The State of the Planet

State of the Planet, by Robert Haas, in my opinion deserves to the Pulitzer Prize winning. It bring together very two crucial elements: simplicity and complexity. Some how he is able to mixed the two together and still have the reader come out with a clear understanding of what he was trying to get across to us in the first place.

My favorite line was:
"There is no silence in the world
Like the silence of rock from before life was."

How true is that? While reading more in depth on that particular verse I was mesmerized. It's hard to really see what life was like before we, animals or plants even existed on this earth. Rock and soil were here long before we came and I also find it interesting that we, according to Genesis, were brought up from the "dust of the earth." Maybe those two statements have something to do with each other. The fact that the entire poem starts out so simple, with a young girl and how rain is falling on her, then getting into thinking about life and our ecosystem...that blew my mind.

The line that reads:
"Poetry should be able to comprehend the earth,...
Something of the earth beyond our human dramas."

The first line starts out the beginning of stanza "2" and the last line ends stanza "2". That's the entire flow of the poem. What starts, must end, but it ends in the same way with the same idea being presented; much how a thesis is the beginning of a paper and the conclusion is the end.

Stanza six really brought out the biology side of things. Most of the poem deals with the beauty of what we see and how we may or may not interpret it, but this stanza tries to define the "state of the planet" as far as how we see it under a microscopic point of view. This is one of my favorite stanzas because it stands out from the rest of the poem, but still has a place in the ciaos of it all.

Overall, I see that our disconnection with nature is very much apparent. I think that with technology booming, cars running faster and people becoming less and less spiritual that we are going to continue to let ourselves disconnect from the very world around us. Eventually, we as human beings will totally disconnect from the world and ultimately God if we aren't careful. On the opposite side, those of us that love nature, that's awesome, but we should also try to look at who created all of this around us and understand that he holds a much higher understanding than we can even possibly imagine.

"It must be a gift of evolution that humans
Can't sustain wonder. We'd never have gotten up
From our knees if we could."

Lucretius

In the upcoming assignment for tomorrow I saw that there is a figure that we are supposed to know named: Lucretius. I found it very interesting that there were little known facts about Lucretius as a person. I suppose in those times, better records where not kept of people. There are six books accredited to him that have to deal with Epicurean philosophy/physics. He wanted to bring those two topics to the Roman public, seeing as he was a Roman of the Hellenistic Period.

In Lucretius' works he says that we have a role in the universe, but without any interference from "the gods". And basically that everyone feeds off of their own humanistic hungers/wants/tendencies in life. That we are somewhat left to our own demise. I really don't agree with his ideas. However I'm sure that his writings gave light to many new aspects of nature and how it is God's creation and not our creation. I firmly believe that we should look toward the Creator and not the creation for total inspiration.

I'm really interested to see where this story of "State of the Planet" takes us. I read a bit up on the fact that it is Pulitzer Prize winning and the author is Robert Haas. I'm really interested to see what the poem is all about and how Lucretius, and Venus interact with this particular text. I look forward to reading this tonight and getting a feel for what may be asked of us in class tomorrow.

An Enemy of the People

The play was sensational! I truthfully went in there not knowing anything about the characters or the play. The people playing the part pulled off the characters very well. I had several friends involved in the production and I couldn't be more proud of them!

I have to speak about one character that I found completely fascinating and that was Peter Stockmann, played by Micah Buckley. Peter Stockmann is the older brother of Dr. Stockmann. In the story Peter is the mayor and is somewhat corrupted by society's views on right and wrong. His morality comes from himself and therefore has no real basis for a truth in life. He happens to tower his brother in most decisions and when his brother Dr. Stockmann rises up with a discovery that the town's springs are poisoned, Peter works fast to hush the problem. That creates a stir among friends, family, media and the whole town. Eventually Peter turns the entire town/friends against Dr. Stockmann and Peter seems to be the victor. Except Peter towards the end realizes that he's totally ruined his brother and tries to ratify the situation just a tad, but offering him his job back only if he retracts everything and says it was a big misunderstanding. Well, Dr. Stockmann doesn't retract anything, he goes against the majority and is ruined by the public. No one ever truly knows the ending.

I most closely relate to Petra. Not because she's a young woman, but because she is stuck between a rock and a hard place, but yet finds herself on solid ground as far as her beliefs are concerned. She still is kind-hearted and meaningful in all that she does, but she also is very stern and gives an "evil eye" when necessary. I do all of those things. Just not within a 2 hour spand of time, ha! I don't see my life as that dramatic, but I certainly am in for the ride of a lifetime with some of the hardships I face.

I would never want to be in the position that the Stockmanns made on that fateful day in Norway. I also wouldn't want to walk away from the truth either. I would probably do what they did and stick together in the midst of trouble and trust God. What else can you do when the majority is against you, and you know you are doing right--You turn the other cheek and speak softly. Give others grace in their misunderstanding and forgive them when they finally come to the realization that the truth has been there all along.

Becky--Lectio Divina

The story presented in class on Thursday was quite different. It was emotional and somewhat hard to hear. It was real and sad. Doing the Lectio Divina with the reading today was okay. Maybe it was just hard for me to get into the reading, or maybe I just felt in the moment that I couldn't relate to it.

Becky was a woman. We have no idea, from reading, what she looked like, sounded like or even thought. We know she had two children, both of color, while Becky was caucasion. She had no husband, and no one knew who had "given" her "colored" children. You can tell Becky was the "black sheep" of the town. The one that people helped, but only in secret so they themselves would not be persecuted by the majority.

I thought of so many things while listening to this while Jen was reading it. I wondered if this was something I did in my own life. If I shunned people, or cast them out because they are too hard to be around. I was wondering if I was just as selfish as the people in that story were being when they wouldn't help Becky out and literally left her to die a sad and LONELY death.

This story was an eye-opener. It wasn't about people not coming together as one, but rather the chance to see the mistakes others make and correct them before we make them as well in our own lives.