Sacred Reading

The sacred reading exercise in Lit class was pretty interesting wouldn't you say? it kind of gave a whole new feel to reading a book or a text I should say. Certain things seem to jump off the page just listening to it in a meditative mode, you seem to catch the scene better and really feel and see what was going on as well as experience the live concert they put on. Listening to it and pausing after ward's let the text catch up to you and let your thoughts fully process. We are so used to reading something then asking a question and having a second to answer but this time we had a minute and we were just able to say aloud what stuck out to us and feel. I liked that a lot because as you begin to shout things out it seemed that many of us began to connect the dot's if you will of our feelings were similar. The text is a sad text about life and pain and hurt but the music, the music brings life, it brings hope it brings something that the people at the revival weren't fully able to bring and that is a sad but true statement to this text. Why? Why weren't the people singing the hymn at the revival able to bring the good news to the people listening like the blues did. I believe it's the fact that the blues hit there hearts and made them feel like they were alive again something that the revivalist preached about but didn't live out. Which is a good lesson to learn, We have to practice what we preach as well as keep to the truth and impact people with the word of God and the music that God has given us and entrusted us with to show people his love.

Joel by the Lake reading

The sun was up, the sky was blue, the lake moving with the wind and the wind blowing on our faces so lightly keeping us somewhat cool on such a hot day. As I stood out over the lake under the shadow of a beautiful tree reading Joel I felt myself transported back in time my imagination running wild of what Joel was feeling, Those emotions all tied up, perhaps bottled in until the correct time to let them out. Emotions of Pain, Sorrow and Sadness mixed with Angst, suspense and Joy makes up this reading of Joel. Reading it outside and out loud puts you in a different position than reading it just like you normally read a book in the bible, It helps certain things stick out more and hit you harder than before and can you imagine it. Your standing there on the lake and as you read the text " the stars get darker" you imagine and see in your mind the Sun sort of losing its glint and its not so light anymore and as the night comes you look up at the moon and see that it has a red tint to it but its not bloody yet. Is It? Its pretty wild all the imagery and different things that stick out in Joel, especially when he talks about the drunkards and the armies he is being so real about what people perhaps looked like. I experienced reading it and trying to put it all together in my head and imagine as if I was reading it maybe toward our generation What would I say? What would God want me to say? What would my emotions be?

Joel- Render your heart

Joel 2:12-14 "Even Now" declares the Lord, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning."(13) rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.(14) who knows? He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing."

Interesting fact but Joel means "Yahweh is God" http://bible.org/seriespage/joel,
Joel calls for utter destruction and death to rain over Israel and he uses an invasion of Locusts to represent an invasion of Israel which plays a very important part in the return of God's kingdom and the restoring of the temple. Joel and Whitman have a similarity in the fact that both talk about death like a fact of life. To Joel and Whitman death is coming, to Joel from God and Whitman well its inevitable and a fact of life but Joel has more hope I believe because he talks about rendering your heart (Joel 2:12-14) as if to give some hope to the people that you still have a chance, that when the days of wrath and death and destruction come upon us like a plague of locust you will still have a chance to repent and return to God but he says Render your hearts. Render as defined by dictionary.com has many meanings but I like this one the best "to present for consideration,approval, payment, action." Joel is basically saying to the people to repent and allow for God to take there hearts and allow God to use them and always to keep and stay with God. The locusts represent a very small part of what God can do. Joel was prophesying over a future and time when disasters worst then Locusts would come. Whitman understands the mortal death that we see everyday but Joel looked ahead to the spiritual realm of things and I believe Walt Whitman did too I think he was more for now then for the future.

