Eleni ar nen

This isn't a very long post, but I have lots of other things to get to today. It's been a pretty rough week, and I wanted to write something. Sam says at the end of The Two Towers that "In the end, it is only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must past. And when the sun shines out, it will shine out the clearer. Those are the stories that meant something."

This is one of my favorite quotes from Lord of the Rings, even if it is from the movies. There is, of course, a longer book equivalent (not really a quote):

"The land seemed full of creaking and cracking and sly noises, but there was no sound of voice or foot. Far above the Ephel Duath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

This isn't supposed to be an English essay or anything (and if it were, I get that it'd be a pretty terrible one). I just want to say that even when everything is at its worst, and you feel as if too much has happened out of your control, that you don't have your Sam with you, it's not the end.  It's going to feel like it sometimes. But when Frodo is captured in the tower of Cirith Ungol with no Ring, clothes, almost unable to walk and with whip marks on his body, he doesn't know that Sam is spending the entire time looking for him. He isn't alone.

Sam finds him eventually, and holds Frodo completely safe and secure in his arms. For a moment, Sam is simply happy that he has Frodo again, and Frodo rests and closes his eyes and lets Sam hold him. This lasts for a split second, but it is an ocean of time for Sam. And to any obnoxious comments about Sam and Frodo's relationship, what they have is complete and utter trust that lasts them the entire trilogy. That's what everybody needs when they can't one single star in a black sky. That's what can get us through. It is sad to see someone who doesn't have that-- but more often than not, when they think they don't have someone like that, they really just don't know that they do.

One person to simply hold them, one person to hold.  Even when you can't physically or emotionally feel them, they are always there. Oiale.

I will not say the Day is done/nor bid the Stars farewell.

Jesus Fanfiction

I was going through the library a while back and happened to be looking through the theology section, which is my favorite (possibly other than the music section). Anyway, I was going through shelves books on the New Testament, and happened to find one called "The Man Who Dared to be God," by Robert Norwood.  I opened it to the prologue:
"Once upon a time, an aging Greek doctor of medicine and surgery wrote a little book for a young college man. The doctor's name was Luke. He wrote his book for Theophilus. The book was about Jesus."

I was intrigued. I couldn't help but read some more and find about about this groundbreaking work of original theology and history. This book is addressed to Theophilus whom the author of the book says "is on every campus, is in every fraternity of North America," which startled me, because I assumed it was a children's book when I first looked through it. However, it apparently is written to every fraternity in North America.

Theophilus, sadly, didn't quite understand what Luke had to say about Jesus, because he sees "a pale, tortured body of a man on a cross, pictured by bits of colored glass above the chapel altar, and wonders of Jesus looked like that!" (yes, the exclamation mark is part of the sentence).  Well, Norwood certainly has something to say about this image- "Theophilis, Jesus did not look like that." He them proceeds to write some facts about Jesus that I didn't know:

"He was a young athlete from the hills of Galilee.  He was every inch a man, [and] Jesus is still a man....he comes down all the ways of the world. He is browned by the sun. He hair has its same red gold. His beard crisps and curls below his laughing, musical lips."

I was very surprised to learn that Jesus had red-gold hair, but it's later described in the book as a lion's mane of hair, which I have always associated with the color yellow, but as I have never spent much time around lions, I am not positive. When Jesus rides into Jerusalem, he is described as a "tall golden man in a white robe; his flowing hair, like a lion's mane, crowned with a snowy turban".  So, not only was Jesus tall and golden, but he also wore white turbans.

So obviously either Luke was inaccurate with the description of Jesus, or Theophilus has terrible interpretation skillz. Naturally, Jesus isn't the only man described as being quite the manly lion in the Bible...his father Joseph wasn't too bad, either.
"Joseph was a notable man. He was tall and sturdy. The hair of his head and of his full beard was a golden brown. His eyes were deepset and blue. Sometimes those eyes were veiled with the mist of dreams, sometimes they twinkled and shone with fun. He was a man of moods. His voice was deep. He had a habit of talking into his beard, that tumbled from an obstinate chin, halfway down his broad breast. His hands were square, but they were nervous and sensitive."

We can see from this passage where Jesus got his sensitivity towards other people's troubles, because from what we can see in the description of Joseph's hands, he is probably a sensitive man, as well.

