Category: History

Thinking Thursday: Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

4/7/2016

Mr. Rumi was born in Persia. Mongol invasions drove him from Persia into Anatoli, Turkey. While in Turkey he meat Persian poets Attar and Shamas al-din Tabrizi and decided to devote himself to Sufism.

The substance of Sufism is the Truth and the meaning of Sufism is the selfless experiencing and actualization of the Truth. The practice of Sufism is the intention to go towards the Truth, by means of love and devotion. (source)

Sufism is the aesthetic and mystical interpretation of the Qur'an. It hasn't always been well accepted by the mainstream of Islamic belief. It was the Sufi concept of uniting with God through love that caught his attention.

Rumi became a teacher in the Sufi movement and as such believed that he was a medium between God and man.   He put a lot of emphasis on daily ritual prayers and litanys rather than analyzing the Qur'an.

He received various visions and shared them with others by writing them down in the form of poetry.

He believe that God is very present and that man is the link between the past and the future.   All of the past, present and future is all on one big continuum.    Everything is an endless cycle... death, decay, and life.... one dies and then is reborn again.

Rumi would say "I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as a plant and rose to animal and I was Man".

Since life and death are an endless circle we should not grieve death or loss.    We should continually strive for spiritual growth... and that spiritual growth will come through what drives our emotions... music, song, dance etc.   It does not come through reason.

Sufism, as Rumi taught it, was instrumental in turning Orthodox Christian Turkey to Islam.   His beliefs also affected fundamental Islamic beliefs.   Into the 20th century his beliefs are starting to gain ground in western civilization.. think less, emote more.

Point brought up by a reader who is more up in history than I am. :)

My appreciation to CN who says:

Turkey, a modern state, has always been officially Muslim . . The region where Turkey is, back then in the time of Rumi was known as Asia Minor, and was Orthodox Christian and a part of the Byzantine Christian Empire. .The region once taken by the Turks, known as Ottomans, became known as the Ottoman Empire and not until recent centuries has been known as Turkey. The Ottomans overtook this region and forced their religion onto whoever remained in a brutal manner, very similar to what is occurring in the Middle East today. Christians were forced to convert, flee or be enslaved or slaughtered. This is the truth. Many Christians during this time became what is known as Crypto Christians..ie. They appeared as Muslims, in order to survive, yet would worship secretly. Because of Turkeys poor tolerance of Christianity, up to 1,000,000 Crypto Christians still live in Turkey today. Turkey is not an Islamic nation because it converted, to Islam, but because its native inhabitants were forced to give up their nation and invaded by Muslims.

So I guess in short......there was no such thing as Orthodox Christian Turkey....only Orthodox Christian Asia Minor - aka part of the Byzantine Empire.

Today was better, not great, but better

4/5/2016

After two weeks of not getting much done in the way of schooling due to cold/flu running through the house, WOOT WOOT.. today I woke up with energy! (granted that energy ran away quickly and by 1 p.m. I was barely function and by 330 was shivering in a warm house). :) BUT HEY!!! Got some schooling done so YEAH!!!!!

Anyways, what did we get done?

The lad worked his way through Veritas Press History and Bible.
Then attacked his A+ Interactive Math.. he loves the short lessons. As long as he gets 80% or higher I don't require extra work.

After this we worked on our Homeschool Copywork. Took a bit of figure out what was wrong with my printer (hubby needed to help) but finally printed off enough sheets for the next bit. The lad is really enjoying the copywork for the Dragons in the Bible book.

Math, reading, science all done. YEAH!!!
To end our time as I was running out of brain power we did some reading.

The Natural World book had us reading about eels today, so we looked up garden eels on Youtube. They made us laugh.

Isn't God amazing with some of the creatures he has made??? Just amazing. :)

Hymn Study: How Blest is He Whose Trepass

3/5/2016

Psalm 32:1 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Lyrics

How blest is he whose trespass
Hath freely been forgiv’n,
Whose sin is wholly covered
Before the sight of Heav’n.
But he to whom Jehovah
Will not impute his sin,
Who has a guileless spirit,
Whose heart is true within.
While I kept guilty silence
My strength was spent with grief;
Thy hand was heavy on me,
My soul found no relief;
But when I owned my trespass,
My sin hid not from Thee,
When I confessed transgression,
Then Thou forgavest me.
So let the godly seek Thee
In times when Thou art near;
No whelming floods shall reach them,
Nor cause their hearts to fear.
In Thee, O Lord, I hide me,
Thou savest me from ill,
And songs of Thy salvation
My heart with rapture thrill.
I graciously will teach thee
The way that thou shalt go,
And with Mine eye upon thee
My counsel make thee know.
But be ye not unruly,
Or slow to understand,
Be not perverse, but willing
To heed My wise command.

