Just a brief update on books and movies

I haven't been writing because I've been absorbed in running ERP experiments and, more importantly, talking with my visiting friend about life, the universe and everything. But on the media-consumption front:

• Finished Four Loves a while back. My central insight: that I try to escape Eros for the comfort of Affection. The familiar pulls me so strongly, and the adventure of the unknown sometimes feels like another danger. Run from the uncertainty, slow down, back away: hands in front of me, palms out, watching, watching. I don't know what's coming next, so I'd rather watch from a safe distance. Only, in backing away, I can't see what's behind me, and I stumble and fall anyway.


• Also read a Discworld book: Equal Rites. Terry Pratchett somehow managed to mix feminism, magic, quantum mechanics, and many-worlds theory into a very appealing and coherent mix. I recommend!


• Watched "Devdas" (Bollywood! gorgeous but so tragic, *tear*) and Hitchcock's "Vertigo" (suspenseful with injections of trippy-ness) plus the end of "Jules et Jim" (totally bizarre and I never want to watch the whole movie). Also "Everything is Illuminated" which was beautiful and tragic but also shot through with hilarity.


• Making progress through Letham's Holy Trinity, finally! I only have 40 pages left. Far too much content to try to extract and summarize, because I don't have the theological background to create an outline of any sort. The point I've been dwelling on, though, is that worship reflects the nature of the Trinity--that in worshiping, we emulate the communion among the persons of the Trinity--that the love of the Father for the Son, the way the Son glorifies the Father, the way the Spirit reveals the Son--that, in attributing worth, these relations have the same essence as the worship that humans offer. Letham also points out that most of Christian worship actually isn't Trinitarian. Ultimately Christian worship should be centered around the God that is distinctly Christian, i.e., the triune God. But most of the hymns could just as easily apply to the God of Judaism or Islam. . . Strange thought.