home again, home again jiggidy-jig

So we have definitely turned home and are back to the swing of things at work and home.  It’s nice to be home, and we had a really great time in Vancouver.  I’m working on my papers for my Lewis class.  I have to come up with a topic for my major paper…not quite sure what I’ll do yet.

Regent was really good.  My class was fun, though it wasn’t totally what I expected.  But the college itself is fantastic.  In so many ways it reminded us of being in Eston.  The chapels at Regent were great; they were of the same spirit and fellowship that I can recall from our days at school. 

I’m also really excited about their programs, ‘cause they have a lot of variety and some really cool classes and concentrations.  We’re kind of thinking about the Interdisciplinary studies which is a part of the MCS program (Master of Christian Studies), but there is also a Christianity and the Arts concentration and a Spiritual Theology concentration which look really interesting.  When we met Eugene Peterson in Eston at Dean Pinter’s ordination he said that the Spiritual Theology program at Regent was one of the best in the world.  “The only other place you could take something like that would be in Singapore,” I remember him saying.

The Arts concentration is pretty cool, too.  They were saying that they’ve attracted a lot of arts students in the past few years.  Even though it’s still a part of the MCS degree, and not a MFA (Master of Fine Arts), students are able to explore the intersections of their faith with their art.  The program is really flexible too.  Instead of writing a thesis, a lot of students do a major project instead: like writing, performing and producing their own albums, or growing, preparing and hosting a culinary feast, to writing a fiction novel, to choreographing and dancing a flamenco routine (yes, you read that right)—and then reflecting on music, food, words and movement respectively. 

Yes, please, says I.

Anyway!  We’re still thinking through it all.  But it’s good.  I’m so glad we went and checked it out.  We met some really great people too, like Dan and Fran who we stayed with…and Luke and Mary-Grace who lived downstairs in the basement suite.  And Mike the heavy machinery construction worker who flies out to Regent from Nova Scotia to take classes whenever he can cause he “just loves it here”.  I knew it was an international grad school, but I really hadn’t realized what that meant.  There were Asians everywhere!  Or maybe that was just because we were in Vancouver…?  Yeah, probably.

So that’s the story for now.  Sarah is playing piano.  Thanks for sending us the chords for “There is a River”, Julie!  It’s so nice to hear her sing that song again.

Also.  Thank you Kathy and Beth for letting us borrow “Pushing Daisies”!  So good.  If I ever get to make my childhood Detective Agency days a reality, I’m totally becoming Emerson Cod.

Have a good one, and be well.

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Oh, Pushing Daisies, why did you have to end after two seasons?? Why!?!

vancouver bound!

Well we’re on our way out west to BC for our Regent class.  Hard to believe we’re actually making the trip.  Right now we’re at Sarah’s Aunt and Uncle’s place in Winfield, just north of Kelowna, and it smells like breakfast is just about ready.

We were counting yesterday how many alumni we’ve been able to visit so far: we had a few unexpected surprises and it’s been cool to catch up with people again.

After leaving Winnipeg and visiting Sarah’s parents and Josh, we met up with Sean Jennings and Tim Sample in Brandon.  Unfortunately, Laurie, Sean’s wife, was already on her way to Springside camp for the week (hopefully she’ll be home on our way back through)—but we had a good visit with Sean and Tim.  I hadn’t seen Sean since our wedding.  Crazy!  We went to Montana’s and talked Rob Bell and how Bible schools need to teach pastors more about organizational administration while we munched on burgers, chips and penne pasta (I ordered the latter!)

From Brandon we went to Moose Jaw for the night and stayed at Kathy Retzer’s house.  Sarah met Josh, her fiancée, and we had a few good laughs before Dave and Leanne Falk stopped in.