First appearing in hymnals around 1910, Who Blest is He Whose Trespass is based on Psalm 32.

In researching this song there seems to be some confusion over who the composer of this song is. http://www.weebly.com/editor/main.php Some sources say unknown with the tune written by Chretien Urhan Rutherford, and others seeming to say that he was the composer and the tune writer, and yet others who say he composed it and someone else wrote the tune. I really don't know which is true.   Rutherford was an accomplished musician and fervent christian.

By all account Chretien was a serious minded fellow who loved music and lived an austere life, giving all he had to his music and to charity.   He was an equally fierce advocate for preserving the works of old masters, while being a strong proponent of the new.

He did however suffer a terrible death.   His last few years he lived in terrible poverty and he entertained thoughts of suicide, eventually choosing to do so by starving himself to death.   He couldn't be dissuaded otherwise and died surrounded by his friends. He may or may not have lost his faith in God at the very end.

You can see the hymn score here.

Copywork on Psalm 32 .

Q is for Query : What will you do for this child?

2/24/2016

This was the question posed to Robert Pierce one day as he worked for Youth for Christ doing evangelistic rallies in China. A lady presented him with a child who was sorely in need of care. She asked him "what will you do for this child"? He gave her $5 immediately, and every month thereafter, and so World Vision was on it's way to being founded. It took an additional three years before World Vision International was officially founded.

Robert Pierce, also known as Bob, was a post WWII man out to evangelize the world.   Strongly opposed to communism and strongly advocating the spread of the Christian Gospel worldwide, he thought spreading the Christian gospel was the best way to counteract the spread of communism.

Pierce started on his evangelistic journey travelling to China with Youth For Christ. His daughter Marilee Pierce Dunker later wrote "My father went to China a young man in search of adventure, and he came home a man with a mission."   He dragged his camera across Asia making films, which he showed to people, begging them to help just one child.   Can you help one child?     He desperately wanted to shake people out of their complacency and turn their hearts to God and helping children in need.

He was a man of strong emotion, leading with his heart, which was both a good and a not so good thing.   It helped him talk with large groups of people and they could see his heart for the children he was so desperate to help which in turn help them to see and feel the need to help these children but the flip side was his anger and he would have angry clashes with the Board of World Vision.

The ministry was conceived in 1947, founded in 1950, formal sponsorship beginning in 1953, Pierce left the organization in 1957.

Click image to go to source: Samaritan's Purse

Pierce put his ministry first and the needs to fund it he considered more important than minding his own family. He would say "that I'll take care of [God's] helpless little lambs overseas if he'll take care of mine at home". He was legally separated from his wife, lost a daughter to suicide, and was estranged from his family until four days before his eventual death.

He worked tirelessly for World Vision except when his health and mental stasis determined otherwise. Clashes with the board led to his being fired. From his efforts an organization that now cares for more than 1/2 a million children worldwide was made.

He also helped in the formation of Samaritan's Purse. It was a small hunger organization when he took over running it in 1970. He continued to be lead by his statement "Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God." He lead this organization until Franklin Graham took it over. He died in 1978 from leukemia.

Click image to go to Link Up

Digging Deeper in Learning

2/21/2016

My lad and I continue reading through a variety of books at night.
Currently we are reading about temperate forests, a novel (just finished Weekends with Max and his Dad), my boy's read out-loud book (Currently learning about zebras), Mammals and a book on railroads.

Sometimes we read about items that spur on our interest. Tonight we had to look up what the oldest trees were and discovered that most old trees are from the conifer family. The oldest being over 5,000 years old, this news stunned my my lad.

We have also recently learned about Caracals and the 8th wonder of the world (built in Canada.. a railroad bridge). Both of these items intrigued us, so I told the lad I'd research them a bit and see what else we can learn.

First up, the Caracal. For those of you who don't know, a caracal is a type of wild cat. Check out the sheer beauty of these cats.

click on image to go to source: zoological society

Caracals are a wild cat living in Africa and Asia. They eat a variety of local game such as Hyraxes, medium-sized antelope and deer, birds of all sizes, rodents, and reptiles. In our mammals book we learned that they eat A LOT of birds, to the extent of killing ostriches. It is a very versatile and agile hunter and the size of the animal does not deter it from using it as a food source. It prefers to live in dry woodland and savannah.

Even though it has ear tufts like the lynx, the caracal is most closely related to the serval and the African golden cat. Other than it's facial markings, the Caracal is a reddish brown cat with no other markings.

The agility of these cats has had them trained by nobility to be personal hunting animals. You can see the caracal's agility in the video below.

