The Platypus Seeks Safe Harbor: The Platypus Reads Part CCLXXXIX

-
From time to time we all find ourselves in need of safe harbor. Life in the world means stormy seas as we sail our little ships from island to island in search of new opportunities. Like Odysseus, we need to find a haven when the wind and waves come without forgetting our ultimate destination, our home. What's required is metis, or cunning; the ability to size up a situation and act wisely in uncertain times. After all, God will not do for us what we must do for ourselves. The cosmos is vast and complex, and even the rescue of one person adrift on a tiny raft has consequences for the whole. While we are nothing without God, we still have our parts to play in not compounding the pains of a broken world by adding our own foolishness to it. Instead, we use metis to move from haven to haven until we find our home making the best use of what God gives us: the bad as well as the good.

So here I am, reading Homer's Odyssey and listening to Haven by Kamelot. It's a little safe space in a world of storm.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

-
Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo
Read more

SNES as Money Well Spent: Platypus Nostalgia

-
I got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was eleven years old.  That's a couple years after it first came out.  The occasion was a little dramatic: to celebrate the end of a two-and-a-half year course of treatment for cancer.  I had no idea that it would be waiting for me at home after the final doctors visit.  It was a nice spring day, the trees were waving gently in the breeze outside the bay windows.  With a cup of tea resting on the coffee table, I set down to play.  What was that first game?  It was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past .  Around twenty years later, my SNES still works as does that Zelda cartridge.  It's been a long way from boyhood in Southern Connecticut to manhood in North Houston, but I'm still playing. Why am I still playing?  There were stretches when I didn't.  Many times, I've just been too busy.  There were also seasons when it felt embarrassing to still be playing video games.  Aren't they just for kids, and boys wh
Read more