Book Review: Showings by Julian of Norwich

Showings by Julian of Norwich, translated with an introduction by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A., and James Walsh, S.J.

Julian of Norwich was an anchoress, a woman who lived in a small room attached to a church in Norwich, England, in the 1300s. Early in her life, she prayed for three graces. First was to have a vivid recollection of Christ's Passion. Second was to experience a severe bodily sickness at age 30, as if she were to die. Third was to have three wounds--"the wound of true contrition, the wound of loving compassion and the wound of longing with my will for God." [p. 179] In her thirtieth year, she did have a sickness that took her to the brink of death, after which she had sixteen visions or "showings" that altered and deepened her spiritual life. She wrote about them immediately after the experience. Twenty years later, she expanded that writing, giving the book richer spiritual detail that she developed with all that time to reflect upon them.

This book contains both the first text and the longer second text. The translators provide a substantial introduction. As is my way, I read the texts before the introduction in hopes of not having the words pre-interpreted for me. The introduction is mostly a rehash of the text, giving the historical context, showing the connections to biblical and patristic sources, and commenting on her theological insights. I found the introduction a little dry and probably won't re-read it in future readings.

As for Julian herself, her visions are a mixture of vivid experiences of Christ's bodily suffering and of God's relationship to His creatures. Several themes are prevalent. Her most famous quote (which comes up several times in the text) is "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." She has a profound faith and trust in divine providence. God has a plan for everyone and things (like her near-death illness) do work out according to His plan for salvation. She appreciates the sacrifice Jesus made for us and wants to unite her suffering more to His. His providence protects us from the greatest evil, sin, but not from suffering: "He did not say: You will not be troubled, you will not be belaboured, you will not be disquieted; but he said: You will not be overcome." [p. 315] The devil tempts us and our own nature can falter, but God's grace is enough to carry us through.

Another theme she develops is controversial. She discusses the motherhood of God, often referring to Christ as "our Mother." He gives us mercy and feeds us from His own flesh, both maternal attributes. She draws on the popular image of the pelican, a bird that will tear bits of its own flesh to feed its young. All good things come from God, so the goods of motherhood also come from Him. Interestingly, even when referring to Christ as "our Mother," Julian always uses the pronouns "He" or "Him." So she isn't confused about Jesus's gender. In addition to His masculine attributes, He also has what are considered feminine traits, like compassion and tenderness and healing. Just as a father and a mother provide for their children, so God provides for all humans. It's a subtle nuance that is easily lost in casual conversation or reflection.

I found the text interesting and challenging. I have read almost nothing about people's mystical experiences and this makes me want to read more. That's a good thing.

Recommended.

Macaroons!

In our ever expanding quest to try out a vaster variety of home-made desserts, we used some leftover egg whites to make macaroons. Macarooncraft involves two steps. First we made the cookies that are the "bread" part of these delightful dessert sandwiches. Second, we made the creamy filling that is the, uh, "filling" part.

Making the cookies involved a lot of work with the mixer. And testing to make sure the flavor was right.

Sampling from the mixer

Back to work

Scrapping down the sides

One last taste

After getting the dough just right, we colored half of it with red dye and put the two halves in two different pastry bags. I guess we could have swirled them together, but that might have been too much work. The bags made it easy to squirt little one inch blobs of dough to be baked in the oven. They came out perfect.

Great cookies

The cream filling was more fun to make. Since we had some leftover pineapple chunks from some other recipe, they were put into the mix. A teaspoon was just right to add a dollop of filling between each pair of cookies.

Some assembly required

Waiting for reunification

Placing with pinache

Finished product

The most fun was, of course, eating them.

Sampling

Approval

Book Review: My Hero Academia Vol. 4 by Kohei Horikoshi

My Hero Academia Volume 4 by Kohei Horikoshi

The sports/Olympics competition for the students continues with a team event called the Cavalry followed by a one-on-one event that is a classic bracket system starting with a sweet sixteen. This volume only makes it through the first round of battles. Lots of action in this issue!

Bits of character development are squeezed in during the fights, making it more than just a long series of conflicts. None of the battle are outstandingly clever, but the match up of various abilities makes it interesting. Quirkless hero Midoriya is slowly developing more control over his inherited quirk from the hero All Might. His hero's journey continues at a good pace.

Recommended.

TV Review: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018) written by Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade

When I was a kid in the early 1980s, I loved reading the "choose your own adventure" books. Every couple of pages the reader would have to make a choice for the characters, moving the plot in different directions and to alternate endings (though I do remember one book where you were lost in a cave and kept going back and forth between pages 84 and 125). I had fun exploring various choices and endings.

In imitation of those books, the Netflix movie Bandersnatch is a "choose your own adventure" story where viewers make choices for the main character. The early choices, like what he has for breakfast, are fairly inconsequential, more of a practice run at making choices and using the controller (I watched it on a iPad, so I could just touch the choice, I didn't need to use a TV remote). As the story moves along, more important decisions must be made. In the story, young programer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead) wants to create an adventure computer game called "Bandersnatch," based on a fantasy novel of the same name. The novel was a "choose your own adventure" work (though the book in the movie is much, much larger than any " choose your own adventure" book I have ever seen). The book was written by a brilliant but ultimately insane author. Adapting it for a home computer (the story is set in 1984, so a very early home computer) is more of a challenge for Stefan, especially as he deals with the anniversary of his mother's death and a looping narrative where he relives scenes from the past and the present.