Next we move along to a bridge in Canada.

Click on image to go to source: History of Victoria Bridge

Once known as the Eighth Wonder of the World the Victoria Tubular Bridge was built in 1859 over the St. Lawrence River at Montreal.

In it's day the bridge was considered an engineering marvel. It's an industrial bridge, not designed to be pretty in any way. As such, it is still in use today... still providing safety for rail cars trundling over the river.

Originally designed for rail traffic, it confounded all the skeptics … and there were many of them in 1850 who doubted that a structure this size could be successfully built..... Whatever the cost, this city surrounded by water had to be linked to the vast U.S. market. The Grand Trunk Railway launched a gigantic construction project, and the celebrated engineer Robert Stephenson drew up the plans for a tubular structure made of riveted iron plates.

Moses Maimonides: God has no Attributes

2/17/2016

Moses Maimonides (original name Moses ben Maimon) was a Jewish Philosopher who followed Aristotelian thought. He was also a jurist and physician. He wrote a variety of books on Jewish law and Aristotelian thought.

Maimonides didn't like it when people anthropomorphized God.   He thought it was the worst mistake of all to take the Torah as literal truth and to think that God is a bodily thing. He believed this so strongly that he thought anyone believing this should be excluded from the Jewish community.

He developed a strand of thought known as Negative Theology.   In this strand of thought God is described by saying what he is not.

He would say that God has no attributes.    Because attributes are either accidental (something that you can change) or essential (something that you must be).   Since God cannot change (has no accident attributes) and God cannot be described (has no essential attributes) ergo God has no attributes.

Click on image to go to source: quotes

Maimonides issue with definition of God is that we CANNOT define God we can ONLY define what God does. So God can act loving, protective, powerful and so forth but we cannot use those words to actually describe God. For instance, we can say that God is a creator which shows what God does... And if one does use a descriptor with God you must use the double negative to describe him. For instance, God is powerful means that if you want to describe God you would need to say that God is not powerless. Only the negations really show us who God is.

Maimonides early life was easy. Growing up as a Jewish boy in Cordoba. Religious freedom was a given. This ended when a Muslim sect the Almohads took control. They didn't allow the practice of Judaism. The Maimons acted Muslim in public, but practiced their Judaism in secret. They eventually found this too difficult and gradually found their way to Egypt where they could openly practice their faith. He needed to end his studies when his father died and his wealthy brother perished, so he became a physician in order to support his family.

MY THOUGHTS:
Personally I think Maimonides was picking at straws a bit. How is it so different to say that God is powerful then to say that God is not powerless? Isn't that saying the same thing?

I do think he showed some wisdom in insisting that we not anthropomorphize God. God is SO MUCH greater than people are that to say that God is love so often limits people to how they understand love and that limits God. God should not be limited by our finite understanding of who God is infinitely.

Sources:
Britannica.
The Philosophy book
Chabad.

Hymn Study: Ah holy Jesus, how hast thou offended

2/10/2016

Isaiah 53:4 (NIV)
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.

Lyrics

1 Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended,
that we to judge thee have in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by thine own rejected,
O most afflicted!

2 Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee!
'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee;
I crucified thee.

3 Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered;
the slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered.
For our atonement, while we nothing heeded,
God interceded.

4 For me, kind Jesus, was thy incarnation,
thy mortal sorrow, and thy life's oblation;
thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion,
for my salvation.

5 Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee,
I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee,
think on thy pity and thy love unswerving,
not my deserving.

United Methodist Hymnal, 1989

Sunday we celebrated Lord's Supper and had a good sermon to go along with it.   This hymn was part of that service. It's a quiet type of hymn to sing.

This hymn was written by Johann Heermann, who, when he was young got quite ill. His mother promised that if he recovered she would train him up for the ministry.     She needed to beg money in order to do so, but he was educated. He eventually made it to the University of Strausburg but health problems led to his return to Baudten.

His life was fraught with illness. He was born in Poland.

He eventually became deacon at Konen, and later was a pastor.   He needed to stop preaching when he had an illness in his throat.

This hymn was written during the 30 Years when many folk where feeling introspective about their views.   The original name of the hymn was Herzliebster Jesu and was translated into English by Robert Bridges.    His own personal tragedies also led added insight into this hymn as he reflected on Christ's death and his own part in it.

Sources:
Wiki.
Rankin File.
Etymology.
Hymnary.
Songs and Hymns.

Teaching Children about the Lord's Supper:
PDF's on teaching children. One. Two. Three.
Christ Centered.
Bible Fun For Kids.

When Books Surprise

1/28/2016

Have you ever come across an unexpected treasure?
Something that is better than you think it might be? Or comes in a boring package?

