Against Nothingness

When I started, back at the beginning of September, to post 3 times a week, I noted that 'life happens.' Well, it has.  My whole family, including me, has spent the last week being sick. You may have noticed some missing posts in that time (last Friday's misc. and last Tuesday's book review). Now you know why.  I enjoy blogging but there are other things higher on my priority list :)  So, apologies for not explaining earlier, and things should be back to the normal schedule beginning Sunday. 

Some things are difficult. Some things are beautiful. They often overlap.  May both the difficult and the beautiful draw you to praise the Lord.

It's misc. posting day, and this is kind of random, but in the past two days I read two entirely different accounts which made me respond: "How did they do that?" The first was the account of Peter Schoening's "Miracle Belay" on K2 in 1953. The team of 8 american men were heading off the mountain, having failed to summit, in order to try to save the life of Art Gilkey who had thrombophlebitis and a pulmonary edema (I had to look those up to). On a steep glacier slope one man slipped, pulling his partner down with him. These two slide into the rope tying the next two men together and pulled both of them down. These four men hit yet another rope, joining Peter Schoening to his partner, but Schoening managed to wrap the rope around his shoulder and set his ax behind a rock, while also bearing the weight of the gurney Gilkey was on.  So, five men are plummeting down a glacier and one man is holding on to a rope and an ax and somehow Schoening managed to ...

Though both are beautiful, I sometimes wish the path of life looked more like this And less like this

On Tuesday I mentioned two genres I enjoy: Conversion narratives and survival narratives. I also mentioned the first book I enjoyed in each category. This gave me an idea. Why not give a short list of books I enjoy and recommend in each of those two categories? Indeed. And so I am doing so today on my misc. post. These lists are in no particular order.  Conversion Narratives: Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton – I mentioned this in the book review on Tuesday. Confessions by Augustine – I suppose you can’t have a list like this without Confessions on it. It really is a good book, though it is difficult reading if you are not used to reading older books. God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew – Another book which has impacted my own life a lot, this is the story of Brother Andrew’s conversion but also his smuggling bibles into communist countries. John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace by Jonathan Aitken – Incredibly well written biography of a man whose life s...