Category Archives: Thoughts

The Music in the Chaos

Posted in Religious Musings, Thoughts by

Supposing you hear a cry or help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires – one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys. – C.S. Lewis; Mere Christianity (pg10)

Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the ‘right’ notes and the ‘wrong’ ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.– C.S. Lewis; Mere Christianity (pg11)

I recall reading Mere Christianity a few years ago. I was in a cabin in a remote area, a friend and I were on a retreat of sorts. I was sitting in the loft area, reading these passages and then it hit me. God is the grand composer. Sweet music doesn’t happen randomly, an intelligent being puts notes on staves in such a way that they sound melodious when played together. I thought of my favourite classical pieces and the complex way the musical notes intertwine, dancing around each other, complimenting one another. These things don’t just happen, thought and time goes into each piece.

I thought of earth the trees growing in the backyard, the deer that walk across the lawns, even the squirrels that ran up and down the trees looking for food. The complexity of each animal, the way trees grow, the water cycle and the fluffy clouds, I thought of these things, could they really have all happened by chance?

I thought about myself. My body, the blood the runs through my veins, the complexity of my brain and I wondered, how could this have all happened by chance?

I thought of how we are all connected as though derived from a similar place and I wondered, is it not possible that an intelligent being saw something that worked and then reworked it, making it better and better at each iteration?

Then, I thought of the notes. The music. The melody in the chaos of black and white. Left alone, things decay, spoil, die, but intelligence begat order and life.

On Zombies and Unicorns

Posted in Bookish, Thoughts by

I’m quite amazed that a lot of search terms that come to my blog contains the words “zombie” and “unicorn”. So, dear searcher, I will do you a favour and help you out with your zombie/unicorn search.

That Starbucks/Barnes and Noble zombie plush that you want? Boom! I found these at a Starbucks inside of a Barnes and Noble.

For that Zombie Identification (Chart), you can thank Think Geek for this lovely little number. If I must have a zombie after me, I’d much prefer the crawler, for all I know, I might want to dance with the Thriller – and that’s how the Thriller gets you … entice you with dance.

If you are looking for Zombie vs. Unicorn, then you’re in look! As a bookish person I know just what you are looking for – Justine Larbalestier and Holly Black’s anthology of the same name. Josh Cochran did the cover for this fun book.

And finally, the person who wanted pictures of “pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows”, well, I think what you really wanted is this video:

And the Gold Medal Goes To …

Posted in Media, The Observer, The Telly by

Some of the memorable highlights of the opening ceremony!

The theatrics in the beginning… I especially loved the Maypole and the different scenes in the grass – picnics, rugby … and the transformation. It’s a shame that NBC didn’t do a good job showing the different scenes depicted in this display of historical Britain before the introduction of the industrial revolution. I mean, real sheep on the set? What’s not to love?

The forging of the rings. Definitely a fan of this! Flying rings of fire gets the gold for sure.

The world’s greatest nanny – Mary Poppins – coming to save the day! This tip of the hat to the NHS and to famous British children’s literature, a segment that started with J.K. Rowling reading from Peter Pan was fun to watch. Especially identifying the different villains. Of course, it’s not without it’s controversy as some  – who will not be named – seemed to believe that  it was a blatant political move. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, all I saw was some very lucky kids having a lot of fun at the Olympic opening and some hard working doctors and nurses honored for their work and Mary Poppins (my favourite nanny), a symbol of imagination. Also, some really awesome umbrellas that I kinda want.

The Queen and James Bond and some cute doggies. Oh that Queen, shocking the world with her sense of humour.

Mister Bean and Chariots of Fire. In true Mr. Bean style, this segment had me laughing at his hilarious facial expression and running scene.

The way the torch was lit!

What a way to light the torch! Why isn’t there more talk of the symbolism behind this? One torch lit by 200 and some tiny torches, burning brightly for the remainder of the games!

Of course, there were some huh moments, like the cover of Come Together, was it just me, or did they sound a little low energy? And, Hey Jude, I mean,  I love The Beatles and great for Paul McCartney for singing at the ceremony, but, I am sure there were many more songs that he could have sung than Hey Jude. And please don’t say it’s for the sing-along value, a lot of people in the world know many more songs and if they wanted people to sing along they just had to put the words up somewhere. I mean .. they have the entire stadium lit, it’s not impossible!

Overall it was enjoyable. Different. Unique. A great display of history. And of course, it was also fun to watch it while having a running commentary on Facebook with a few friends. My status because Olympic size, totaling 1006 comments. Not bad for seven or so people.

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Images from Reuters

Oh look, 30 years went by in a flash!