Cemetery and Walt Whitman

"To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle"-Walt Whitman

In Walt Whitman poem When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, he describes his very feelings of death and in those reflects on life. Walt Whitman faces the inevitable uncertainty of death. But Toward the end of the poem he starts to praise death almost excepting it entirely and appreciating it, in line 140 he says "But praise! Praise!Praise! for the sure-en winding arms of cool-enfolding death". I love Walt Whitman words there, Sure-En winding Arms of cool-enfolding death gives death such a personification of a person wrapping there arms around you and that's a wild vivid thought. Walking around the cemetery reminded me of just how mortal I was, Not thinking I was immortal or something but you know what I mean. Several Thoughts floated through my head one in particular was in the cemetery across the street by where the angel was... There was a path which split and the path in the middle went straight and led to a building, for what I don't know what it was for but It was there and I got this imagery of walking toward heaven the roads on the side being the fork in the road and the path leading straight leading toward heavens gate, I think I had a moment. The angel statue was beautiful and reminded me of maybe when you die the angels carry your spirit to heaven or come and watch over you. Who knows? I also thought about what it would look like when the "dead in Christ rise" I mean won't that be wild, being in a cemetery and seeing people coming out of the graves or maybe it won't be like that. The whole thing I learned was that death is a certainty but staying dead isn't. I mean think about it we are promised eternal life with Christ in a place of peace, heaven, a city where God's glory dwells. Revelation 21 says " I saw a new heaven and a new Earth, I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, Keep reading and it says Now the dwelling was with men, and he will live with them. Isn't that amazing that we will be in eternity dwelling with God and we can all say to each other hey do you remember when.... To finish this up I just would like to say that we don't need to fear death it is a reality and sometimes that very reality I think will always be hard to grasp, watching a loved one die or a child or whatever you may see can make you upset, sad, scared and worried but we serve a God who defeated death long ago and has promised us life eternal full of peace and joy and love and happiness forever and ever. Just like Walt Whitman said night and day journeys a coffin but in reality night and day another soul reaches eternity. Which side of eternity do we plan on being in?

Tuscana Restaruante Eating and talking lit

Eating and talking about lit was a different experience in and of itself. I really enjoyed it, I mean having meaningful conversation and good food was a nice thing and a good time. We talked about the hobbit and did some ritels which were a good time trying to figure out and then we talked about various literature and what effects us and discovered some similarities and differences about each other through what we read. We talked about movies as literature and realized that movies tend to keep out some of the best parts of the book, they don't go through the entire book completely. WE talked about alien movies and different things. A great discussion on C.S. Lewis and Tolkien went on as well. The food was delicious and the conversation was equally as satisfying. This experience was cool and opened our eyes up to the normal every day conversations that could happen and do happen over literature in all shapes in sizes, books, movies and music.

Night City and Facing the Darkness...

In Night City by Elizabeth Bishop we see a very dark scene, along with Howl we get a vivid image of something that has gone terribly wrong. The world moving toward a place far from what God originally intended is the overall themes of these two stories. Questioning Hope in such a dark and dying world I mean in Howl you see people who are dying of drug addictions, Suicide and who are just plain crazy. Compassion plays a big role in Howl as the author is feeling for these people, you can feel the heartache that this author is feeling for these people as he sees and isn't that the same heartache Jesus has when he looks at the broken and abused being mistreated by the Pharisees. We have to have compassion on those people (Isaiah 58) and not just have compassion but to reach out and clothe these people and help them find Jesus and that's where there hope and freedom where come from. When I look at the Night City poem I see sort of a post apocalyptic city in ruins, People moving along the street hastily and scared of the fact that all is gone. She is looking at a well to do person weeping by himself and just like I said in class its like she can imagine him with all these people having friends and wealth and now just like the city he is in ruins. I like the fact that she could also be alluding to the fact that the world is in ruins or heading that way.

Theme plus the things they carried part 2

So theme is defined as a readers take or the overall moral of a story. It's where we get the moral of little red riding hood from when we dive into the text and see what really lies behind all the metaphors and such. Theme can be anything from love and death to friendship and lies. Theme is not really limited and sometimes isn't supposed to be discovered. There can be more than one theme to a story just like The things they carried had many many themes, some strong themes of death and love but also of mayhem and memories. When we look at the story of The things they carried when compared to Little Red Riding hood Death plays a role in both stories. Little red riding hood more of a moral message of be careful who you trust with the things they carried being a message of "moral" or "no moral" in war. Love is represented by the lieuntenent looking at the pic and little red riding hood loves her grandmother. If you ask me I think Love and Death are probably pretty much represented in most literature, movies, art work things like that because well those are the two biggest themes of life or at least the most important themes of life in which we think about these things everyday because whether we are off at war or being decieved by a wolf we face them every day.

