Reading List for the Summer

Here's my reading list for the summer, in its general order. The three main categories are my theological reading list, as it were.

Finished Projects:
Love and Responsibility

Current Projects:
The Lamb's Supper
The Book of Romans

Later Projects:
Paul on Marriage and Celibacy
Secrets in the Dark
The Christian Commitment

Novels (Concurrent Reading)
The Man Who Was Thursday
Gilead
The Road

Descriptions (Read Items):
Love and Responsibility by Karol Wojtila, A.K.A. Pope John Paul II before he was JPII. I just finished this today and it was pretty much awesome. I didn't buy into every single thing that was said, but there may also be links in the argument that are made elsewhere, and as a framework for thought/discrenment (which is the reason I picked it up in the first place, broadly speaking) I found it quite useful.

Descriptions (Unread Ones):
The Lamb's Supper by Scott Hahn. Hahn is a Catholic theologian who writes a lot of popular theology and apparently here he's going to attempt a connection between the Mass and the Book of Revelation. This one should be interesting.
Paul on Marriage and Celibacy by Dr. Will Deming. Deming is actually on the theology faculty at University of Portland, the chair as of this year. I'm looking forward to reading his book.
Secrets in the Dark by Frederich Buechner. It's a book of sermons that I received and started a couple of summers ago, but then I stopped for whatever reason.
The Christian Commitment by Karl Rahner, S.J. I have no idea exactly what this is about, except that it probably involves the Christian commitment. But hopefully it's good!
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. This would be Gilbert's suspense-ish novel about an ideal everyman who infiltrates a ring of anarchy.
Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, which is a portrait of a small-town preacher, his father, and his father, and the first guy's son. It's also an immensely awesome look at life in general. This is actually a re-read for me.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which is apparently a kind of science fiction or speculative fiction.

If anyone's got anything theological or otherwise to add, please post and let me know.

Testing 1 2 3...

A Thought

Whenever a human being, particularly a human being who professes belief in God, realizes that the world is not the way it ought to be, they ought to do three things:

(1) Examine whether in this aspect the world is as it should be or not, that is, attempt to discern how this aspect of the world would be seen by the Divine.

Then, granted (1), they should

(2) Pray that this aspect of the way things are, insofar as it originates in themselves, would be cleansed and purged from their inner life.
(3) Work to change the world by their own actions--in thoughts, words, what they do and what they do not do.

I had a realization recently that there was in fact something about the world that I absolutely hated, and that I had an opportunity to help change it by doing it differently. So I did. Granted that I didn't go in quite the order I recommend, I also realized how I'd failed to pray for this change in myself as well as in the world.

I'm not going to say what it is. But if anyone has thoughts on this as an abstract ideal, let me know.

Braid and Portal Are Freaking Amazing

This is a beautiful game. Screwed with me on many levels, but it was heavily enjoyable. I loved its world and its characters...it was also kind of sad. But it was good, and there's an actual lesson to be learned.



This game is also quite pretty. I'm hesitant to call it 'beautiful,' and I'm also hesitant to identify much of a real 'lesson,' or message, but it's a similarly brilliant puzzler-disguised-as-something-else kind of game.

FINALS COUNTDOWN

Real Analysis in Class and Out-of-Class: Done. The out-of-class finished about halfway, and I should have at least most of the credit for every problem on the in-class. So this final shouldn't be too terrible.

Four left to go. They're all tomorrow.

Worst thing about all of this: Because of my own stupidity I'm guaranteed almost no sleep tonight. I only got about half an hour of sleep last night and got about three this afternoon. So I'm hoping for basically a little bit more sleep tonight, but there's also:

The good news: which is that after the Crypto Final and whatever food I ought to be eating...basically after a nice late 10 PM Tuesday prayer, I get to settle down and sleep for N hours, where N is the sum total of all the blood and sweat and tears of my procrastination and stupidity and awkwardness and growing in the Love of God this semester... I know Pat wouldn't object to me skipping his prayer under the circumstances, but I can always just nap between dinner and prayer and not worry about it...

Marriage Final Essays due: Done.

Now there's three left to go and they're all today. Logic won't suck but the other two will!

Logic In-Class Final Exam: 1:30 PM. I don't anticipate it taking me more than an hour and 15, so depending on how much time I need for the Crypto final I might ask Dr. Santana if showing up late is okay.

Now there's me, Crypto and Complex Variables.

Cryptography Final Take-Home Exam: 4:00 PM, so basically I get to hand it to Dr. Wootton at the start of my...

Complex Variables Final Exam: 4:10 PM. Basically I carve out about 30-60 minutes for review of this tomorrow sometime.

Now there's just me and a pile of somewhat regrettable classroom performances, but less regrettable out-of-classroom ones!

I love God. It might sound like a "well, duh," statement, but I don't exactly like God at the moment, entirely...but it's in a loving way.

The way things have gone this semester is yet another pointer to a Mystery that some logicians will never understand, because they will, in the words of Chesterton, be "seek[ing] to get the heavens into [their] head[s]."