Jim Janknegt

We live about 25 miles east of Austin in the country and like to garden. Right now we are growing potatoes, onions, greenbeans, asparagus, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, squash and hot peppers. We also raise chickens and goats. My wife is learning to make cheese. We try and preserve as much as we can. Last fall I began an experiment with aquaponics, like hydroponics, except instead of all the chemicals you cycle water from a large (300 gallon in my case) fish tank through grow beds. There is bacteria in the grow beds that converts the fish poop to fertilizer for the plants while it purifies the water for the fish. It is a closed system except for the fish food. You grow veggies and fish to eat using about 10% of the water used in a dirt garden. So far my experiment seems to be working, already eating tomatoes I started last fall as well as kale, broccoli, carrots and chard. So far my catfish aren't big enough to eat but some day...

My favorite movie about artists is The Horse's Mouth staring Alec Guiness as a shifty, dishonest, obsessive artist. The movie is hilarious, not something you can say about most movies about artists. IMBD: The Horse's Mouth

Perhaps reading Mr. Berry will inspire you to dig up your yard and plant a vegetable garden. But if you have a brown thumb, perhaps not. I have a vegetable garden. If we ate weeds and grasshoppers, we'd be set.

Read some Wendell Berry.

This is the earliest known narrative crucifixion and depicts Jesus with a loincloth, from around 420.

I think so too, and this is a point Darrel and I pursued in one of the previous threads. Man and woman in coital union form in a sense a teleological unity. The joining of individual reproductive systems forms a single reproductive super-system, a shared reproductive act in which the individual reproductive functions of each is completed by the other. Even if actual reproduction does not take place or is not possible, it is still an act with a shared reproductive teleology -- a shared act, biologically speaking, of attempted reproduction. The male system attempts to deliver seed into the female reproductive tract, which attempts to receive them so that they can attempt to flagellate around in a quest for an ovum that the vast majority of them will certainly not find, and that may not be there at all, but that it is nevertheless their purpose to seek, and which will be there if it is anywhere to be found. This is a radically different act than acts that merely juxtapose the reproductive system with, say, the digestive system (at either end), or which involve mutual, separate stimulation of reproductive organs (e.g., by means of toys). With such an act, the teleological unity of conjugal union is not merely possible but forbidden, it is not possible. If the act involves a man with another man (or one man by himself, or with anything or anyone other than a woman, in any other act than coitus), the male organ may still go through the motions of delivering seed, but there is no reception of seed into the reproductive tract in which lies their raison d'etre. What fellowship hath sperm with the digestive tract (male or female)? "No, but God knows we keep trying." This one-liner from Milk in response to a question about whether two men can reproduce, quoted by Darrel, applies just as aptly to the question "Can two men become one flesh?" Thanks for that very clear explanation. As always, you say things I wish I could say but can't. You have a gift of clear thinking and explanation.

Be fruitful and multiply! What about the objection to homosex that it is not fruitful in the sense that it has nothing to do with procreation? The traditional notion of sex is that it has two parts, one unitive and one procreative. When the procreative part is removed then the unitive part gets distorted into sex as recreation. Then anything pretty much goes, divorce, adultery, masturbation, homosex, fornication, contraception, abortion, sex with animals, sex with children, sex with dead people. If it floats your boat, go for it. Ii seems to me the church needs to return to the idea that procreation is the main reason God created sex, to insure that children get the chance to grow up in a stable family. If we take this seriously, the first step for most Christians would be to stop contracepting and have a big family.

This is pretty amazing. Sistine Chapel

I am trying to become a Thomist :-) I have recently read: The Christian Philosophy Of St Thomas Aquinas by Etienne Gilson Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide by Edward Feser Reality and Painting by Etienne Gilson Art and Scholasticism by Jacques Maritain On the fiction side I have read several novels by Wendell Berry, one I am rereading for our book group: Hannah Coulter. Berry's novels have really struck a chord in me. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen For my devotional reading I am spending more time reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Spiritual Diary: Selected Sayings and Examples of Saints which is an amazing book. For each day of the year there is a quotation from a saint and then a commentary. Each month is devoted to a different virtue, like March is mortification. Very profound stuff.

I like the cowboys, too. They have a great sense of humor and don't seem to be taking things too seriously. You definitely have to give the guy credit for doing the bungee jump with his hat ON. I was sure it was going to come off. But it stayed put. My cowboy hat will come flying off when I am just walking across the field. I was also glad to see the detectives step up a bit.

My point is that both human creativity and human reasoning are equally reflections of divine activity. If anything, reason more so than creativity, since God is not essentially Creator, but he is essentially Logos. Creation itself is a plan of divine reason. People might play dice for entertainment. Chess is different. You play chess for the beauty, elegance, complexity, logic, mathematics of the thing. It is as much a passion as a pastime. Must get around to seeing it sometime. Right after, you know, the other 48. I have never had enough "reason" to play chess so I just paint. You, SDG, have it in boatloads and I know better than to argue philosophy with you! If you say chess is a reflection of the divine, so be it.

Is atheistic chess any less of a contradiction than atheistic art? Isn't all human reasoning a reflection of the divine Logos? If you are an honest nihilist, is chess any more fulfilling than art? Chess, being a game, has as its end the entertainment of those playing. The end of art is to create a new "being", the work of art. While it is not creating from nothing it is still a work of creation, which playing a game is not.

I think, in one sense, atheistic art is categorically impossible. Any act of creativity is analogous to the creative act of God, so it is life affirming and has meaning. I think of Marcel Duchamp, one of the founders of Dada, who ultimately quite making art and spent his time playing chess because he was an honest nihilist.