If you're not listening to Mannheim Steamroller, you should be.

Born out of boredom, sloth, and inactivity, my thoughts have been unpleasant lately (all revolving around a hungry gnawing core, obsession slinking through the bedroom, yellow-slitted eyes wide – you know how it is), which is why I had difficulty sleeping, which is why I got up early, which resulted in green tea, the synthesized/medieval christmas music of Mannheim Steamroller (practically the only christmas music worth listening to, if you ask me), and reading the Bible, which in turn resulted in a free blogpost for you! Merry Christmas!
You may be less pleased to learn that it deals principally with points of Christian Theology. Or perhaps more pleased. Who can say.
Anyway. I’ve been reading Søren Kierkegaard some lately, and need to read more, but he’s gotten me thinking about faith. Which is what I’m going to talk about. “Hebrews 11, Levi?” those of you who’ve done time in church ask. “Why, yes – however did you guess?” I reply. Not the whole chapter; I will be selective.
Hebrews 11: 4 (English Standard Version, which is an excellent version until it starts talking about porcupines haunting the ruins of Babylon notwithstanding the fact that the porcupine is a distinctly New World species, unless I am much mistaken. One of those words they had no idea how to translate – and they’re Bible scholars, not zoologists. Well, I think it’s funny.) “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts.” Now I had always wondered why Abel’s sacrifice was more acceptable than Cain’s – if you know the story, Abel and Cain were the sons of Adam and Eve; Cain was a farmer, and Abel was a shepherd. They both offered their respective commodities, and God, apparently arbitrarily, decided he liked Abel’s better. Cain flipped out and killed Abel. Now, at last, I have the explanation: they were playing Settlers of Catan. God already had plenty of wheat, and so traded his ore for Abel’s sheep instead of Cain’s wheat. As a result, Abel was able (haha) to build a city, and thus won. Cain, whose play was theoretically much better and who SHOULD HAVE WON EXCEPT EVERYONE KEPT FRIGGIN ROLLING ELEVENS, killed his brother in a fit of anger. I know people who would agree with me that nothing is more likely to have inspired the first killing rage than losing a game of Settlers.
Queso. Serious now. Hebrews 11:1. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Lo, a definition. Unpack. Faith is “assurance” and “conviction” – in other words, it is certainty, it does not waver. “Of things not seen” – the object of faith is not something apparent. If you are reasonably certain that the U.S. Cavalry will show up and save your sorry hide, since you did send messengers, carrier pigeons, and smoke signals, and the nearest fort is just a mile or two up the river, and listen! that might be them now – that’s not faith. Faith is when you’re on Mars and you expect the U.S. Cavalry to show up and save your sorry hide. This particular faith is probably stupid. However, it can look much the same as a well-placed faith from the outside. Which is confusing, and I apologize. Let me put it this way: Damon and Phidias (I think those are the correct names, let me consult Edith Hamilton – WHAT? YOU FAIL, EDITH. Wikipedia it is, then. Oh! It’s Pythias, not Phidias (he was an ancient sculptor. Discobolos, maybe.)) Right. Damon and Pythias. Pythias hacks off some local king, who decides he’s gonna kill him. Pythias says he has to go do something first in a very distant country. The king is like, “Yeah. Sure. What kind of idiot ­–” and Damon is like, “No, it’s cool. He’s legit.” and the king is like, “O RLY?” and Damon is like “YA RLY and you can kill me if he doesn’t get back in time.” and the king is like “OHO! You are a fool.” and Pythias goes off and everyone sits around twiddling their thumbs and then the king is like “He’s not back. You die.” and Damon is like “My Westley will come for me.” and Pythias is like “What’s up, guys? Sorry I’m late. Pirates, dontcha know.” and the king is so impressed that he doesn’t kill either of them. That’s similar to faith – that kind of trust can be considered illogical in that many if not most people would simply scarper given this opportunity. Well, perhaps not – perhaps you’ve read friend Pythias like a book, and you know he’s such a sap that he’ll be back if he possibly can – even if you can trust his intentions, it may not be logical to trust his ability to get there and back in the given amount of time. After all, shit happens (like pirates). But let us say that Pythias is a badass of epic proportions. Being dead will not stop him, much less pirates. Knowing that you can trust his intentions and his ability, what are you to think when you’re on the chopping block and the axe is on the way down? This is faith: knowing that God is all-powerful and completely loving, what are you to make of the situation where you are in the direst of emergencies, and he simply hasn’t shown up? There are two common responses, I think. The first is to shake your fist at the sky and curse him. The second is to meekly say something along the lines of, “Well, it must not be God’s will that I be delivered from this my hour of trial.” Neither response is faith. Faith is expecting him to show up at T-minus 00:00:00.000001.
I realize that raises questions, mostly of the “and what if you’re wrong?” variety. I’ll get to those, but I’m not finished unpacking Hebrews 11:1. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. One thing you may notice when reading the Bible is that faith and hope are nearly always linked and indeed appear almost synonymous. Paul says in Romans 8:24-25 “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” which is very reminiscent of what has been said of faith. It’s actually very difficult to separate the two concepts in my mind – you would as well have one without the other as you would place your life in someone’s hands without trusting him. For what it’s worth, hope contains desire for what has been promised, where faith is certainty that what has been promised will come to pass. Except hope contains certainty as well. It’s confusing. Thoughts?
Anyway. So. What if you trust God to save you at the eleventh hour – and he doesn’t? Abraham has faith in God to sacrifice Isaac, the knife goes up, the knife comes down, and Isaac gasps out his last breath. What now? “Show’s over, folks, thanks for coming out, my apologies, guess we were wrong”? That’s scary. That’s – man, that’s really friggin terrifying. Elijah v. the prophets of Baal – Elijah asks God to send fire from heaven to consume the offering on the altar – what if God doesn’t? I don’t recall this situation occurring in the Bible. Maybe it doesn’t occur in real life either. I mean, praying for someone to be healed (they die) occurs a lot. I don’t know why. But staking everything you have on God coming through – actually, I’ve never seen that. Easy to understand why. Staking everything on God coming through and then he doesn’t – what then? Maybe that doesn’t happen ever. But what if it does? What then? Job 13:15 “Though he slay me, I will hope in him; yet I will argue my ways to his face.” is, interestingly, one of the most defiant sentiments in the Bible – as close as it gets to Invictus (everyone’s read that bloody awful poem, ja?) It’s also the best answer I have. Though he slay me, I will hope in him. That’s faith. Maybe you can begin to see why Kierkegaard titled his work on faith Fear and Trembling.

