In Service Training and the End of Homer

February 22, 2008

Here is a nifty article that I ran across on the Archbishop of Canterbury. Allen Hunt had it on a blog post under the “Death of a Church” and I had to check it out of course. The link to the article is in the blog.

http://www.allenhuntshow.com/Allen-Hunt/2008/02/09/the_death_of_a_church#comments

Our bus rules.

Oh well, I return from San Vicente. Fun stuff. Only really two things to talk about and that is my trip to SV for a few days and the end of the Iliad and the Odyssey, wahoo! First the trip to San Vicente. The deal is that after the first three months of service for volunteers, there is a reconnect, or In-Service-Training, in our center in San Vicente. So I went back Tuesday morning, after writing some letters with Don Mauricio to the power company to move some power lines out of the new road and taking some pics of the guys working, and made it back for dinner at my training host family’s pad. I had dinner with Mercedes, Estefani, Joel, and Alejandro and then hung out and chatted for a while. We ate pupusas :)

Our road project.

I had breakfast with them and then headed back to SV for my day of reconnect or whatever you call it. It was good, we took the first while to do a round table discussion of how each person’s site is going. That was actually much more helpful than I thought it would be because each person has made a few different contacts to help out. We spent the rest of the day learning about some different programs that Peace Corps offers to help out with certain projects. Fun stuff.

Our Masters in Geology and Volcanology

That night I hung out in the “hotel” from our first few days in country, the one that had a hole in the wall for a shower haha. Its funny. We all hung out in the “lobby” and listened to music on the ipod etc and chatted it up. Ohh, I totally forgot. There were some great religious conversations that went on that night starting at dinner. The group I was sitting with broached the topic of how they were amazed at the Stations of the Cross here in El Salvador (the whole group being non-Catholics). One volunteer described how that each station was laid out and made in colored sand around town while the population carried a model of Jesus bearing his cross to each of the stations with a man who had a bull horn that led the prayers. Another volunteer (who comes back in later) on the opposite side of the country talked of similar experiences (without the bullhorn haha) and was amazed at the piety in this time that was publicly displayed. I just sat back and enjoyed the show, but then I was drawn into a conversation by this second volunteer on the use of the familiar in dealing with God and Jesus instead of the formal Spanish by the Church. Historically, if I’m not mistaking, the familiar in Spanish was used only with royalty and close family. But, it made for interesting conversation. As I was sitting at the table with the second volunteer more off to the side, she eventually questioned me on quite a few social issues of the Catholic Church over the dinner. She is part of one of the married couples here and said she considered becoming Catholic in the past after moving away from her period in life of what she called “hardcore evangelicalism,” yet settled on Episcopalian, however still attends Mass once a month or so because she is compelled by the liturgy.

Our Masters in Spanish Literature. Straight up Don Quixote.

Our Masters in Education and wifey of the previous guy.

She is a big John Paul II person, which didn’t surprise me because he was big on clarifying Catholic positions on social ideas in an ever changing realm in our culture. We disagreed on some things here and there, but as usual, she sometimes characterized us in an inaccurate way and naturally pegged me as a convert lol. She likes to comment that most cradle Catholics don’t deem the understanding of the teachings as important, just the fact that there are teachings. So, she made some comments later that night at the hotel that brought up huge discussions that involved 4 or 5 of us volunteers. It was all good discussion. It was like a big religious forum night in our Peace Corps group. None of which I started!



The next day I had nutter butters for breakfast and guacamole and chips for lunch while I was waiting on my 3pm bus. However, I have made the mistake of letting people see the books I am reading. There is like a line of people waiting for The Divine Comedy and Homer now. I am afraid I will never get them back. I don’t mind Divine Comedy because even though it’s a nicer copy, it will make a lot of people really think if they read it all. Homer, not so much. Haha.



On to subject two, I finished the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer!



