from the world of the thesis

I've been doing much reading lately in order to get some grasp on what I am going to start writing my thesis on. Rather, to get background and material from which to spring. Here's something I read in Wendell Berry's "The Unsettling of America" that I found quite interesting (I found the entire book quite interesting, of course--but this particularly caught my eye after having lived in a conservative-Iowa-farming community for four years):

"The curious thing is that many agriculture specialists and "agri-businessmen" see themselves as conservatives. They look with contempt upon governmental "indulgence" of those who have no more "moral fiber" than to accept "handouts" from the public treasury--but they look with equal contempt upon the most traditional and appropriate means of [agricultural] independence. What do such conservatives wish to conserve? Evidently nothing less than the great corporate blocks of wealth and power, in whose every interest is implied the moral degeneracy and economic dependence of the people. They not esteem the possibility of a prospering, independent class of small owners [farmers] because they are, in fact, not conservatives at all, but the most doctrinaire and disruptive of revolutionaries."

On a different note, a paragraph on love from Madeleine L'Engle's journal-like book "Two-Part Invention," in which she is recollecting the early years of her marriage:

"I wrote in my journal how much I missed him, adding: ‘But the wonderful thing, whether we are together or apart, is to know that he is in the world, and that we belong together. And what I must learn is to love with all of me, giving all of me, and yet to remain whole in myself. Any other kind of love is too demanding of the other; it takes, rather than gives. To love so completely that you lose yourself in another person is not good. You are giving a weight, not the sense of lightness and light that loving someone should give. To love wholly, generously, and yet retain the core that makes you you."

If anyone is looking for a good read, do pick up some Madeleine L'Engle. Every single book of hers that I have read has impacted me and taught me about life and faith. Her novels are particularly fabulous...

Oh, and in response to a question in the last post: Justin and I will wed, Lord willing, on Decembber 20 in St. Catharines!