The Things They Carried and so much more...

This story was really good. Its the story of soldiers and what they really carry? Sure its things like Guns and health supply's and everything in between but its love letters, its personal thoughts and other things that make you realize not only the effects of war but also the depth of love and pain in which a man feels. I like in the end how Lieutenant Cross figures out that what men fight for isn't honor and anything else like that but its to not have dishonor in there lives. Their very pride has led many of them to this place of certain death and yet they have become so cold to death it is another joke to them, another game to play, another thing to make light of. All of this chaos and mayhem is going on and lieutenant cross can only see one thing can only feel one thing and that's his love for a girl named Martha yet it is a sad love because he feels like she doesn't love him which could be true or far from the truth. As the book describes these men are losing there minds daily, the blood, destruction and mayhem of war has put them in another mind state and because of this maybe Cross doesn't realize that she really does love him. He burns her pictures and letters trying to convince himself that he could let her go but doesn't he love her so much he can't burn her out of his head and heart no matter what. He just wants to be in this place of peace, in her chest as the book puts it, but he can't, this war, this world whatever it is in the way. Will he ever get back to her? Will she continue writing him? If he dies what kind of reaction will she have? These are all questions I wish we could see answered but like every good writer the author just keeps us guessing.

Intro LIt first post get to know me....

Hello my name is Tyler J. Maraia I am 20 years old and decided to take Lit because I love Writing and want to expand my knowledge on how to become a better writer. I like writing because it can take you to places and remind you of things and help you understand the true feelings behind and beyond the typical seeing, feeling, touching and tasting of everyday life. My earliest memories of Lit come from my 3rd grade teacher Mr. Droke. We wrote stories and I came up with a character called TYLER PRIVATE EYE and he was like an action/mystery kind of guy and went on all sorts of wild adventures. I wrote all the way up until about the middle of High School or less and then I kind of let it go and became more of a note writer/journaler/Blogger and did some poetry but always have had the yearning to write and get emotions on paper. My most recent memories would be my composition 1 and 2 class at Saint Petersburg College and I loved just learning about the various poets and writers of our day that takes me up to this class. My Most Significant Text is probably Honestly Shakespeare and I just say that because it was some of the hardest stuff to read and understand simply because of the old language. We read through the play and took care of all of that. Lit matters because it is another way to communicate to people and get a message out. Sometime Lit doesn't matter because the author will simply write something without any thought that it will impact or do anything for anybody else.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a story of 4 people each of who have similar but different issues going on. It's a break down of 2 couples, one couple is the deeply in love, we love each other because we just do couple and the other is the married been through hard times couple. My initial reaction to this story was bewilderment as I listened to Terri's story, Terri is telling her husband how much her crazy ex husband who blew his brains out love her and there is this whole discussion of what is TRUE LOVE? I find it interesting that Mel criticizes deeply Terri's Ex Husband when he himself makes a statement or two or three about killing his wife and wishing she was dead and hating her. The room is full of conversation and drinking which toward the end of the story begins to create tension that is so thin you can cut it with a knife. Mel tells his wife Terri to shut up just for once. Terri is trying to play the happy go lucky gal who puts up with the drinking just to basically keep Mel from not losing his temper which brought me to this question? Does Terri make Men crazy because both the guys she has been with seem very tense and one of them was psycho and the other one is borderline crazy. Now the main character sort of has the narrator role he just kind of sits back drinks his drink and listens and sees the expressions on the peoples faces, he admires his gal Laura and thinks the world of her and Mel is his best friend so he just sort of puts up with him and his antic's. Are they dying or close to death? What does the light slowly fading away with almost every page turn represent? What exactly is True Love and does it have a definition? We know Love from 1 Corinthians 13 but do these people exemplify that. I would have to say no, they see love as just a simple object that if lucky enough you fall in love and stay with one person but as Mel puts it one of us could leave and the other could move on and be happy and thats alright with him. So this to me is sort of a twisted perspective and outlook on love and I think in the long run they all yearn for the " old People" who were hurt not because of being broken up in the hospital but because they couldn't see each other.