The Gospel According to Sigrid Undset

Kristin Lavransdatter is undoubtedly one of the best works of fiction I have ever read. It chronicles the life of a girl in middle-ages Norway from her childhood to her death. A pretty unappealing narrative prima facie, I know; but in the sprawling, sometimes dark storyline underlies a coherent tale of dramatis personae -- emphasis on dramatis. It's like Shakespeare in prose: that good, unless you dislike Shakespeare.
The Norway of Kristin Lavransdatter's time was a country of Catholicism, mingled with a bit of pagan superstition (having lived in the Philippines for the majority of my life, I find much to relate with), and the driving force of the story is (to over-simplify) sin. These lead to magnificent lines of dialogue about guilt and confession. Some lines induced those "chills-down-your-spine" that make reading worthwhile. And I quote (from Tina Nunally's wonderful translation):

"Kristin," the priest tried to lift her face, "you mustn't think about this now! Think about God, who sees your sorrow and your remorse. Turn to the gentle Virgin Mary, who takes pity on every sorrowful –"
"Don't you see? I drove another human being to take her own life!"
"Kristin," the priest said sternly. "Are you so arrogant that you think yourself capable of sinning so badly that God's mercy is not great enough?..." (page 381)

"Help me, Gunnulf," begged Kristin. She was white to the very edge of her lips. "I don't know my own will."
"Then say: Thy will be done," replied the priest softly.... (page 467)

"... I understood that the torment of God's love will never end as long as men and maidens are born on this earth.... And I was afraid of myself because I, an impure man, has served at his altar, said mass with impure lips, and held up the Host with impure hands. And I felt that I was like the man who led his beloved to a place of shame and betrayed her."
... "I can't, Gunnulf, I can't – when you talk like that, then I realize that I can never..."
...
"Kristin. You can never settle for anything less than the love that is between God and the soul." (page 472)

(Kristin's mother:) "What did you think... when you found out that Kristin and I – the two people you held dearest and loved the most faithfully – we had both betrayed you as much as we possibly could?"  

(Kristin's father:) "I don't think I thought much about it."

"But later on, when you kept thinking about it, as you say you did..."  

"I thought about all the times I had betrayed Christ." (page 578)

There are more, similar passages in the remaining 600 pages of the book. I also have to say that passages like these aren't the bulk of the book. There are narratives and dialogues of adventure, romance, humor, and  (what else?) politics. All part of a balanced diet.

Snapshot

I woke up this morning, picked up my phone, and on it read a bit of Chesterton's Saint Thomas Aquinas, after which I ate breakfast, and, while drinking coffee, read the first chapter of David E. Holwerda's Jesus and Israel, then started my application to UChicago, and to end the first half of the day I scrubbed the bathroom floor (for the first time in my life). My forearms are still throbbing.

I don't know why I wrote this down. Maybe it's because I excessively desire the life of the mind and so often get slapped in the face by the life of the body.

Thanks for nothing, Marcion.

Some Advice? from Screwtape

My family opened the first chapter of The Screwtape Letters last week for our daily morning read. I had read Screwtape before and didn't give my full attention to the read. At least, not until this part came up:

Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can't touch and see. There have been sad cases among the modern physicists. If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; don't let him get away from that invaluable "real life". But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is "the results of modem investigation".

Well, that was timely. Economics is my first choice course at DLSU, and I really haven't read science (does attempting to read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions count?). Lately, I've been wondering whether I should shift my interests to the sciences after realizing the apparently bleak situation of the liberal arts. Consequently, I've given economics, which still isn't a hard science, a high place among my preferred courses. (I've also finally decided to take up physics after a month of wondering whether I could escape high school without it.)

My mom was laughing for a good while, and I was shaking my head, shocked that Screwtape seemed to know my situation. (Perhaps that means another thing, too.)

And Other Etceteras

A friend shared an essay with me, and it's simply pure gold. It can be found here.

I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. The essay consists of various blunders written by college freshman the author taught. The collected malapropisms and misspellings are expertly paced, but I still found myself clutching my stomach.

If you don't have time for the whole thing, here are some hilarious highlights:

"During the Middle Ages, everybody was middle aged."

"Finally, Europe caught the Black Death. The bubonic plague is a social disease in the sense that it can be transmitted by intercourse and other etceteras... Victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. "

"Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to a church door. Theologically, Luthar was into reorientation mutation. Calvinism was the most convenient religion since the days of the ancients. Anabaptist services tended to be migratory. The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic."

"The enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare wrote a book called Candy that got him into trouble with Frederick the Great."

"Among the goals of the chartists were universal suferage and an anal parliment. Voting was done by ballad."

"Germany invaded Poland, France invaded Belgium, and Russia invaded everybody."

The author, Anders Hendriksson, has also written a book Non Campus Mentis: World History According to College Students. A short article on Wikipedia gives some golden samples:

"Prehistoricle people spent all day banging rocks together so they could find food. This was the Stoned Age." 

"Civilization woozed out of the Nile about 300,000 years ago. The Nile was a river that had some water in it. Every year it would flood and irritate the land." 

"Magellan circumcised the globe." 

"John Calvin Klein translated the Bible into American so that the people of Geneva could read it." 

Hydra's Too Strong

Got rejected by UP. That was fast. Time for others.

I Begin Facing the Hydra

Just completed an application for the University of the Philippines College Admission Test. UP was never a first choice, but, hohoho, it's the first college I've applied to. We'll see how I do on the test (which, unlike most of the other admissions tests here, includes two sets of Filipino).
One down, but a lot more to follow. And the only fiery torch I have is to finish all the exams and applications. But it's exciting, nevertheless.

Updated Summer Reading List

I didn't anticipate the busyness of this summer, but, still, to have read about ten books over two months is pretty good, considering my abysmal reading rate at the moment. I added and subtracted from my last book list, and I very likely won't be adding any more, since school year starts next year.

Final list (unless nothing short of a miracle happens and I finish some other book before the end of the week):
1. John Green - The Fault in Our Stars
2. Dorothy Sayers - Whose Body?
3. John Currid - Against the Gods
4. Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game
5. Dorothy Sayers - Clouds of Witness
6. Khaled Hosseini - The Kite Runner
7. Chaim Potok - The Chosen
8. Padraic Colum - The Children of Odin
9. Truman Capote - In Cold Blood. If all nonfiction were written this well, my fiction books would lie dusty.
10. O. Henry - The Gift of the Magi and Other Stories. I read it sparingly, since twist endings lose effectiveness when taken in rapid doses.
EDIT: Miracle happened. I finished another book since this post. I bought a hardcover edition of Leif Enger's So Young, Brave, and Handsome at Booksale (along with the Capote book above).  It was an easy read, hence, my fast pace. The book itself was a disappointment, in light of Enger's first book, Peace Like a River. It felt forced and unbelievable, which Peace Like a River could easily have been. That said, it still is a better book than the usual trash paperback.

What I left unfinished:
Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. 62% through, about 600 pages. EDIT: If you consider Kristin as a trilogy, similar to LotR (this is how many publishers go on about publishing this work), then I've finished two more books: The Wreath and The Wife; but you may count that as a desperate attempt to look impressive.

Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I stopped when I had to read through the uncomfortable cross-dressing incident, but I've added it to my required reading this quarter.

Flannery O'Connor's Complete Stories. I think I've read a bit more than half of the stories in here, but nearly all are worth rereading, and I've done that multiple times. Moved to required reading.

Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica. No surprise that I didn't finish this. I enjoyed the quinque viae section, but it's only about 0.2% of the whole Prima Pars (First Part). It's the most daunting book I've ever picked up.

G.K. Beale's New Testament Biblical Theology. Kindle stopped reading PDFs, and so, I haven't made progress whatsoever, which is a pity, since the subject matter was becoming quite interesting.

(something I forgot to add to my list last time) Existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard's Practice in Christianity and The Sickness Unto Death. I started reading both on the same day; I initially enjoyed Sickness Unto Death, which deals with despair and, eventually, original sin, more than Practice, which, after a not short first part, deals with Kierkegaard's famous leap of faith (or leap to faith), but reading about despair is not as uplifting as discussions about belief and faith; hence, I've read more of Practice than Sickness.

I dropped a few books altogether. I hope to improve next summer, but that's not likely.