Reality: What a Concept!

Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961)

Pulitzer Prize 1952

Nobel Prize for Literature 1954 

"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day."

Pilgrim's Progress

Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan is an allegory full of Christian truths - everyone who calls themselves a Christian should read it. But it's an important literary classic as well and any student of English literature should be familiar with it. For example, I recall in a college English Lit. class when we were reading Vanity Fair, the teacher didn't even mention where the title came from (PP) and how the meaning of the title is relevant to the story.

There are various versions out there - the best ones include Bunyan's footnotes with scripture references. I would also recommend that modern readers select an edition in Modern English if they find that the "Old King James" English bogs them down. 

Bunyan's goal was to present Christian doctrine and truths in a way that was entertaining and memorable. This is the reason for the short sermons that are included in the dialogue - a common method of instruction. Also he gives the characters such obvious names so that his meaning will be easily understood by the reader. While someone who is not a Christian or is unfamiliar with the Bible may enjoy and profit from reading this, it definitely holds more meaning and instruction for the Christian reader.

Charles Spurgeon said that if Bunyan were to be poked, he would bleed scripture - he knew it so well! This comes through in Pilgrim's Progress as he incorporates so many concepts and terms from the Bible throughout the story.

Old Times Good Times

The Second Coming

The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Wind Up

Generation X

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