In and out of Consciousness...

On my plane ride back to Phoenix today after quite a lovely Thanksgiving break, I was determined to catch up with my reading on "The Power and the Glory" - and by hook or by crook no one (and no other book now that I have finished most of the Narnia series - yay children's books!) was going to stop me.

I was even ready to give up a window or aisle seat if my overhead light didn't work.

I'll admit I was on the brink of constantly falling into sleep, but the overload of coffee and coke (at separate times, of course) kicked in to keep me awake overall.

Ok, here goes...

To preface, I sometimes have difficulty analyzing literature at deeper levels, so bear with my connections and discussions.

Here is one part that stood out in reading the very beginning of Part II (p. 70 in my edition):

"...Oh it is easy to say all the things that there will not be in heaven: what is there is God. That is more difficult. Our words are made to describe what we know with our senses..."
(This part comes directly after he is talking about not being able to enjoy things without first denying the self of them - in experiencing something only in relationship to something else - or lack thereof.)

If you think about it, though, most things are much easier to talk or think about in relation to something else - e.g. Warmth could be thought of as the absence of cold. (I guess that's not really deep, is it?)

I pose, though, this question - Can you think of anything or any situation in which our words do not describe what we know with our senses? Or, in other words, is there a time when things can truly be understood in the absolute sense?

(If this is still not making sense, I apologize for my near delirium now that the caffeine has lost its effects.)



Oh, and for those of you visual learners unfortunate enough to never make it to a desert climate, I have included a picture of a cactus below. (Maybe that could earn me some bonus points?)

We're posting at the airport because we can.

to our left, we have the new, snazzy, futuristic south bend terminal.

more thoughts below.

please read on.

love, caitlin and andie

ps. my phone will not let me use caps, sorry.

pps. andie is slowly going insane next to me. she has burped, snorted, and cried from laughing within the last two minutes. isnt life grand.

now our thoughts on graham greene and the power and the glory. last night at ace advocates, we had mass. it was the feast day of blessed juan migwel /yes, fr. lou pronounced it phonetically/ and fr. lou started talking about mexican martyrs. he also brought up the power and the glory as an excellent example of catholic literature. and then he told us how the book ends. so basically andie and i know the end location but not what happens on the journey. so much like the priest wanders throughout mexico without a home, so too are andie and i sitting in an airport hoping for salvation from thanksgiving travel.

and we are talking about pocahontas and unicorns. but that is neither here nor there.

so love from the vaguelly futuristic south bend. may your days be more blessed than those of the priest and may you have a phenomenal thanksgiving.

Trippy connection to today's First Reading!

Hola chicas.

So I didn't finish all of Part One yet, but I wanted to stop and post here because what a coincidence that today's 1st reading (found here) so closely relates to the lieutenant's crazy thoughts about martyring the priests.

So on page 25, he's talking about the priests making choices to either marry or be killed. He says "It showed the deceptions they had practised all these years. For if they really believed in heaven or hell, they wouldn't mind a little pain now, in return for what immensities..."

So usually I don't read the readings before I go to Church and, as a visual learner, don't usually remember them if I just listen to them at Mass. But today I knew I was going to a Spanish Mass and so I read the readings ahead of time so it stuck with me. All of this is only important to say that this part from the reading really struck me when put by the lieutenant's thoughts:

"After he had died,
they tortured and maltreated the fourth brother in the same way.
When he was near death, he said,
"It is my choice to die at the hands of men
with the hope God gives of being raised up by him;
but for you, there will be no resurrection to life."2 Mac 7: 11-14 (ish).

If we read this through the eyes of one of the martyred priests saying this, then do we think that the lieutenant will prove that he has the hope of resurrection to life?

What does it say about the brother's hope for resurrection that he is so quick to state that his torturers no longer will have that chance?

So... do you agree? Do the lieutenant (and the men from Macabees) still have a chance of being raised up by God?

Oooh I can't wait to find out what the lieutenant decides to do! He's currently my favorite character (as written... not that he'd be my favorite as a real human), mostly because whenever he appears on the page I want to see what he's going to do next.

The Power and the Glory: Part 1

I'm just going to jump right in here.

I've always been bad at keeping characters straight, which is why I can't read Lord of the Rings (Really? Sauron and Saruman? I'd never get through that.) My question is this: are there two priests between which the story shifts back and forth? I'm very comfortable with the man hiding in the barn at Captain Fellows's house, and I think I've got it right that he is still a priest, but is in hiding and that he's the one who wrestles with the onus of his vocation -- he feels he must serve the spiritual needs of the people he meets.

Then there's Padre Jose. This character isn't the same man, is he? In Ch. 4, Padre Jose is walking in the graveyard and the people beg him to say a prayer for their child -- he feels the same weight as the other character, yes? But Padre Jose is married to his housekeeper, if I've got that right, because of the pressure of the government.

And finally, what's the deal with the mother who is reading to her children? Do they have any relationship to the rest of the characters in the book so far?

Simple Things I Love

This should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who knows me. Or anyone who ever visited our ACE house in Montgomery and saw the anal retentive way that I wrote on the whiteboards.

My simple joy is having different colored pens with which to organize myself.

Considering I got called a nerd by 4 out of 6 of the Academic Supervisors in ACE today, I'm going to own my love for color coding.

Love from the Dome!

Things that are Wonderful

Katie Helm,
With your inspiration, I hereby Christen this blog with the first post. Here is a whole website dedicated to things that are awesome. I think you should add Earl Grey tea and rainy days in New Orleans to the list.

And HERE is a website dedicated to thanking good things in our lives like I will do now:

Dear Literary Sodiality of GrACE,
Thanks for helping me feel refined, feminine, intelligent, and loved.
Love,
Stew