Lions

Lately we've been reading about lions and wardrobes and witches. It has been great. Most recently, we finished The Silver Chair. Here are some parts of the story I liked best.

Jill meets Aslan in his land, a high mountain overlooking Narnia. Aslan tasks Jill with finding the lost prince and tells her four signs she will use to accomplish the task. After giving her the signs and making her repeat them until she had them memorized he says:

"Stand still. In a moment I will blow. But first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to your clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as your drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters." (p.560)

Taking Aslan as a figure of Jesus Christ, his words have direct meaning for us. We have distinct spiritual experiences. At those times we can see clearly and feel as though we're on mountains looking down on common life. And we may be told to do something in the future: to know the "signs" or scriptures by heart; to remind ourselves of the time we spent on the mountain. And it's true! Common life happens and the signs or scriptures seem not to fit. But they do and we should follow them.

Near the climax of Jill's and Eustace's adventure, they must decide whether or not to untie a dangerous person from the silver chair. Their reason for untying him: one of the signs Aslan gave Jill indicates that they should. Their reason for not untying him: they think he will kill them if they do.

"Do you mean you think everything will come right if we do untie him?" said Scrubb.

"I don't know about that," said Puddleglum. "You see, Aslan didn't tell Pole what would happen. He only told her what to do. That fellow will be the death of us once he's up, I shouldn't wonder. But that doesn't let us off following the sign."

That's faith! Either The Lion is right or He is wrong. If He is right, it doesn't matter what happens in the interim from following what He has commanded.

Life is Grand

Christy is visiting her sister this week. But it's okay. I'm not one bit sad. Life is pretty much the same.

I sleep.

I shave.

I get food out of the fridge.

I scamper off to work.

I drive to work.

I work.

I leave work.

I drive home.

I eat delicious dinners.

And even delicious desserts.

Don't even worry about me. I'm totally fine.

Oh, things

I was looking at Salt Lake's weather today and was presented with this:

The popup asks, "Would you like to save this location?"

YES! Yes, I'd like to save Salt Lake City! Is it going to be torn down? What do you need from me in order to save it? I'd donate funds to keep it around! Please, everyone, I plead with you to go to weather.com and vote to save Salt Lake City!

Also, I'm getting married this weekend.

Boneless, skinless, chicken breast

I'm having Elevensees right now: leftover chicken pot pie from Tuesday night. I'm about half-way through my piece. It's late. It's dark. And I just thought, whilst staring admiringly at my pie, "Wow. I made this." As I told my dinner group, this is the first time I've made pie crust unsupervised. And it turned out quite well. The crust has mellowed a bit during it's stay in the fridge. In its prime, it was crisp and flakey.

My exact position right now is rather remarkable. I'm seated on a wooden chair, in my warm house, typing on a portable computer under the light of both incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. Most of the pie resides inside me, now -- only a rind of crust remains. Yum. All gone. That pie was made of flour, water, shortening, peas, carrots, lima beans, green beans, boneless, skinless chicken, salt, pepper, oil, cream of potato soup and cream of cow. The water came through pipes right into my kitchen. The vegetables came frozen, in a plastic bag. I've never grown lima beans... and without instruction would not be able to grow them. Yet I can eat them. I've also never grown wheat or green beans, nor have I ever harvested salt or pepper. I'm not sure how I would go about harvesting salt. I imagine a shovel would help. Cream of potato soup comes from cans -- aluminum cans (They're no longer tin, right? Who cares anyway?). I wonder how many hours I'd need devote for the cream of cow I used...

But back to meatier matters. Boneless, skinless, chicken breast! Of all God's children, how lucky am I? I've never raised a chicken. I've never killed or plucked a chicken. I've never skinned a chicken, or removed it from its bones. And yet I eat boneless, skinless, chicken breast? In colloquial parlance, I can claim that the pie was "made from scratch." But really, I have no clue how to make that pie from scratch. Imagine the hours I'd need to dedicate just to get one part of the pie. Pick any part! Oil? Flour? Pepper? Aluminum? The oven?

I live like a king. And so, likely, do you.

Here's my castle:

It's that time again

I feel like this again.

I love the Fall after a wonderful summer. Yes, I capitalized one season's name and not the other. Autumn feels like a slow ending to a good movie. Things are wrapping up; preparing to die. Somehow, though, there's a sort of freshness in the decay.

