Aristeia

ar•ist•e•i•a (noun)

A moment in an epic poem or other literary work in which a character has their finest moment or "time to shine"

from the Greek ἀριστεία for excellence.

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(This is my post to make up for my missed post on Tuesday)

Okey doke, I got a lot to say today and I have chapel in an hour. . . let's do this thing!

In Classical Backgrounds, we recently finished The Iliad, the earliest and one of the best epic poems ever written/recited.

In it, many different characters, Achaians (Greeks) and Trojans alike are given their epic moments were they perform what in contemporary terms we deem as:

MOMENTS OF SHEER, UNBRIDLED PWNAGE. 

Diomedes of the great war cry, swift-footed Achilleus, Hektor of the shining helm, Telemonian Aias, and Agamemnon the lord of men all are given opportunities to just own the crap out of all those with the gall to stand near them. It is just awesome.

Reading about people getting stabbed through the heart and having heir heart trying to dislodge the spear by beating faster sure is fun, but is also reminded me of some of the epic moments we witness in modern culture.

Mainly, I thought of two distinct individuals: Legolas and Mace Windu.

Some Seriously BA Fellows.

Neither of them are vital characters to their respective movie series, yet they both are given numerous opportunities to just beat the crap out of everybody.

Legolas gets an average of one awesome ownage scene per every half hour of LOTR footage And while Mace only has two movies in which he unsheathes his mighty purple motherfriendly decapitator, every time he does, you know it'll be amazing.

This is what I love about Classic Backgrounds to English Literature, it doesn't just apply to English Literature, but it applies to every aspect of culture that has been affected by the Greek myths (namely, all of Western society).

As an example for The Odyssey, we watched scenes from A New Hope and The Lion King. On a day I came in early to class, I had a ten minute discussion with a classmate about how nearly all fantasy and science fiction is about classical myths. A guy who sits in front of me is constantly making references to Warhammer, Fire Emblem and Nausikaa of the Valley of the Wind. (Nausikaa is the name of a princess in The Odyssey and a chapter in Ulysses about that character).

The other reason I brought up Legolas and Jules Windu is that they both remind me of that partircular friend you mentioned.

I agree wholeheartedly with every point you brought up in dissecting the article. I also have some other things I wish to say concerning the article, the reason it was written, the reason it was posted and a great deal of other things.

I'll just point out that duality has a great deal to do with religious argument because of gnostic ideals, which still permeate the church today, some of which I have been guilty of for many many years. It wasn't until my religious studies class that I realized my faulty logic pertaining to the duality of the spiritual and physical world. I'm not saying I had an epiphany right there and then and reformatted my entire faith-base and way of thinking, rather I began thinking about something I had always taken for granted and realized the dangers of not fully approaching every aspect of my faith with a want to understand.

Not understanding itself, but a want to understand. This is all we can do, for as much as we like to believe that we have the means to find all the answers of life, we can never know anything completely.

You mentioned that God is wholly perfect and wholly good, which reminded me of St. Thomas of Aquinas.

What I love about St. Thomas is how he argues and uses philosophical logic to prove the existence of God. He doesn't prove God by any means of science or tries to claim that this is possible. He only uses reason and logic, gifts given to us by God, and understanding that comes from divine revelation.

As Christians, we are always in danger of being overconfident in our abilities to understand God, and thus, all of creation. We often mistakingly believe that the more we understand God, the more we understand the universe. Both of these are completely impossible, as no one can completely and perfectly know God except for someone with complete knowledge who is therefore perfect. Thomas's axiom of all his arguments was that only God can fully know God.

However, one thing that we rely too much on is the ability of the human brain to understand the universe without God. This is also impossible, whether the universe is infinite or not. We are both limited and incomplete beings that can never fully understand anything, not even ourselves.

There was a physicist who wrote an article about Nuclear Technology. He argued that in Universities, people no longer learn anything. When we enter into a university context, we only learn what we want to learn instead of what we ought to know as human beings. The most comprehensive learning we ever do is in Grade 10 when we still have mandatory subjects we must participate in. As much as I may not enjoy Chemistry, Engineering or Mathematics, these are things I still need to know. Theses things are all around us as vital to modern day life.

This is why I attend a Liberal Arts University. With all the prerequisites to graduation, I have to take classes I would never normally take if I had the option. Yet I've learned way more from my Philosophy Psychology and Interdisciplinary Studies classes than I would have ever learned just in English. The more I learn, the more I see how interconnected all these fields are, in both concrete and completely abstract ways. I will never know everything, let alone scratch the surface of everything, but it is the pursuit of knowledge, not the end goals that keeps me going.

Because in that process of continuous learning and relearning, I find relationships. With friends and family, new and old. With a significant other, whom I am constantly learning new things about. And with God, who is infinite in His knowledge, His power and most importantly, His love.

I'll end with my favorite verse from, I just realized how ironic this is as I type, grade 10.

"Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed , for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is your faithfulness." -Lamentations 3:22-23

Tim, I intend to have a lengthy conversation with you concerning all of this tonight. Let me know more of your thoughts and I'll try to defend my own as best I can. 

See you tonight. congrats on the midterms (I still have one left, dagnabit!) and I love you.

-Clayton