly thrilled to discover the correlation of the three aforementioned parts of man to Lewis' description in the Abolition of Man to the Stomach, Head and Chest.  

Plato's Phaedrus also talks in some detail about threes.  In said dialogue, Socrates gives a description of the soul as a charioteer (Reason) and a good and bad horse, one which represents good desires and one sinful desires (as near as I can make out from Plato, that is).  It's interesting that you can tie that description from Plato to Lewis' statement that...The Head (charioteer/reason) rules the Stomach (bad horse/fleshly desires) through the Chest (good horse/right desires).  

But today in class Mr. Bartel tied them all together in an amazing way.  For some time now I've been trying to find some correlation between the soul's three parts and the three pillars of Christian living, goodness truth and beauty.  What Mr. Bartel showed us today was how they relate.  

1) Hands-Goodness most closely relates to the hands.  How to live rightly, do good things, etc.

2) Head-Truth-What is truth, how can we know things...truth deals mainly with the intellect.

3) Heart-Beauty-what are right sentiments and feelings?  What is truly beautiful and how do we recognize it...beauty deals mainly with the heart.

I am very excited to see this finally tying together.  Thank you so much Mr. Bartel for enlightening me in this!  And thank you Wheatstone for first opening my mind to these wonderful threes!

Under the mercy,

Elizabeth

Poetry post

Moonlight O’er the Pacific

Summer sunset o’er the sand

Glistening, reflecting, burning bright

Sun shimmers on the surface of the sea

Waves murmer, birds whisper in the evening light

A lonely set of footprints follows

A solitary line across the sand

Treading my path alone across the beach

I look across the waves to distant lands

The sun dips low beneath the water

Sending dazzling diamonds across the sea

Sky grows dark, diamonds ascend

Into the sky, rain down on me

Tears glisten on my cheeks, in the sky

Diana reigns in the darkness sublime

Beauty touches my soul, you touch my soul

In the wind and the waves and the sky, this is mine

Alone with the waves, they whisper my name

Sharing secrets with the wind and me

Diana descends, paves a path across the water

I step out upon the silver path, to run across the sea.

Please pray...

for my grandma tonight.  She has had a stroke this afternoon, and already is not in the best of health.  If you would keep her in her prayers, that the Lord would heal her body and take her worries upon himself, that would be a great blessing.  Thank you my friends.

Under the mercy,

Elizabeth

First Class!

Hooray for Foundations!  I must confess I was a bit nervous starting class this afternoon, as we have a handful of new students in our class as well as a new tutor.  However, everything exceeded my expectations and we had a wonderful discussion!  Four things that I'm looking forward to this year...

1) Fellow classmates-it took quite a long time for our class to warm up to each other and actually discuss last year.  Today we actually had a pretty decent discussion compared to first semester discussions last year, and I foresee much improvement with this.

2) Mr. Bartel-I have heard Mr. Bartel highly praised over the summer, and he has definitely lived up to all the praise I heard.  He was funny, intelligent, and helped us to get at the answers without handing them to us.  Everyone greatly enjoyed him I believe and I am greatly looking forward to this year with him.

3) Poetry-As I have heard much of Mr. Bartel's love for poetry, I'm pretty excited to read the American poetry later in the second semester.  I'm also hoping to hear some of his thoughts on poetry in general as well as maybe if I can work up the courage to ask his advice on my own poetry...poetry is a beautiful thing is it not?

4) Starbucks-Hooray for having a Starbucks within walking distance of our site!  After class hopefully we can make it there some Tuesdays.  Sadly though I just found out that they no longer carry the base for making decaf frappaccinos...so sad.  

I hope that all my fellow Torreyans had wonderful first classes as well!

Under the mercy,

Elizabeth