Sleeping Beauty

My niece came over to Grandma's yesterday with a Disney princess sand pail. I asked her the names of all the princesses on the pail, which she knew. She even knew who Sleeping Beauty was. I don't think I could pick Sleeping Beauty out in a lineup.

So I asked Meleah to tell me the story of Sleeping Beauty. She related the story in its entirety: "Once upon a time, there was girl named Sleeping Beauty. She liked to sleep a lot. The End."

From bash?

This one, too.

From bash?

This post brought to you by Google's command line tool

A recent purchase

Guess what I bought. Can you guess? Here's a hint:

Do you know what it is? Here's another hint:

Can you tell yet? No? Here's another hint:

A lawn mower! It's an old-school reel lawn mower -- the kind you push. I really like the exercise I get from pushing it. I also like how quickly it starts and stops. It gets approximately infinite miles per gallon (beat that, Prius!). And it's quiet enough that I can mow in the wee hours of the morning. (The wee hours of the morning are when the Scottish awake) I don't know how long I'll keep the mower, though. It leaves a lot of grass behind (even with a bag attached) and doesn't always cut evenly. I'll give it a few more chances.

Along with purchasing a lawn mower, I also bought a house. The house gets zero miles per gallon and doesn't cut grass nearly as well as the mower. Despite those defects, though, I think I'll keep it for a while.

A few things I like about my house:

1. There's a sink in the garage! I repeat: a sink in the garage!

2. I have a drawer to keep all my scissors in:

The scissors drawer is right next to the kitchen towel. "But Matt," you say, "how would I know where your kitchen towel is?" Good question. Perhaps this is a satisfactory answer:

3. The shower head is actually a shower head and not a shower sternum or a shower belly button:

4. My room is not purple:

I specifically like the non-purpleness of my room because it used to be purple -- this purple:

5. This room:

6. And, of course, the beautiful yard full of plants whose names I don't yet know:

You should come over and see it sometime -- I'll have a housewarming party soon.

My friend, Ted.

I like this -- you should watch it:



For those of you who didn't watch it, stop reading this post and watch it.

I've been thinking a little about gun control lately (largely because of Miri's post; it wasn't actually the point of her post, but I managed to completely derail it by my comment -- sorry, Miri). I don't think I actually care so much about gun control as I do about the legislation about gun control. I don't own any guns currently. I might later. Shotgun shooting is really, really fun. But if I never own a gun, I'll be okay. However, some people really want guns, and I'm fine with them owning and using them responsibly (<--- deliberately vague term).

These are guns painted like toys:


Hello, Kitty. May I borrow your knife?

Though I don't particularly care about guns, I do care about excessive regulation and legislation. Like Mr. Howard says, "Life is too complex for a software program. All these choices involve value judgments, and social norms, not objective facts." Laws that attempt to cover every eventuality never will... but in the process of trying, they will restrict freedom rather than secure it. Says Mr. Howard: “we've been trained to squint into this legal microscope, hoping that we can judge any dispute against the standard of a perfect society, where everyone will agree what's fair, and where accidents will be extinct, risk will be no more. Of course this is Utopia, it's a formula for paralysis, not freedom.”

I listened to this speech while I was driving to St. George over the weekend. As I was driving, I started to think about the laws for driving. Cars pass me. I pass cars. Cars speed past my car within a several feet -- but it doesn't worry me. And what prevents me from worrying? Paint. Yellow paint and white paint. Yes, sometimes cars cross the paint when they shouldn't. Accidents happen. (I'll use “accident” and “crash” interchangeably, though they aren't the same -- most things people call accidents are avoidable crashes; but that's a tangent) We could try to prevent all accidents by putting cars on rails and making them all go the same speed. That would be insanely expensive and impractical... and idiotic. And, even if cars lived on rails, we would still have malfunctions, and bad weather and accidents.

How beautiful is paint! It's flexible and cheap and works well. In the cases where a human needs to use their judgment and break outside of the boundaries to avoid an accident, he can.

Let people have agency. Let some use it poorly. Let most use it wisely.

And lest you think I'm advocating anarchy or getting rid of all law, I'm not. I am advocating simple paint solutions. Draw some general lines and let people fill in the spaces. It is not a government's job to eliminate all pain or possibilities for pain.

This one about octopus and dragonflies was interesting. So was this one about simplifying legal jargon; and it's short.


...now I'm hoping that I don't get in a car accident tomorrow... or accidentally get shot.