Hey y'all! My name is Brianna Lockaby and I am 17 years old. I am a senior (thank goodness) and I plan on attending the University of South Carolina this coming fall to study education. Yes, I actually want to deal with little kids who cry and scream all day long. I am also in Student Council here at Wren and I love it!
Fun Fact: I have been to Disney World 17 times. (that is one time every year since birth and yes it gets very old)
February 26 Response: Genesis 1-3
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And God said, "let there be light" and there was light. And God said, "let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." And God said, "let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." "And God said" is such a powerful statement. To completely grasp the idea that God has the absolute power to simply create the whole universe in six days is completely amazing, and then decided to throw in a day of rest. With just one breath God created everything that we needed today. It's just awesome to think about! After God created the earth, he then created man out of his own image. To imagine that God created man out of dust is so cool. All it took was one breath and man became a living human being. God believed that Adam needed a companion so he then created woman out of the rib from Adam. Adam said "this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man." God says that man will leave his father and mother to be united with his wife and stand with her and become one flesh. God gave Adam and Eve one rule to follow and that was to not eat from the tree of life. Of course Satan saw this as an opportunity and struck with convincing Eve because she seemed weaker than Adam and which we find out to be true. The serpent convinces Eve that she will be like God if she takes the fruit, meaning she will know good and evil. Eve saw that the fruit was "good for food and pleasing to the eye," she couldn't resist, she took a bite and immediately offered some to Adam. It seems like it is our human nature to drag our friends or other people into our messes that we make. After eating the fruit, both of their eyes were open and they realized that they were naked and sewed leaves together to cover themselves. They heard God coming and felt ashamed, but through all this God showed so much mercy with them. He made them garments to cover their skin and then banished them from the Garden of Eden. This is an example of how merciful our God is. We deserve so much worse than what we actually get because we are so unworthy of His grace, but God is a loving and compassionate God and forgives us of our failures.
Partner Response February 28, 2013 I agree that the feats that God can do just blows my mind sometimes. He can do so much with just the blink of an eye or the snap of a finger. I feel that Adam and Eve eating from the tree of life was probably one of mankind’s biggest mistakes because it single handedly changed the way man would be able to live on Earth. Satan is very manipulative and loves to take advantage of a person’s weaknesses. It is very sadistic, but that is what Satin is and you can’t change that. I also agree that people always seem to want drag their friend s and loved ones into the sticky situations that they have created. I guess people just feel the need to put some of their burden on other people’s shoulders. And there is no doubt that God is so merciful. Everyday people defy him and turn away from him, but he is merciful and lets people use their free will to make their own choices. If God wasn’t so merciful, almost every person would be screwed because people screw up every day just like Adam and Eve screwed up when they ate from the tree.
March 8 Response: On the Marionette Theatre
To me it is really hard to imagine puppets and their movements as being graceful. Whenever I think of puppets I think of Pinocchio and how clumsy he was. It was really interesting to me how Kleist described the center of gravity for the puppets. He said that the way they are moved is by their center of gravity and when the center of gravity is moved," the limbs describe curves". Once moved, the puppet falls into a rhythmic movement that resembles dance. It seems to me that the dancer thinks very highly of the puppets, but that is just my opinion. It stuck out to me that it was said that the puppets would never be guilty of affection. When I think of dance I think of someone who puts their heart and emotions into their dance, and the puppet can't show that. The dancer claims that the limbs are just "lifeless, pure pendulums, governed only by the law of gravity." What really seemed to jump off the page and hit me in the face was when he said that "Misconceptions like this are unavoidable, now that we've eaten of the tree of knowledge, but Paradise is locked and bolted." Now I know this is supposed to have some significant meaning but honestly I have no idea what it means, but I am just glad that I actually saw this and just didn't look past it. One of the quotes that I really liked from this passage is "human spirit can't be in error when it is non-existent." By the time I got to the third page I was completely lost. I didn't understand why he started telling stories, it just didn't make sense to me. I thought it was cool though how he said that "we see that in the organic world, as thought grows dimmer and weaker, grace emerges more brilliantly and decisively.... Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in the god." What really threw me for a loop was when he asked if we have to eat from the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence, because that would mean that they think that sinning again would take back what Adam and Eve did which is just weird and would never happen.
