oh c.s. lewis

recently got audiobook version of c.s. lewis's mere christianity. have always loved the book, but there is something about having it read to you in such a britishly matter of fact manner that is just soo funny. though I do have to say, after listening to him for 4 hrs straight on my drive home from Cleveland, my brain does hurt a bit--

some memorable quotes:

- on science: "Science works by experiments. It watches how things behaves. Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, "I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 am on January 15th and saw so-and-so," or, "I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to such-and-such a temperature and it did so-and-so."

- on the old testament (very reminiscent of hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy i thought): "He (God) selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God that he was- that there was only one of Him and that he cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process."

- on love: "Another notion we get from novels and plays is that 'falling in love' is something quite irresistible; something that just happens to one, like measles."

some insightful quips:

"It [Christianity] has just that queer twist about it that real things have."

"God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than any other slackers."

"When a man is getting better, he understands more clearly the evil that is still left in him. ... A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is alright."

further thoughts -

the chapter on pride hit me really really hard. i can see every part of my being drenched in pride in an incredibly self-satisfied way. that confidence so strongly relies on the sense of being higher or better than others. always judging, comparing myself. and how annoyed i get when people don't respect me or i feel like they treat me like i'm stupid. some of mr. lewis' thoughts on pride:

"the more we have it in ourselves, the more we dislike it others." he suggests, that if we want to know how proud we are, just see how much other peoples' pride annoys us.

"Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind." he writes that "unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that are mere fleabites in comparison." which i completely agree with, but it just makes me cringe at how big of a deal today's church makes of these "fleabites" like homosexuality when "the worst of all vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life."

on vanity and seeking other people's praise - "It is a fault, but a childlike and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. It shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admiration. You value other people enough to want them to look at you."

and lastly: "a proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you." and how much will you have missed out on!

cast iron, YUM.

Finally pulled out the cast iron plate Julia got me for Christmas to use. :D!!
because ... I bought pre-marinated pork bulgogi from H-mart yesterday.
aw man it was soooo good. Honestly, some of the best meat I've eaten at home before.

now thinking about the possibilities for using cast iron. high temp cooking!
I think I might need to try making steak sometime soon...

reading!

as to my new years resolution to read at least one book per month (it seems like quite a meager goal, but albeit realistic), I am making some progress. On my trip to taiwan I got a chance to finally really take time to READ. I forgot how good it feels to read; to get sucked into a book and not want to put it down.

so that inspired me to go on a book buying binge the other day. I went to b&n to buy a book. i was thinking about getting up in the air (i.e. movie based on book), but after flipping through it didn't look that enticing. So i ended up wandering around and found a table of "buy 2, get 3rd free!" books. Normally I'd think - that is way too many books to buy, and I need to stop buying books. But that day, I just thought, I think I'll read them all, hopefully.... So I came home with 1100+ pages of reading. But I'm already halfway through the first book! thanks to being sick and staying home.

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Books I've read (i'll try to keep updating on books i'm reading):
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. this book was incredible. It was the one that I couldn't put down. I bought it b/c i saw it at costco and it looked interesting so i just picked it up. its a memoir, incredibly a true story. The writing was beautiful and the stories were engrossing, but i think the most compelling thing about the whole book was that everything was real. It chronicles Jeannette's childhood in a family where her parents never had the resources, financially or emotionally, to take care of their children; the Walls kids band together to learn to take care of themselves, finding hope and optimism in situations that did not merit any. I was amazed once again by the resilience of children (of these children in particular), and at the same time angry that you had to find out about their resilience at all.

The Gospel According to the Son by Norman Mailer. JZ gave this book to me more than a year ago, but i never got around to finishing it. It's Jesus' life told from his point of view. I think what I like most about it is that he portrays Jesus as very human- not necessarily human as in flawed, but human as in able to be hurt, able to be weak, able to feel very deeply. It was sort of confusing, to read one person's imagined account of who Jesus might have been- to try to distinguish what was real and what was not. But in the end I think, Jesus was a man; Jesus was real. And we can't think of him as an abstraction; we all end up imagining our own picture of who he might have been. I think the last few sentences really resonate with who I imagine Jesus to be: "So I think often of the hope that is hidden in the faces of the poor. Then from the depth of my sorrow wells up an immutable compassion, and I find the will to live again and rejoice."

currently reading: Little Bee by Chris Cleave. "I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.
"In a few breaths' time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them the same way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile."