Friday, September 01, 2006

Blogger Remorse and Other Fun Things

Apparently, Thursday afternoons aren't the best time to think. I re-read my post this morning, and found that I completely disagree with it. Well, not completely, but significantly.

I'm tired of blogging. So what are all you lovely readers up to? What's on your mind? Take over my blog. I welcome you. I'm begging you.

I came home the other day to find my kitchen, newly-floored dining room, and newly-carpeted living room covered in two inches of standing water. My washing machine broke while I was out (yes, I left it running) and just kept pumping out the water, until I came home, waded barefoot through the pool, and turned off the machine. The water seeped under the wall, into the boys' bedroom, too, and it looks as though we'll need to replace the carpet.

I've got most of Marshall's curriculum, now, but I haven't been able to look at it in too much detail; I've been swamped. Ha, ha.

I can't wait to learn latin, though. And to diagram sentences, again. OOOOHHHH. I don't believe I've ever enjoyed anything more. Sentence diagramming may be the one thing I was born to do.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny how it works - I thought a lot of your Thursday afternoon post. I think I see God most clearly when I give myself whole heartedly to something. Your post reminded me of that, and put it in better English than I will ever do.

What's sentence diagramming?

Rachael King said...

Andrew: Good to hear from you. I miss you.
I don't disagree with what you're saying. In fact, that yearning to put my whole self into something, without distraction or guilt and with purpose and meaning and divine approval is the emotion which prompted me to write that post. It's just the last bit I would change, because I worded it poorly. When I re-read it, it sounded very individualistic.
Where I went wrong is in identifying our "passion" as "God". That makes God nebulous and molded by each person's unique set of desires.
I meant to convey the idea of final rest, or the healing of the fractured self, but there is also a sense in which becoming part of a larger whole is desirable and even proper. We are the "Body of Christ", and as such, we offer praise to God with one voice. This coming together as individuals to form a new entity, is also what we are made for.

Sentence diagramming: You would love it. You'd become addicted to it. I'm so sorry you never had occasion to experience it, because it's right up your alley. Basically, it is taking apart a sentence and organizing its various parts of speech into a picture (diagram), which conveys the place and meaning of each word in the sentence. I learned it from the age of ten or so and it helped me immensely in my understanding of language and sentence structure. Check out this site:
http://www.lifestreamcenter.net/DrB/Lessons/TS/diagram.htm

Anonymous said...

What feelings/impressions/sensations do you get when you do sentence diagramming?

Anonymous said...

Also 'Gaudy Night' by Dorothy Sayers has says some great things on being single minded in the pursuit of something (for example, it says some really interesting things about being unable to go wrong if you really want something).

I always wondered what the alternative to pride was. From one of the characters '... you feel like God on the seventh day, for a bit anyhow'. And that's why there's no one word as an alternative to pride - that quotes it, and there's no way to condense it.

Rachael King said...

Feelings/impressions/sensations while diagramming: I guess I would say I feel like it all fits. which it does. There is a logical place for everything. The modifiers are placed under the thing they modify; you can accomodate a compound subject or predicate or direct object- there isn't any sentence which can't be diagrammed. Some times you have to invert the sentence to find the actual meaning. Diagramming is very unlike life; it is a system which accounts for every scenario. And I am good at it.
Diagramming is enjoyable in the same way and for the same reason that math is enjoyable: if you follow the rules, you'll succeed. You might miscalculate or misidentify, and then you'll come out with the wrong answer. But it isn't the fault of the system; the system works. I wish I could find a system like that to apply to life.

On single-mindedness: I'll have to read Gaudy night to know if I agree with it. But what you say reminds me of the conversation we had re: Chesterton's "blue tigers", in "Orthodoxy". Does Sayers run along the same line?
Have you ever read Kierkegaard's "Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing"?

Rachael King said...

'... you feel like God on the seventh day, for a bit anyhow'.

Yes, that is what I was getting at.