Norwood goes on to describe the life of Jesus growing up with his best friend Simon the Rock. I flipped to a random page to find an iconic quote from Peter, and found this: "Jesus, I don't understand you." That pretty much remains constant throughout the whole book (the Bible, too).  Jesus performs miracles, tries to get his disciples to understand that he does, in fact, have to die, and we have a scene involving Judas breaking down and crying. "[He] embraced Jesus with the arms of love, saying, 'Though you were not the Messiah and only a man like me, I should love you to the death, my sweet friend, my beloved one!' As Judas wept in Jesus' arms, the Master caressed him."

I don't recall this scene from the Gospels-- I certainly don't think it's in Luke, in any case. It seems to be a sort of humanistic catharsis here, where Judas represents Theophilus, who is sad and confused as to why Jesus has to die.

The last scene the author leaves us with is Jesus dying on the cross, the people around him taunting him. But, "To these taunts, Jesus made no reply. He had not heard them; he was lost in memories of a night of stars and a cool wind and a mother's croodling song:
Little boy Jesus,
Tell what you are--
Moondrift and a white cloud
Caught on a star!"


I don't think I will quote the whole song. It's four verses, and that would take up a lot of space, and I've probably written far too much on this odd excuse for a book. Interestingly, there are questions and notes all over the margins, and every other paragraph is underlined or starred, so I guess some persevering soul dogged his/her way through this entire book for some paper that I hope she/he did ok on. I really do.

And for all of you college students out there, Theophilus is actually not a five year old, but a college student who is on YOUR campus! That is, if your campus has a fraternity. In any case, give him this book so that he can get a better idea of what Luke was really talking about.


(The Man Who Dared to be God , by Robert Norwood, Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1929.)

Percy Jackson

I had plans cancelled this weekend, and I was left on a Sunday evening in my dorm without much to do. The rest of my suite (as well as the majority of campus) was out on account of "fall break" (a three day weekend during which the smarter students will understand that this actually does not exempt them from any work due the following week; I myself have a test in two days). So, I ended up sitting in my room somewhat bored that I hadn't done much this weekend, but with no desire to go out.

The result was that I curled up in my bed, wore fuzzy socks, and rented an iTunes movie: Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. I have an avid interest in both film and mythology, so I figured this would be a fun and fairly mindless movie. I trusted my roommate enough to refrain from judging me after she got back, once she found out my film choice. I have never read the books, and I probably will never read the books unless I can very easily obtain a copy without spending money (someone loans their own copy to me, one miraculously appears in my dorm room).

Percy Jackson is a middle school student with what he thinks is ADD and dyslexia. But, we soon find out that the ADD is actually a godly urge to fight demons and his dyslexia is from the fact that English letters all look Greek to him (literally-- also, all Greek letters look English to him). There is one scene of him staring at the blackboard and all the letters turn into water. He can also hold his breath underwater for seven minutes. He has an abusive stepfather whose last name is "Ugliano," so we can tell he's probably pretty mean. Throughout the rest of the movie, he befriends a satyr, decides that he likes the daughter of Athena, and meets the son of Hermes. Percy, Athena Jr, and Satyr hang out together the whole movie (I didn't remember anybody's name other than Percy's and god/demigod names that already existed). 

Percy is not the smartest protagonist in history. It took him a good thirty minutes into the movie to realize that he was Poseidon's son (even after knowing that he was the son of a god for twenty mins), despite his being able to sit underwater for unusual periods of time and seeing Greek letters turn into water. Twenty minutes after this discovery, he is lying on the beach, mortally wounded (according to Athena Jr, who lightly cut him on the arm and face), and he doesn't think it would be a good idea to actually touch the water near him until he hears another voice telling him that that would be a good idea. However, he catches on pretty quickly after this, and develops cool water powers during the rest of the movie. I do wish he knew more about mythology, though, because everything has to be explained to him during the movie, like who Persephone is, what a centaur is, and why you shouldn't cut a hydra's head off. 

Athena Jr bothered me a bit more, though, because for someone who was supposed to be the descended from the goddess of wisdom, she wasn't very wise. While Percy fights the hydra, she is smart enough to point out that its heads will grow back doubly if one is cut off, but she forgets that the trio happens to be carrying Medusa's head with them (that they obtained earlier in the movie), so they could turn the hydra to stone at any point. While obtaining magic teleporting pearls that will take the protagonistic trio to the underworld on a rescue mission, she doesn't realize that they will need four magic teleporting pearls in order to leave, not just three, because of the added person.  The problem with these mistakes is that this is something that the viewer could quite easily point out on their own, without knowing anything about mythology. 

Anyway, the movie itself was fine. Not brilliant, but a good watch for a cozy and introverted Saturday night. I just hope Percy Jackson learns a bit more about mythology before his next adventure. It really is dangerous to cut off a hydra's head. Hadn't he seen Hercules?