Partner Response March 10, 2013 I agree that the dancer thinks very highly of the puppet and I think it is because he sees an inner beauty to the puppets dance and most people don’t see it. Also I agree that the best dancer put their heart and emotion into their dance and puppets can’t do that. However, a dancer can sometimes let their emotions get in the way of their dancing and that could be where Kleist sees that the puppets not having affection could be a good thing. Later when Kleist had the characters start telling stories, I feel that he was trying to help shed light on the characters point of view on the puppets being graceful. Like when the boy posed like the statue, he only was able to do it without using his consciousness. That helped prove his point that puppets are graceful because they have no consciousness to get in the way of the way they move and dance. I don’t think Kleist was trying to say that sinning again would cancel out the previous sins of Adam and Eve. More so, I think he was trying to say that if we were to eat from the tree of knowledge again, then theoretically we would have even more knowledge that would give us infinite consciousness. March 14 Response: The Cave When I first read this passage I really had no idea what they were saying. When we came to class the next time, Mr. Alexander drew a demonstration of what the cave theory was and it really started making sense to me. When the men were chained and faced towards the wall I can't imagine how much that would have sucked, but they had to have something to pass the time, which meant looking at the shadows on the wall. The people looked at the wall and shadows for so long that the shadows actually became real to them. When a prisoner was let go though when he turned around and saw the actual men walking by with pots he determined that that was an illusion and was not real. When he approached the light he was in great pain from the brightness while his eyes slowly adjust to new things, he has new realizations. For example, the reflections in the water and then actually looking up from the water to see the real things. I can't imagine what it would be like to see the sun and moon and stars for the first time after spending your whole life in darkness underground. He would be like a child, having to teach the child what is what and why it is called that would be such a hard task.
Partner Response March 17, 2013 I agree that the drawing Mr. Alexander showed us in class was very helpful because it helped me figure out how the cave was setup. The way it was described in the reading was kind of confusing. When the man was released I find it interesting how he found just knocked off the real people that he saw as being an illusion. I think he did this because of the way the human mind tends to think. The prisoner in a sense had faith in his thinking that the shadow was real and that the human was an illusion. I think it would be a beautiful and amazing thing to see the sun, moon and stars for the first time after being trapped in dark cave your whole life. I like your example of the prisoner being like a child and that he has to teach himself everything over again. I agree that this would be a very hard task especially since he has to learn everything over again because his reality is actually all an illusion. To be honest, if I was in the prisoner's shoes, I would just go back and live in the cave on my own because I wouldn't want to have to relearn everything I know.
March 21 Response: Book 2 I have to be honest, although I really did read both book 1 and book 2, I still have yet to completely understand what the heck they are talking about. It is so hard for me to comprehend this type of stuff so that's why I never participate in the group discussions. What was said in class today was that Book 2 is about a group of demons who are meeting in the castle which is in Hell, which is in Chaos. That in itself is hard for me to comprehend haha. It is so weird to actually think that one man could write something like this. Like who would think to write about a group of demons talking about a plan to disrupt earth? The group of demons, if I heard Mr. Alexander say it right, are planning an all out war on Heaven by force. Throughout the book, Satan manipulates the conversation. He plants the idea of going to Eden in Beelzebub's head for him to say out loud. Satan then plays it off by saying that since he is such a good man he will go to Eden, which is what he wanted the whole time. Satan made it seem like the task was too dangerous and volunteered it seem like to take one for the team. All in all I would have never understood this much if it wasn't for the class discussions.
Partner Response March 24, 2013 I would agree with you that Book 1 and Book 2 are confusing, but you shouldn’t be worried about it because Milton is hard to read and I would say that he is the hardest author that I have ever had to read. What you gathered from the class discussion seems to be the same interpretation that I got from it. I think the reason Milton wrote about the demons meeting is because he wanted to try to tell the story from Satan and the other demons’ point of view. Most of the things we hear always tend to come from the Christian’s point of view and I think Milton just wanted to try and get some of the bias out of the stories that we have heard. I feel that Milton still thinks that Satan is evil and what he and the other demons did was wrong, but he just wants to try help people understand why Satan did what he did. I find the class discussions to be very helpful and I also get a lot from them too. March 27 Response: Book 9-12
To me this was the easiest read to understand out of all of them, beasically because I knew what was going on so I kind of had an idea in mind of what was going on. Book 9 talks about how the fall of man came about. Eve basically wanted to split the work and separate, but Adam doesn't want to and fears that it is easier for temptation to take over either one of them. They split up and then Satan goes and finds Eve in the Garden and starts to butter her up. She is shocked to see a talking creature in the garden and Satan tells her that he got that wasy from eating fruit from the tree. He then convinces her to eat from the tree which is now the time that man has fallen. Eve goes and finds Adam to tell him what happened and she wants him to eat from the tree as well to be equal with her. Adam is horrified of the situation but decided that he can't live without her and eats the fruit. Book 11 is basically saying that God is going to send an angel down to earth to remove Adam and Eve from the garden. I thought it was so cool how it said "God accepts them." It shows that no matter how great a sin, God will accept you and love you unconditionally. He accepts the sinner, but not the sin. Michael the angel went to earth to remove them from the garden, but before they leave, Michael took Adam up a mountain and showed him the future of mankind. To me that would be so scary to know that you are in a perfect place and before you eyes you are watching the future of the world unfold and become a terrible thing. Book 12 continues with Michael and talks about how he led Adam and Eve to the gates of Paradise and made them leave. He placed a fiery sword at the entrance to protect Paradise. When this happened, Adam and Eve turned away with tears and walked to their new world. To me this would be absolutely terrible. Knowing that you were just banned from a perfect place because of one stupid mistake would make me cry for the rest of my life. I would not want to give up living in paradise for anything. It just shows how easy man is to give into temptation whenever something seems the slightest bit intriguing. Partner Response March 31, 2013
I agree that book 9-12 was a lot easier to understand because we already know some of the story. I basically got all of the same ideas out of these as you did; we just seemed to touch on a couple of different things. One thing I like that you mentioned was about God accepting Adam and Eve. This was something I kind of overlooked, but it is very important because it does show Gods love. Also I agree that I too would be upset for the rest of my life if I had just been banished from paradise for a stupid mistake. Man does give into temptation very easily and that was our downfall and it will continue to be our downfall. It kind of sucks because I couldn't be there for the class discussion to hear all of the other people’s thoughts, but I think you had some good thoughts and I was glad to hear them.