I’d say it’s a super book for the history enthusiast who doesn’t want to think a ton. There is not a ton of applied thinking work that comes with reading it and it’s an awesome example of ancient oral culture that we find in writing. If I remember correctly, scholars date the battle of Troy sometime just after 1200 BC if it actually took place….which I think more and more people are leaning towards yes. Anyways, there were a few things that I took from reading to two books. Actually, I ‘d say two things: Mortality and Humility.



First, this book revolutionized my idea of mortality in that I think that men died in just about every way possible throughout the books….and repeatedly so, haha. Moreover, there was no discrimination in between the godly warriors (often with immortal blood in some manner), those with experience fighting, and those who were deemed common. All at some point fell before the spear of another fighter. The book was explicit with gore, as to the exact causes of death of each person, but I’d say never overboard for their culture.



Second, the underlying idea of humility of all involved stunned me. Every Greek or Trojan that would be daring enough to go out and tout that his own personal strength was the cause of his victory probably only had about 10 pages to live. Every successful character in the book submitted to a will greater than his own and after the victory, reveled not in himself, but in someone greater than himself. From Achilles to Hector, right on down the line. The polytheist ideas are obviously wrong, but if you were to substitute the word Providence every time you read gods…and God everytime you saw Zeus, you would more or less find a Christian book because the operating principle seem to be similar. Humility and respect. Now of course, these are gross exaggerations, but it helped me bring into context what Paul had to work with when he set off into the Greek culture to convert.



Other random things about the books I found, was that in the closing books of the Odyssey you see the word ‘God’ and ‘holy’ begin to appear, which I don’t remember in the entire rest of the books. Interesting….I don’t if the later translations or whatever were corrupted by the Christians copying them, or if that was just the deal. But it’s convenient that it happens in the latter parts of the Odyssey which most say was written much later.



The story differs from the movie Troy somewhat, but movies will be movies I guess.



Yes, bats live in my house at night. I hear they eat mosquitoes though.

Hello little guy. Yeah, thats my ceiling. He finally stopped flying around so I could take a pic.

On to the Pilgrim Church by E.H. Broadbent in 1931. It was gifted to me and seems to be about the ‘church’ that lived outside of the ‘orthodox’ Church up until the Reformation, I guess, when they became somewhat ‘free.’




The back cover of the book:




“It ought to be obvious to even the casual observer of history that the real story of the church is not the one recorded in secular history. But E.H. Broadbent’s classic work, THE PILGRIM CHURCH, demonstrates that the true heart of this amazing drama is not even recorded in church history books.
· This is the saga of those intrepid believers, ‘of whom the world was not worthy,’ who not only were persecuted by civil authorities, but were denounced, defamed, and decimated by the professing church.
· Who were the Waldensians? The Lollards? The Stundists? The Anabaptists? These names were given by their enemies to those who claimed only the name of Christ, and who were prepared to suffer for His cause rather than submit to those man-made traditions that they believed contradicted the Word of God.”




The inside flap which gives a little more insight into what it seems could be an unbiased presentation of history, but I don’t know yet, I have yet to read it. The parts in brackets are what the inside flap left out from the books preface.




“Ours is a day of ecumenism which seeks to establish an unbiblical unity denying the very separation from error for which the Pilgrim Church suffered an died… [Leading evangelicals would have us believe either that the Roman Catholic Church’s doctrine of salvation has changed, or that it has always been biblical, in spite of its official declarations (consistently for centuries and still today) to the contrary and it’s persecutions of those who adhere to biblical truth.




That persecution is still going on in Latin America, parts of Europe and other places where Rome is strong enough to impose its will.] Both the martyrdom of the Pilgrim Church for 1,500 years and Reformation are being presented as a semantic misunderstanding that should never have occurred between those who actually believed the same thing but didn’t know it. Evangelical leaders have gone so far as to join hands with Roman Catholics in proclaiming the gospel to the world. The Pilgrim Church sets that record straight.”




This forward was written by Dave Hunt in 1999.




Fun times….although I can’t really disagree with his “consistently for centuries” argument :)