January 2009 – a time of new beginnings

The Poem will be handed our during the first class on Monday.
Since it is January and it seems that Spring has no intention of gracing us with warm weather for quite some time yet, we may as well work on a few poems and stories that are somewhat light hearted. For this week’s poem, we will look at Robert Browning’s Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister. Some things you will need to know in order to appreciate this poem are:
1. Who was Brother Lawrence?
2. What is life like in a Spanish cloister? That would include the hours that a monk would have to keep.
3. What is the three-fold vow of a Monk and how does that relate to the speaker?
4. What text in Galatians is the narrator referring to in line 29?
For your paragraph this week: explain how the envy and anger of the narrator twists his mind so that he does not even realize what he is doing or how he is breaking his own vows. This may take more than a paragraph this time.
The short story will be handed out during the second class on Monday.
The short story for this week is somewhat disconcerting in some ways. So often we are rather arrogant about what we believe others should be like. We just wish they could be like us. What happens when someone comes into a community that has a completely different culture than that person, and he tries to change it into his culture? This short story (and I mean short) tells a tale of what could conceivably happen in such a culture.
Before you go and say that you would never do that, take a hard look at yourselves first. What has happened here in North America with the First Nations people? Western Europeans came here and forced most of the First Nations people to accept, against their will, ways that were foreign to their culture. This has had disastrous results.
And what about Houston Christian students and teachers? Do we condescend to those around us, because we are so superior? I hope not but I know this short story was a bit of a shock to me as I read through it.
Paragraph for the week: How could healing and restitution begin to take place between the principal, the community and the inspector? What would each have to do in order for ‘education’ to begin in this village?
I don’t have Language Power with me so I will assign it on Monday.
Welcome back and Happy New year.