Unassuming little book eh?
Brown cover. No fly cover.
Nothing really to draw your eye to it.
It has definitely seen better days.
I have to admit... I almost tossed it in the for sale bin... but something, God perhaps, caused me to say.. why don't we read it first?

Written by Joyce Reason, To be A Pilgrim is the story of the Life of John Bunyan.   My son and I have read this over the past couple of weeks. 13 Chapters, reading one chapter every school day.     It was a neat little book.   Published in 1961,

My son and I found it interesting how thick the paper was.   We would often have to double-check that we weren't turning more than one page because that's how it felt.

Reading this book gave us a good feel for how life was at the time.
How tough it was to be one of the poor people, and not part of the elite.
Before reading this book I knew that Bunyan spent a good deal of time in prison, I wasn't aware that a good portion of it was without justification... judges who didn't like Bunyan refusing to give him a writ of release.

Such an abuse of power.
But God used it to bring about good things.   Without his time of despair in prison, would Bunyan have had time to think about the story of the Pilgrim's Progress?   He would have been so busy pastoring his people.   His time in solitude and confinement gave him time to experience despondency and realize more deeply his need for the Lord.

When we finished reading this book my lad said "I liked the book mom".   I know that he was involved in it as he often asked questions "Why could they do that mom?   Why didn't they make a rule that you had to let people out of jail when their time was up?   Why could rich people do things like that?   MOM!   They destroyed his stuff just because he wanted to go to a different church.. that's not fair!!!"    He was not happy with how the rule of the land was in those days.

What a great way to teach history and how much has changed, while yet so much stays the same eh?

So one unassuming book... became a book we are glad we read. :)

Thinking Thursday: Averroes (Ibn Rushd)

1/28/2016

Averroes is the Latinized name for Ibn Rushd, an Arabic philosopher who followed the Aristolean view on Philosophy. He believed that philosophy and religion are not incompatible.

Averroes believed that "only the educated elite are capable of thinking philosophically and everyone else would be obligated to accept the teaching of the Qur'an literally". (page 82, philosophy book) He said this while believing that the Qur'an was not accurate, but had a poetic closeness which was good enough for the masses...ergo they should believe it as is, but the educated should use philosophy to explain and understand it.

He wrote several books among them the Decisive Treatise on the Agreement Between Religious Law and Philosophy, Examination of the Methods of Proof Concerning the Doctrines of Religion, and The Incoherence of the Incoherence. His position in life was that of chief judge who worked under the Almohads, one of the strictest Islamic regimes in the middle ages. They were slowly becoming less rigid, but not at the speed that Averroes was learning/teaching.

Averroes had no issues dismissing or changing some Muslim tenet beliefs if it didn't fit his philosophy though. For instance, the Muslim belief in the resurrection of the dead, he says we must believe in personal immortality but we don't really have souls it's just our shared intellect that survives. And our bodies die.. no one really survives forever.

He lived in a time when most Muslims believed that philosophy was not a legitimate form of study. He ended up exiled (with his books banned) from his homeland for two years because popular opinion was against him.

Sources:
philosophy book
IEP.
Britannica.
Humanities.

click image to go to source: quotes

Canada: Nova Scotia

1/22/2016

Today my son did our introductory work for Nova Scotia. I found this page from Crayola and printed it off and used it as the basis of some study.

As you can see on the page it talked about Canada's provincial flower. We learned more about the Mayflower here. and then had a chance to see a real one via video. We were amazed by the huge proboscis on the bee fly.

The Osprey in the provincial Bird. The Osprey is a fish eating bird. Therefore they are generally found around water... streams, lakes, oceans etc. The gripping pads on their feet help them hang onto their fish after they dive 9-30 metres into the water after them. it's rather neat... if osprey have to carry a large fish for quite some distance they will orient the fish so that it has the least wind resistance. :) Cool how God built that intelligence into them.

Bald eagles will share the same habitat with them, being larger they will often force an osprey to drop it's fish and take it for it's own meal. Osprey have a black stripe extending from their eye to their back, and it's one of the ways you can distinguish it from the bald eagle.

They have a staggered nesting season, which means in times of poverty the older bigger offspring eat while the smaller ones will starve.

My son really liked what happened in this video.

We filled in our Canada map showing where Nova Scotia was located and it's capital.

click on image to go to source

We also learned the history of the flag. The crest being from old Scottish roots. It is the St. Andrews cross in the reverse colours with the Scottish coat of arms. Nova Scotia stands for "New Scotland". For a brief period of time they used a different flag/coat of arms issued by Queen Victoria, but it was not well received, so the old flag and coat of arms was again put to use.