I just received an email from a friend in the English department. I’d love to hear anyone’s comments on the following email. I think she makes some great points. Here it is:

Okay, I haven’t totally lost my mind yet. That’s my disclaimer for you all before you read this. Hopefully, someone will sympathize with my meandering deep thoughts and give me a reply on this. Here goes:

Has anyone ever really thought about the importance of sheep in our culture and literature? I mean, I’m sure some historian at a small private university somewhere in the Midwest has spent a lifetime researching the role of sheep in the English speaking world. I just can’t find his book right now, so I have to flesh this out for myself.

Maybe the sheep have to do with me and my Irish heritage thing. But think about it, those of you also of Irish or Scottish heritage: Our
ancestors’ whole damn lives revolved around their animals. Namely, sheep. They wore their wool, ate their flesh, used them for currency and dowries for their daughters! The whole of Christianity is based around sheep metaphor. And there the critters are again, starring in Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love.” The overwhelming question here is, of course: Where have all the Sheep gone???

We have sacrificed our sheep to our greedy, postmodern urbanization!
We have betrayed our friends!

Seriously, we did leave the farm. But isn’t it ironic that the Scottish scientists chose Dolly the Sheep as their first cloned mammal? Don’t
you find that kind of poetic? Doesn’t it make you feel all proudly pastoral and Robert Burns-esque? Maybe not. But since I know no one is going to stoop to argue this one, I declare the British Sheep the Single Most Literary Animals in Our Language.

Baaaaaaaaaaahhhhh,

Ferris

I am on a low right now. I guess it was coming. I have been on a high all day. We had a really good study group for MA comps tonight. We studied for about 2.5 hours and made up some research for each of us. There were about eight of us there tonight. I am supposedly the authority on Renaissance lit. How fun.

I am in one of those contemplative moods right now. I sometimes have to wonder if I am not completely nuts. I just got depressed out of nowhere. I have to tell myself what I would tell my friend, “Quit sinning!” I miss a friend that I haven’t talked to in awhile though. I often think of the shortness of life. On a daily basis at least. I also think of death at least daily. I have to remind myself who I am. I am a sinner, but I am also in Christ. It is an odd thing to me. It is quite a glorious thing though. I also sometimes have fleeting thoughts like “What’s the point of getting married with such a short life?” That is when I KNOW I am going crazy

I am finally going to get a Louisiana license tomorrow. My Oklahoma license is quite tattered, and I am afraid that the airline officials will think I am Arab. I will be going to Washington/Idaho next week. I am trying to get excited about it. It is a weird thing about me, that I don’t really get excited about things until they’re here. I was quite excited about the Pastor’s Conference. That was quite an odd thing for me. I wasn’t disappointed.

I heard a typical reformed lecture about carnal Christianity yesterday. Typical Reformed theology can be so backwards sometimes. He showed three pictures with thrones, and each picture represented where sin, Christ, and ego were in relation to each other. The suggestion was your typical reformed answer, but it failed to take seriously baptized, covenant-breaking apostates. It simply acknowledged them as not elect. Where are the covenantal curses? It undermined the sacrament of baptism. What was particularly frustrating is that this man gave the same lecture a year ago, and I approached him after his lecture about it. He decided that he was in error and that my diagram was better. Well, when he taught it this time, I approached him again. I drew him what I believe was the correct diagram, and he said, “That’s it, you’re right.” Ahhh. I need to learn patience.

Thanks to John for pointing out these catechisms for me. I think these are beautiful.

Calvin’s Strasbourg catechism:

Q. Are you, my son, a Christian in fact as well as in name?
A. Yes, my father.

Q. How do you know yourself to be?
A. Because I am baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.

One of Bucer’s liturgies includes this catechism:

Q. Are you a Christian?
A. Yes.

Q. How do you know?
A. Because I have been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit.