Ignorant Historian

I have a backlog of quotes…none of these are from yesterday’s Read-a-thon! Look for those over the next 2 weeks. I actually found the last 3 quotes in a stack of old papers.  They’re from before I officially started collecting quotes.

“What, you don’t think I want my wife to be happy?” – Taub
“Sure, as long as it makes you happy.” – Foreman, House episode “Black Hole”

“I’ve always believed that if you took one tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you’d be surprised by how well things can work out.” – Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, p. 138

“You’re in for it now, child. Your body will change, your thoughts will be jumbled, and any man will be able to do what he wants with you.” - about the onset of puberty, Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende, p. 45

“Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.” – Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, p. 148

“He missed his venerable master, who had marked him forever with a thirst for knowledge as persistent as the drunk’s thirst for alcohol or the ambitious man’s thirst for power.” – Daughter of Fortune b y Isabel Allende, p. 178

“From where I stood, all my female friends were skinnier, or brighter, more talented and definitely happier than me.” – Amen, Amen, Amen by Abby Sher, p. 196

“Neither European nor Chinese patients admitted that the other race had anything to teach them.” – Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende, p. 181

“The heart wants what it wants.” – Woody Allen

“And this I believe: that hte free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.” – East of Eden by John Steinbeck, p. 171-172

“Eventually, I sold the original to the Hard Rock Cafe, not only because I needed a little money, but because I was afraid that, if I would die, it would be put on the street, like all stuff is put on the street when people die, in a black plastic bag.  Now it was safe.” – AJ’s neighbor, Nancy quoted in The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs, p. 325

What a messy world we live in.  You don’t have to look long to find an example of a difficult situation or a problem with no easy answer.

I, on the other hand, am a very cut-and-dried person. (Okay, I always thought it was “cut-and-dry” but a quick search of the internet seems to indicate it’s “dried.” Anyone know?)

Not that I don’t have and make my own messes…that’s another blog post altogether. (And doing a search of my blog seems to indicate that that is not something I talk about much.  Not surprising…who wants to talk about their sin?)

(And if I don’t keep interrupting myself with parenthetical thoughts, you might be able to follow what I’m trying to say.)

What I mean by saying I’m a cut-and-dried person is that I like to see the world in black and white.  Something’s right, or it’s not.

While I DO believe that most things are right or wrong in theory, in the field, things are muddier.

Just like all those physics problems that I’d do back in my college days.  They never were true to life, because they didn’t factor in things like wind resistance.  Game time decisions are hard to make, even after you’ve practiced play after play. (Ha! I used a physics metaphor and a sports metaphor back to back…and I’m a girl!)

I sometimes get myself in trouble when I rigidly apply my in-theory principles to the real world.  I am not in want of opinions.  Just ask, and I’ll tell you.  But I’m forgetting that real-life situations are always messier.  This isn’t physics class–we must account for things like emotions and motives, both of which are known to be messy.

So, while there may be one clear answer or solution, it might not be the first one that pops to my little head.  I’m still learning that there’s a difference between knowledge and wisdom…the second of which I still sorely lack.

Photo by Andy Field

As a Protestant, Evangelical believer, I’ve been taught all my life (and rightly so) that the Bible is the basis of truth we can know.

Yet, it seems like some are too quick to call something biblical if it includes a verse or two.

Remember, even Satan quoted scripture:

“Then the devil took [Jesus] into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command His angels concerning you’; and ‘on their hands they will bear you up, so that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’ ” – Matthew 4:5-6

That is why we must take everything we hear and everything we read and compare it to the Scriptures…which means we must know them.

Photo by Accent on Eclectic

One of the great things I love about blogging is being able to share with you, world, all the great insightful things I’m learning here at seminary. That’s why I’m proud to share with you a thought-provoking discussion I had with 3 other students during break time in our philosophy class.

What prompted this discussion was Easter candy (a holiday we do up big ‘roun’ here), particularly those malted milk ball eggs. Once they were mentioned, someone asked (it might have been me):

What exactly is malt?

Ooh, good question. In fact, this is such a good question that it sparked at least 5 minutes of debate on what it could be. Since we knew that you could have malt vinegar, malted milkshakes, and malted beer, we thought it might be something you do to a liquid, like fermentation.

The lady in front of us, who is from South Africa, had to chime in, just like you imagine would happen in a coffee house where intelligent discussions are going on. She said that in South Africa, malt is something you give a child to increase their appetite. She described it as a cross between honey, syrup, and cod liver oil. Yum.

Not satisfied that we’ve figured out how all these things could be “malt,” I came home, sat down, and put to use the years of research skills that have been honed by my Bachelor of Arts in history and my soon to be Masters of Divinity.

After painstaking research, I found that the information guru Dr. Wikipedia had something to say about our quandary. According to him, “Malt is a process applied to cereal grains, in which the grains are made to germinate and then quickly dried before the plant develops.” Malted milk, which is used in milkshakes and candy, is this type of malt mixed with flour and milk, and then evaporated.

So, yes it is a process, but it is a process done to grain, not liquid. It also makes it seem much less gross than I imagined it was based on what I’ve learned about gelatin and carrageenan (don’t click if you don’t want to know…I will say that I eat ice cream anyway).

There you go. Now you know something that I learned in seminary. And you didn’t have to pay a cent in tuition.