Crossing the Rubicon: One Time Only!

I said in my latest post that I wouldn't flip through thousands of pages of N.T. Wright's works just to tell you where he said that history is a series of unrepeatable events.

But I did.  I couldn't resist.

And what he has to say is just really, really good... as always.

Missing the Forest for the Moral Checklist

In a previous post about The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, I got around to saying that industry, like slavery, has not served us well.

I don't think that Industry and Slavery are perfectly analogous.  Like I said before (in the aforementioned post), there are no perfect analogies in history.  By nature, history doesn't allow for it: history is a sequence of absolutely unique events.  History is not a science, and we cannot treat it like one.  As N.T. Wright pointed out - in one of his Christian Origins books; I'm not about to flip through thousands of pages to tell you right now, but it was probably The Resurrection of the Son of God - 'Caesar's Crossing of the Rubicon' happened once and for all; it is not the sort of phenomenon you can repeat and therefore test.  Science, an empirical art, requires exact duplication.  History forbids it.

I digress. So Industry and Slavery are unique in history and not perfectly analogous.  That doesn't mean we shouldn't be learning by comparing them, because all analogies must at some point break down, anyway - but not necessarily before they prove their worth.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: Thoughts

Reading Frederick Douglass's narrative was one of those things I've been putting off for years.  But I did it, I finally did it.  And boy was it worth it.  I had an inkling it would be, though, because what made me want to read it in the first place was a lecture I heard on Douglass's very brief story -- so, keep in mind, some of what I'm going to write today I've heard somewhere else, from my friend Rob, to be precise.

I visited Dutch L'Abri a couple of summers ago, and it was there that I heard Rob give his impressions of Douglass's very moving story.  In case you haven't heard of it, it's the story of an escaped slave, published before the Civil War in the year 1845.  But for a couple of reasons (and probably more than these, but this is just off the top of my head and having just finished the book), the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is no ordinary escaped-slave-tale.

Jaws, Jurassic Park, Avatar: One of these things is not like the other

I've been up to a lot lately.  Worked for a month as craft services on a film set with my then-fiance, and, two weeks later, made him my now-husband.  Woo-wee.

While honeymooning on Oak Island, NC (where, much to my disappointment, we saw no sharks THEY ARE TERRIFYING I LOVE THEM SO MUCH), we found ourselves sans internet.  Which was fine, really, because we both regret what we consider our overuse of the internet.  The house we were staying in had a fascinating DVD collection, and we definitely re-watched Jurassic Park.  It's still amazing, in case you were wondering.  I had recently re-watched Jaws, which is also still amazing.  I'd been interested in watching these again because, while working on the film set, the DP, a Spielberg-lover, had been raving about how Jaws still terrified him.  He was right.

Also while working on the film set, the director, a James Cameron-lover, had been talking about Avatar.  Which I hated.  So I thought I'd give that one another try, and my newlywed husband and I popped it in (if you know what I mean).  Well, guess what.  I had been right.  I still hated it.