The next day we left Moose Jaw and headed for Brooks, AB to stay over with Leif and Cara.  On a whim, while we were in Swift Current, Sarah thought of calling up Gordon and Karla Hamilton, and Karla was home with Sophia!  So we went over to see the new little one and then drove out to where Gordon was working as job foreman on a construction project.  In typical FGBC fashion, there were a few more alumni working there as well.  Craig Knudsen and Dean Drinnan were up on the rough, and Dean even recognized us and gave us a wave.

Then it was on the road again to Brooks.  We got in for supper time and enjoyed chicken and veggie kebobs with Leif, Cara, Damien and Nikolai.  So good.  For future reference: always barbeque your chicken next to your pineapple—delish!  We hung out and played with the kids before turning in.  The next day would be our longest yet.

There were storms just past Calgary—you couldn’t even recognize the mountains through the clouds!  Thankfully no hail or strong winds.  The storm diminished once we made it into the mountains.  I just wanted to stop and watch the mountains (“watch”?  Yeah, that works…) but we’d be stopping every minute or so they were so awesome.  I love spotting little waterfalls cascading down from the snows up high.

After a lengthy drive and many adventures we found our way to Winfield! 

Now it’s time to relax…

 

Trip to BC Part 1 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

out of the silent planet

The second book I’m reading for my Regent class is Out of the Silent Planet.  I’ve read this one before, or, rather, it was read to a group of us in college when a small band of curious listeners would converge on Larry and Lorraine’s living room for Beth’s weekly literary reading.  The group, fittingly enough, was called Inklings.

So it’s been a good refresher to return to this first book in Lewis’ science fiction trilogy.  What strikes me the most thus far is Lewis’ ability to present fascinating ideas about reality through the mind of his main character, Dr. Elwin Ransom (a philologist whom he designed partially off of his friend, J.R.R. Tolkien!)  What Ransom experiences through his voyages to Malacandra (what we call Mars) and his experiences thereon are nothing short of fantastic.  Along the way Lewis shares some fascinating ideas.

Here’s an example of how Lewis reimagines Space itself.  Ransom is sailing along in his space-ship and discovers that one side of the ship is always night and the other is always at “noon.”  He finds himself continually drawn to the light, for while he bathes in the glow he feels himself being changed:

There, totally immersed in a bath of pure ethereal colour and of unrelenting though unwounding brightness, stretched his full length and with eyes half closed in the strange chariot that bore them, faintly quivering, through depth after depth of tranquillity far above the reach of night, he felt his body and mind daily rubbed and scoured and filled with new vitality.…

[He] became aware of another and more spiritual cause for his progressive lightening and exultation of heart.  A nightmare, long engendered in the modern mind…that follows in the wake of science, was falling off of him.  He had read of ‘Space’: at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds.  He had not known how much it affected him till now – no that the very name ‘Space’ seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam.  He could not call it ‘dead’; he felt life pouring into him from it every moment…  No: Space was the wrong name.  Older thinkers had been wiser when they named it simply the heavens… (Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 34-35).

Soon after the crew descends upon Malacandra, and Ransom has another revelation and his earlier thoughts come to conclusion:

They were falling out of heaven, into a world.  Nothing in all his adventures bit so deeply into Ransom’s mind as this.  He wondered how he could ever have thought of planets, even of the Earth, as islands of life and reality floating in a deadly void.  Now, with a certainty which never after deserted him, he saw the planets – the ‘earths’ he called them in his thought – as mere holes or gaps in the living heaven – excluded and rejected wastes of heavy matter and murky air, formed not by addition to, but by subtraction from, the surrounding brightness.

Things do not always happen as a man would expect.  The moment of his arrival in an unknown world found Ransom wholly absorbed in a philosophical speculation. (Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 45).

What is love is how Lewis’ imagination finds it way onto the page.  It’s like he has his characters moving along and then has this idea about space and finds this way to have Ransom think it through in a believable way and even giving us as readers an opportunity to share in his epiphany.  Also, it’s just such a neat thought… that space is more alive than the worlds are.

Have a good one!

Nik

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References:

C.S. Lewis.  Out of the Silent Planet.  London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005.