Posted in Thoughts by

The 80s, that’s when I was born, thirty years ago. This is the beginning of my thirty-first year on the earth. I am much wiser for it, and I am about to give you unwanted advice because being thirty means I can tell you what to do.

Or not. Due to my overnight wisdom I realize that no matter how old I get I will never know everything. It didn’t take me thirty years to figure that out, I knew it all along, it just took me thirty years to admit it. So, what should I post about for my thirtieth year? Well, I thought about doing one of those “30 things in 30 years”  or, “30 things I did in my 30th year” thing, but to be quite honest, 30 is a big number, and I don’t really want to come up with 30 things and, since we’re being honest, let’s just admit that you probably won’t have read pass the 7th thing if you’ve even gotten this far. And if you have … why are you still here? There’s no prize at the end of this, no secret thing! I promise you this!

I feel as though, many people get scared of getting older, it’s one step closer to death, but that doesn’t frighten me, for that matter, I welcome it with open arms … now this has taked a morbid turn and you’re all planning on giving me the number to your favourite psychiatrist; you know, the one you have on speed dial.

I’m the Doctor

Ok, enough of that … time to get serious.

I couldn’t resist!

A few days ago I received a text from a friend, she told me that thirty isn’t the end of the world and I smiled. I said I was fine, but it made me think of the many people who turn thirty and feel … well … odd. I won’t say that it’s no big deal, to many it IS a big deal and that’s fine, we all experience life differently. There are all these slogans out there to keep you from rolling up into a fetal position and sobbing, my favourite is, “thirty is the new twenty”. To be honest, I use that phrase sometimes, but let me be clear, I use it in a sort of tongue-in-cheek way. I don’t want to repeat my twenties. Sure, we had some fun times, lots of jokes and lots of adventure, but at the end of the day those days are over and thirty feels like a brand new chapter, a brand new page, a brand new day. And, if in all my life, my 20s were my best year, then what a sad life I’ve lived! I don’t want to ever stop and say that my life will be “all downhill from here”. I want the graph of my life to be y=x! I want my line of experiences to keep growing and life to keep me interested.

So, I’m one of those people who is looking forward to finishing my thirtieth year on earth, because I like the newness of the decade that is before me. Sure, my body is reaching is peak and I’m slowing down and I’m closer to the years where things stop working like they use to, and I have to watch my diet, but hey, that’s part of the adventure right?

Give me a second, I’m going to go show some admiration to my eyes, legs, internal organs, and everything else …

I’ve still got legs!

Ok, I’m back.

I’ve had thirty years of life under my belt, life is a gift, may I use it to its fullest!

Laus Deo…

[PS – if you’ve made it this far, I’d like to reveal a project that I’m attempting this year. Of course, now that I’m revealing it, I’ll probably neglect it. I’m writing … or trying to … I will need your criticism, as long as it’s constructive. Just a note, things like “u suk!” is not constructive. Take a look! Not much is up, but, comment away =) Let the dialogue begin, and if dialogue continues it will also encourage me to write more: Visit Ella Wrytes!]

“Excuse me!”

Posted in The Observer, Thoughts by

I travel to work on the Long Island Rail Road and I tend to notice interesting bits of behaviour. One behaviour in particular is the inability of passengers to say, “Excuse me” when they want to exit a row.

The typical train has 5 seats in a row – three on one side of the aisle and two on the other  – there isn’t enough space to pass the person sitting in the aisle seat without first asking them to move.

So, how do they indicate that they need to exit? Well, it’s really simple … they start to fidget. They gather their things and angle their bodies and there is this expected agreement that this fidgeting means they want to exit. This reminded me so much of a post on “She’s not from Yorkshire1” that, one day, when I was in a particularly mischievous mood, I decided to see what would happen if I ignored the “I need to leave” cues.

We were waiting to pull into the station at Jamaica – a big transfer station – when the lady next to me started to gather her things and angle her body. I wasn’t listening to music, only reading a book, and I decided to be conveniently engrossed in the paragraph that I was reading. This wasn’t difficult, the book was a good one2, and I was at a good part. It took her a moment to realise that I was missing her cues, but she finally said, “Excuse me!” and so I said, “Sure!” and got up.

Thankfully she was nice about it3. I just find it interesting, wouldn’t it be easier – and quicker – to say, “Excuse me!” than to fidget and wait for the person next to you to notice?

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1 They do that in NYC as well!
2 I was reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
3 I was lucky to get a decent person, not all people are decent and not all people will react politely. Basically, this is a disclaimer saying, “Reactions may vary, so observe with wisdom”.