Also, because I feel like it:
Out of the night that covers me
That in this concert hall still lingers
I thank whatever gods may be
For my indomitable fingers.

For though my fingers blistered and bled –
Up and down that Kreisler road,
My pizzicato, tinted red:
My violin’s bloody, but unbowed.

This one is a tad self-indulgent

I’d forgotten how difficult virtue is. It’s easy to treat people well when they’re interesting and intelligent and you like them and they like you, which has been most people I’ve interacted with in Chicago – but there are few things more difficult than treating one’s siblings and parents well – and I say this as someone who has a ridiculously functional family. It’s really humbling after being so very tolerant and openminded and magnanimous in college to come home and find that you absolutely cannot stand your brother’s taste in music, or that not swearing around younger sisters is a bit more difficult than you remembered, or that your parents still aren’t comfortable with you reading Lolita, and that your virtue has been only a caricature of the real thing. Thank God my relationship with him doesn’t depend on my performance.

So first quarter at University of Chicago went pretty well. Taking Honors Calculus was a mistake which I will attempt to correct next semester, but Physics and Spanish and my Philosophy class were all good. Next quarter I’ll be taking Calculus instead of Honors Calculus and an Intro to Poetry class (awesome) instead of Spanish. Other mundane details, etc. etc...

Yeah, so, important stuff: I am not disciplined. During the quarter I stopped exercising. I barely wrote. I neglected to read the Bible. I spent hours playing videogames, reading webcomics, seeking cheap entertainment. I only see the results now: my mind has warped, no longer translucent to the words falling through a quiet which no longer exists. I can’t find ideas to fit words to. My addiction to cheap story has burned a hole in my mind, and now all I have are the petrified remains of old ideas. Like every other state, this is not permanent. Whether it’s gone when I wake up tomorrow or lingers for weeks (a week is more than enough time for moods to ossify) I don’t know.

I can write. Sprachgefuhl: an innate sense of the linguistically appropriate. I don’t know if I was born with it or if it results from my early voracious reading (Chomsky? any thoughts?) but it’s there. Words are my native element; I can make them do what I want them to – not perfectly, obviously: I’m only eighteen and not quite arrogant enough to blame my failings on the imperfections of any human language – but it seems that they obey me better than they do most people. I doubt it’s any sort of “artistic vision” – that is, I doubt I see things other people do not, or rather, I doubt I see things more than other people – different things, yes, but no two people see the same things – anyway, the difference is I can write these things. Or attempt to. How to translate into words something that has only been known as perhaps only the juxtaposition of the view from an airplane and the cover of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles (sci-fi books, by the way, have the best cover art. I’ve taken to cutting the covers off and taping them to my dormroom door.) or, completely different, the night view from an airplane and a cool lake under a summer moon – why does the sky in spring recall nursing homes and kitsch while that of winter means cardboard boxes by the interstate, concrete jungles, and fake palm trees, and that of autumn, and of autumn only, means Icarus? Everything means something else.

For instance: I received from a friend for Christmas a bracelet made entirely of soda-can tabs, three per link. It is very cool. But what does it mean?