It's Been a Good Year: A Few of My Favorite Things.

"Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true."

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850
 

Here are some things I liked about 2010:

 

Favorite Album Released in 2010

My favorite song states, "Let's go downtown and watch the modern kids. Let's go downtown and talk to the modern kids. The will eat right out of your hand, using great big words that they don't understand." It takes me back to my high-school days when I would walk down Massachusetts street in Lawrence Kansas. This song is a great representation of who I would see as I walked downtown.

Favorite Novel

 

 

Out of the twenty years I have existed on this planet, this is probably the best fiction work I have ever experienced. It is by far the longest and most challenging. It takes place around the time the events of the book of Acts are taking place. It is a story about the preservation of the chalice that touched the lips of Jesus during the last supper. Key characters include Basil, Deborrah, Joseph of Arimathea, Simon Peter and several other apostles. This story is so detailed and vivid, I couldn't help but get emotionally involved in the story.

Favorite Non-Fiction

Chris McCandless has become so intriguing to me over this past year. I saw the movie a few years ago, but reading the book has taken my interest to a whole different level. In 1992 McCandless left his mother, father, and sister, ditched his car, and gave his life savings to charity. He hitchhiked to Alaska where he died from mold on the wild potato roots he was eating.

In response to the criticism McCandless has received, someone said "you either starve in your stomach or you starve in your soul...you choose."

This man chose solitude. This man chose simplicity. He wasn't out of his mind and he wasn't stupid. Before he died McCandless wrote in the margins of a book, "Happiness only real when shared."

Favorite Essay

 

"Autumnal Tints"

By: Henry David Thoreau

 

"It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling leaves. How beautifully they go to their graves! how gently lay themselves down and turn to mould!—painted of a thousand hues, and fit to make the beds of us living. So they troop to their last resting-place, light and frisky. They put on no weeds, but merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting the spot, choosing a lot, ordering no iron fence, whispering all through the woods about it,— some choosing the spot where the bodies of men are mouldering beneath, and meeting them half-way. How many flutterings before they rest quietly in their graves! They that soared so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again, and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay at the foot of the tree, and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! They teach us how to die. One wonders if the time will ever come when men, with their boasted faith in immortality, will lie down as gracefully and as ripe,—with such an Indian-summer serenity will shed their bodies, as they do their hair and nails."

Favorite Movie

I could watch this movie over and over. I love the simplicity of it. There are several long moments where there is no dialogue at all. I think it is the dream of most men to take a pilgrimage into the mountains and survive off of nothing but nature and faith in God. This film will make that dream explode inside the heart.

 

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"For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."
-T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

Naive.

Things are changing. Some of it is good. A lot of it is difficult. It's hard to be in the mood for an overcast day when the sun is blinding your eyes.

 

My bones are being ornery and not wanting to move. I try to stretch them out of bed but it's half hearted. I think my soul is in the same mood.

This song is good for today.

Religion is a breeding ground
Where the Devil's work is deeply found,
With teeth as sharp as cathedral spires,
Slowly sinking in.

God knows that I've been naive
But I think it makes him proud of me.
Now it's so hard to separate
My disappointments from His name.

Because shadows stretch behind the truth,
Where stained glass offers broken clues
And fear ties knots and pulls them tight.
It leaves us paralyzed.

But in the end such tired words will rest.
The truth will reroute the narrow things they've said.
The marionette strings will lower and untie
And out of the ashes, love will be realized.

God knows that we've been naive
And a bit nearsighted to say the least.
It's broken glass at children's feet
That gets swept aside unexpectedly

Some Say He's Dead...Some Say He Never Will Be.

I just finished the film "Jeremiah Johnson" and I wanted to share some of the quotes I found memorable from this wonderfully made movie:

 

Jeremiah Johnson: Just where is it I could find bear, beaver, and other critters worth cash money when skinned?Robidoux: Ride due west as the sun sets. Turn left at the Rocky Mountains.

 

Letter found on the body of Hatchet Jack: "I, Hatchet Jack, being of sound mind and broke legs, do leaveth my rifle to the next thing who finds it, Lord hope he be a white man. It is a good rifle, and kilt the bear that kilt me. Anyway, I am dead. Sincerley, Hatchet Jack."

 

Del Gue: Jeremiah, maybe you best go down to a town, get outta these mountains.Jeremiah Johnson: I've been to a town Del.

Bear Claw Chris Lapp: You've come far pilgrim.Jeremiah Johnson: Feels like far.Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Were it worth the trouble?Jeremiah Johnson: What trouble?

 

Bear Claw Chris Lapp: I am Bear Claw Chris Lapp; bloodkin to the grizzer that bit Jim Britcher's ass! YOU are molesting my hunt!

 

Bear Claw Chris Lapp: You're the same dumb pilgrim that I been hearin' for twenty days, and smellin' for three!

 

Del Gue:I told my pap and mam I was going to be a mountain man; acted like they was gut-shot. "Make your life go here, son. Here's where the people is. Them mountains is for Indians and wild men." "Mother Gue", I says "the Rocky Mountains is the marrow of the world," and by God, I was right.