Mary and Martha

Something has been weighing on my heart for the past few months - the sacrosanctness of books. Why? Why are books so exalted while television and even radio is looked down upon? What have books done to make them so holy, so untouchable, whereas "Turn off that darn TV!!" is a constant phrase in my own home. Can't books be just as smutty, just as frivolous, just as vapid as television? Don't try to tell me that The Devil Wears Prada is somehow automatically better simply by being in book form than "The Bells of St. Mary's" . Yet, that is exactly what people seem to mean when I hear them screech, "Turn off the stupid TV and read a book!" Reading is just as sedentary an activity as television, it will ruin your eyes faster than television, but, for some reason, the fact that books force you to imagine the story yourself rather than it being shown to you is held as the evidence that books are inherently better. Why am I suddenly posting this now w...

I just got back from a weekend in D.C. with EJ. We visited Mt. Vernon on Saturday and the National Air and Space Museum on Sunday (can you guess which place was picked by whom? =P). It was so much fun. I'm taking a special studies class on C.S. Lewis and am learning oodles and gobs about the man and his works. In a way, knowing that he wasn't perfect - and that, yes, it's perfectly fine if I don't agree with everything he says - has helped me gain a greater appreciation for his works. We've read The Great Divorce and Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer , the teacher has outlined for us the arguments in The Personal Heresy and we're now working on An Experiment in Criticism . The professor is constantly forcing us to engage in debates over Lewis' viewpoints, but I don't usually participate in them, preferring to sit back and form my own opinions quietly. The same few people are usually the ones arguing and, often enough, they haven't thought throu...