Mary, Martha, and Francis

Wow, its been a while since I've posted. I just finished about a two week sprint of homework, projects, and tests. Its been hard but good. I feel (potentially) better prepared for finals knowing how I need to study between now and then.

One of the papers I wrote was on the historica Crusades and contemporary 'Crusader' rhetoric when certain journalists or politicians refer to Western foreign policy. My thesis paragraph was the following:

While there is much evidence that might characterize the West as historically ‘colonial’ in nature, the connection between the crusades and modern politics is deeply problematic. This in and of itself might be a small issue if it were not for the fact that this connection between the Crusades and modern politics is employed repeatedly in political dialogue regarding East-West tensions, and in the position of this paper, inappropriately. In contemporary political dialogue, the popular association of the Crusades with recent Western political intervention in the Middle East is largely a re-interpretation of history to further a political end. References to the historic Crusades as found in recent critiques of Western foreign policy (primarily American) are used to interpret current events as a part of a perceived historic aggression of the Christian West against Muslim lands that began with the Crusades and has continued unabated up unto the present.

It was a great paper to do research for but I procrasinated so much my final draft that I rushed the whole end of the paper and was fairly dissapointed with the final outcome. Bummer. Fortunately, I am doing my end-of-the-term history paper on a similar topic so a lot of my research crosses over.

The last week has been a great week of being exposed to moments of history of the Church and Christian leaders that I had never previously gotten to know in any significant way. This week we spent time learning about the High Middle Ages, Francis of Assisi, the Franciscan and Dominican orders, St. Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and more. Its been great. Learning about the life of Francis of Assisi has been 'a gong show' (that's Canadian slang for huge, overwhelming, etc.)! He was such an incredible man - humble, innocent, full of joy, corageous, simple, cared for the poor and common people, choose to live in poverty for the sake of identifying with Christ, lived for heavenly reward and not earthly. We recently watched a movie called Brother Sun, Sistern Moon. It was a movie created in the 60's and it definately shows! But it was a really inspiring movie, great to watch with a group of friends and discuss afterwards. So I recommend it to ya'll back home in REAL... or at least the Garrett club.

Prayer Request: I am still unsure about what church I want to committ to being a part of so please pray for me that the Lord would give me discernment and peace about where to put down roots and get involved in ministry.

Well, I want to be a more regular blogger which means my blogs will need to be more frequent but shorter. So I'll end this here with a short quote from one of my readings. The author's name is Hilton (1370), who wrote a letter to a layman who wanted to become a monk. He writes to him to tell him to NOT give up his secular life and profession for that would be irresponsible and misguided charity towards God. Instead he must pursue "the mixed life" - a life characterized by both Mary and Martha pursuits...

"The mixed life was thus modelled by our Lord Himself as an example for those who take up the estate and calling of a mixed life... that [they] should give themselves to their worldly businesses in reasonable measure...such as may profit the people who are under their care...[and] they should make time for giving themselves entirely to contemplation, in devotion, prayer, and meditation...." And, "for such persons it is appropriate to labor and occupy themsleves inwardly in order to obtain through the grace of our Lord cleanness of heart and peace of conscience through the rejection of sin and the nourishing of spiritual virtues."