The movie is very self-aware. It starts to deal with big issues like free will and responsibility. Stefan feels responsible for his mother's death (though what happened to her is much more complicated than such a simple interpretation). That more interesting narrative gets drowned out by the desire of the creators of this show to be cleverly self-referential. Stefan has a growing awareness that he's not in control of his life. He comes just short of staring at the camera and asking the viewer what we want him to do. I found that distracting and made the story more mechanical than engaging. In a typical movie, viewers identify with a main character (like Luke Skywalker or Indiana Jones) and while it seems intuitive that choosing actions for the main characters would strengthen that identification, the opposite happens in Bandersnatch. The viewer and the main character are deliberately divided, making this an exercise in narrative manipulation rather than an immersive experience. Stefan is a fictional character who really does not have free will precisely because he is a fictional character. The movie is self-aware to a fault.

Throughout the movie (and even at the end), there are opportunities to go back and try different branches, which I appreciated since I was curious about different elements of the story. With a book, it's easy to backtrack and try different routes. This movie was able to do that to some extent, though not in as satisfying a way as with a book. I felt that a few of the endings were lazy or poorly written. Often, these unsatisfactory endings immediately send the viewer back to an important decision point, presumably to make a different decision along the intended narrative track.

Overall, I was disappointed. The idea is great but the meta nature of the narrative worked against it rather than for it. Also, it definitely comes down against free will since the character really doesn't have it (the viewer seems to have control of almost everything) and the viewer is constantly shuttled back into a main narrative that the filmmakers seem to prefer (so the viewer doesn't really have control after all).

Not recommended.

This is currently (April 2019) streaming on Netflix.

Rams Head World Beer Club Update for February and March 2019

It's been a slow winter for my beer club drinking. We've had a bunch of other family activities and not enough celebrations to get out to Rams Head Tavern at Savage Mill. Here's what I sampled in the last two months:

#36 is Vienna Lager (5.2% alcohol by volume) from Devil's Backbone. What's a Vienna-style lager? The restaurant lists this beer under the Dark Amber section. It was satisfying and unlike most other lagers. It's not too sweet and not too bitter and yet still distinctive enough. It hasn't become a new favorite but it will definitely get preferential treatment.

Vienna Lager

#51 is Affligem Blonde (6.7% alcohol by volume) from Affligem Global. The brewery goes back to 1074 A.D. when a group of knights became monks and founded a monastery in the town of Affligem. This beer is easy to drink with a fine flavor. The Belgium influence is there--I did detect a nutty flavor. I enjoyed it a lot. Belgium is still my favorite source for beers.

Affligem Blonde

I went out twice for drinks, hopefully Spring will bring more tastings my way.

See my past adventure:
  Initial Post
  January 2019

Cute Kid Pix March 2019

More pictures that didn't make their own blog post...

We made a King Cake the weekend before Ash Wednesday, adding the trendy new ingredient coconuts. It was yummy.

Home-made King Cake

My prescholar's class celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday, including a Cat in the Hat craft!

The Cat in the Hat!

I went for a walk and saw a cool restaurant sign and two almost twin houses.

Rhyming makes cheating okay?!?

I love a front porch!

Our youngest child has taken to reading the newspaper, though apparently he doesn't want to proof of it.

Maybe it's just bigger than he is?

Hiding or napping?

Somehow a die wound up in a cup. I know this because the picture wound up on the camera. Otherwise I have no information to share.

Oh yeah, there's water in the cup too

My son went on his first BSA Scouting trip, i.e. without any family members along. He was happy and we parents were nervous. The main activity was exploring a cave in western Maryland. We have no photographic evidence other than he took camping equipment.

Packed up and ready to go

Waiting to depart

At the library, the Spring into Science program had "metamorphosis" as the word of the week. So we studied frogs and butterflies, since they go through some big changes as they go from egg to adult.

Making a book of the caterpillar/butterfly life cycle

Putting together a butterfly

Finished product

My eldest participated in the Howard County Elementary Solo and Ensemble Festival with his best friend playing a saxophone duet.

Book Review: Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis

Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis

Doctor Ransom is on a walking holiday in the English countryside when he gets kidnapped by Weston and Devine, two scientists working on a secret project. Ransom gets knocked out. When he wakes up, he's in a ship hurtling through space. The scientists are taking him to an undisclosed location where they will offer him up as a sacrifice to the locals. But they claim their intentions are noble, because they seek the gold on the planet and they plan for humanity to move to that planet when the Earth becomes uninhabitable. Humanity must exist forever, after all. When they get to the planet (called Malacandra by the locals), Ransom manages to escape. He's befriended by local horse-like intelligent creatures called hrossi. He learns the local language and some of the culture before he is summoned to Oyarsa, the leader of the planet, with some surprising results.

The book makes a fine adventure story, even if it is scientifically inaccurate. Since Lewis is the author, he clearly has more interest in allegorical intentions than scientific explanations. The planet is populated with three intelligent species who all get along just fine. There's no racism or speciesism, just a natural appreciation of the diverse talents of the diverse species. The planet has a certain utopian peacefulness. A fourth race of angelic-like creatures is introduced, though they are not natives to the planet--their home is the heavens, of which the planet is just one spot. They are not the ultimate authority or creators of this world, they acknowledge Maleldil as the Supreme Being (a fairly clear reference to the Judeo-Christian God). The book ends with a confrontation where Weston tries to justify his rapacious attitude toward Malacandra with some fine rhetoric. He doesn't really know the local language, so Ransom has to translate his fancy speech into plain words, a clever way that Lewis shows how venal and self-serving Weston's attitude is.

This book is the first of a series of three adventures known as the Space Trilogy. A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast has reviewed this book and will review the others (Perelandra and That Hideous Strength) in the coming months.

Highly recommended, as long as you can make allowances for the out-of-date science in this science fiction.