Books for Christmas

These are the two books I received for Christmas. I'm enjoying them very much. They may seem contradictory to each other but so what. They are both fun to read and both represent different kinds of creativity and insight. They are both "right" somehow.




Looking for God Knows What by Donald Miller - Stresses the importance of relationship in understanding who God is and What God wants.





James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls by Robert Eisenman - Uses clues from ancient non-canonical documents as well as canonical as a detective to discern the previously hidden role of James in the first century.

Dostoevsky Statue in Wiesbaden Aug 29, 1999

Kiril, Vitaly, and Nikolai

Playhouse in Wiesbaden


Me next to statue of Dostoevsky in this park in Wiesbaden where Dostoevsky came to gamble. I took a picture of my Russian friends next to the statue. But since I can't find it, that photo must have been taken with their camera.

That day, it was a Sunday, we started out just south of Bonn in the town of Bad Honnef. Because they wanted to see every possible thing, we stopped many places along the way to the Frankfurt airport, including this park in Wiesbaden. We had been to a Gravity conference. Vitaly is the most well travelled person I've ever known. He's a well known gravity physicist. I had met Kiril in London about 9 months earlier. It was the first time out of Russia for Nikolai. They were happy to find this statue and they were clearly and justifiably proud.

Good, Evil, Satan, and God

Have been trying to keep up with all that Richard Beck has written on his blog about the theodicy of Satan. Satan and the problem of evil are intimately tied together. I'd like to add that some of the gnostics moved in other directions to handle the problem of evil. In Philip, verse 9 it says:

"The light with the darkness, life with death, the right with the left are brothers one to another. It is not possible for them to be separated from one another."

This seems to indicate that one can't have the good without a bad. Isn't it true that to a certain extent we cannot experience pleasure without having a knowledge of what pain is? Perhaps Philip may be a wild eyed gnostic text but consider also Isa 45:7

"I form the light and create darkness,I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things."

And Lamentations 3:38 "Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?

But our story has a happy ending, for it also says just a few verses earlier (and this squares with Richard's earlier posts about the apocatastasis, the eventual restoration of all things and salvation for all):

31 For men are not cast off
by the Lord forever.

32 Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.

Chicken Casserole

1 cup sour cream
1 jar dried beef (also known as "chipped beef". Its paper thin, about 2" diameter.)
2 cans of cream of mushroom soup
bacon
garlic powder
4 whole boned chicken breasts. (Sometimes we halve the breasts)

Line dish with beef. Wrap chicken breasts with bacon. ( Or you might use 1/2 piece bacon per 1/2 chicken breast as desired.) Mix well the soup and sour cream in a separate container and pour over the chicken. Season with garlic powder. Sometimes I save a few pieces of the thin beef and place on top. Cover and cook 3 hours at 275 F. Take cover off near the end to brown. I plan to take a picture the next time we make it.

To serve, place chicken breast on top of a bed of rice then spoon the mushroom/sour cream sauce over it. I like to season with a copius amount of pepper. It is already salty enough.

I think this has replaced turkey as our Thanksgiving meal.

We Are All Search Engines

Via reading Chris Gonzalez blog I discovered his link to Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. An interesting blog it is. She mentions in an Oct 16 entry a U. Minn. campaign that suggests that We Are All Search Engines. What a thought!

That's me, I am a search engine.

Loving

You gotta check out this entry on Loving over at Steve Bogner's Catholicism, Holiness and Spirituality.

So much is written about love… probably because it is so much easier to write about it than to actually do it. I’m not discounting the words that are written about love; but it’s a bit disheartening to see how prevalent the lack of love is in so many places these days.

Let’s build a wall to keep them out of our yard, our subdivision, ........ continues here.

I recently discovered his blog and now link to it.

Science, Faith and Society by Polanyi

In his 1963 preface to his 1946 book Science, Faith and Society, Michael Polanyi says many interesting things.

The creative life of such a community rests on a belief in the ever continuing possibility of revealing still hidden truths. In Science, Faith and Society, I interpreted this as a belief in a spiritual reality, which, being real, will bear surprising fruit indefinitely. To-day I should prefer to call it a belief in the reality of emergent meaning and truth.

He died in the 70's. Wow, wouldn't he have loved to see where science and technology are now.

Evidently he is reponsible in part for this idea of "emergence", something that I presently find fascinating, meaningful, and worthy of deeper investigation.

Fall colors at their peak

I had just pulled out of my driveway and facing the direction to go to work I snapped this picture. Just had a little sunshine that Nov. 1 Wednesday morning. The colors here and on the 20 minute drive to work were wonderful.

Contemplating the Genocide Museum of Vilnius and Moral Luck

Here I am, a few weeks ago, in one of the cells in a facility that once housed prisoners of the Soviet regime. If I had been born and raised in Vilnius, what would my life had been like? This facility was in operation until I was about forty years old. So it is not so farfetched for me to contemplate. What kind of prisoner would I have been? What kind of guard or administrator would I have been? It would have been a difficult job. The guards were punished if they were too easy and if they were too severe. I am thankful I was never in such a situation.

Richard Beck over at Experimental Theology has a great post that backs up his reasoning behind espousing Universalism. Why I am a Universalist Part 4: Moral Luck. He refers to one of my earlier comments there.

Museum of Genocide Victims

This is a basement cell in the Museum of Genocide Victims. It is where suspected opponents of the Soviet regime were taken for incarceration followed by torture and perhaps execution. The Lithuanians turned this building into a museum almost immediately after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Also along the hallway below, we saw a torture room where a prisoner had a dry spot the size of a frizbee to stand on surrounded by frozen water. They were left there for hours. Some would give in and lay down on the ice. Upstairs was the execution room. Grim.

Best Restaurant Ad in Vilnius

I was tempted to lunch here but it was a little early.

The Gaon of Vilna Museum

I tried to visit, but, alas, the museum was closed. The Gaon of Vilna was a famous rabbi of the 18th century who lived his life in Vilnius.


According to this site, some credit him with deriving "Cramer's Rule" for matrices. It says this is a matter of controversy.

Here is the official museum site, I think

http://www.jmuseum.lt/index.asp

Potato Pancakes from Double Coffee

This was scrumptious. They called them potato pancakes but they were what we would call hash browns. They were greasy but great. What really made the dish was the garlic and capers wrapped in herring that you see on the top. When the lemon is squeezed on the topping it makes a wonderful dish. That is sour cream underneath the sprig of parsley to the left. You will note the wording on the plate is, for our convenience, in English. This was in the old town and the restaurant was Double Coffee.

Lunch at the Cili Keimas Restaurant Oct 1

Raspberry Pie

Beetroot Soup. It was great and I came home with the recipe.

Carp, potatoes, carrots ... Umm Good

The name of the restaurant began with a Z and was in the Old City.