Hey y'all! My name is Brianna Lockaby and I am 17 years old. I am a senior (thank goodness) and I plan on attending the University of South Carolina this coming fall to study education. Yes, I actually want to deal with little kids who cry and scream all day long. I am also in Student Council here at Wren and I love it!
Fun Fact: I have been to Disney World 17 times. (that is one time every year since birth and yes it gets very old)
February 26 Response: Genesis 1-3
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And God said, "let there be light" and there was light. And God said, "let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." And God said, "let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." "And God said" is such a powerful statement. To completely grasp the idea that God has the absolute power to simply create the whole universe in six days is completely amazing, and then decided to throw in a day of rest. With just one breath God created everything that we needed today. It's just awesome to think about! After God created the earth, he then created man out of his own image. To imagine that God created man out of dust is so cool. All it took was one breath and man became a living human being. God believed that Adam needed a companion so he then created woman out of the rib from Adam. Adam said "this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man." God says that man will leave his father and mother to be united with his wife and stand with her and become one flesh. God gave Adam and Eve one rule to follow and that was to not eat from the tree of life. Of course Satan saw this as an opportunity and struck with convincing Eve because she seemed weaker than Adam and which we find out to be true. The serpent convinces Eve that she will be like God if she takes the fruit, meaning she will know good and evil. Eve saw that the fruit was "good for food and pleasing to the eye," she couldn't resist, she took a bite and immediately offered some to Adam. It seems like it is our human nature to drag our friends or other people into our messes that we make. After eating the fruit, both of their eyes were open and they realized that they were naked and sewed leaves together to cover themselves. They heard God coming and felt ashamed, but through all this God showed so much mercy with them. He made them garments to cover their skin and then banished them from the Garden of Eden. This is an example of how merciful our God is. We deserve so much worse than what we actually get because we are so unworthy of His grace, but God is a loving and compassionate God and forgives us of our failures.
Partner Response February 28, 2013
I agree that the feats that God can do just blows my mind sometimes. He can do so much with just the blink of an eye or the snap of a finger. I feel that Adam and Eve eating from the tree of life was probably one of mankind’s biggest mistakes because it single handedly changed the way man would be able to live on Earth. Satan is very manipulative and loves to take advantage of a person’s weaknesses. It is very sadistic, but that is what Satin is and you can’t change that. I also agree that people always seem to want drag their friend s and loved ones into the sticky situations that they have created. I guess people just feel the need to put some of their burden on other people’s shoulders. And there is no doubt that God is so merciful. Everyday people defy him and turn away from him, but he is merciful and lets people use their free will to make their own choices. If God wasn’t so merciful, almost every person would be screwed because people screw up every day just like Adam and Eve screwed up when they ate from the tree.
March 8 Response: On the Marionette Theatre
To me it is really hard to imagine puppets and their movements as being graceful. Whenever I think of puppets I think of Pinocchio and how clumsy he was. It was really interesting to me how Kleist described the center of gravity for the puppets. He said that the way they are moved is by their center of gravity and when the center of gravity is moved," the limbs describe curves". Once moved, the puppet falls into a rhythmic movement that resembles dance. It seems to me that the dancer thinks very highly of the puppets, but that is just my opinion. It stuck out to me that it was said that the puppets would never be guilty of affection. When I think of dance I think of someone who puts their heart and emotions into their dance, and the puppet can't show that. The dancer claims that the limbs are just "lifeless, pure pendulums, governed only by the law of gravity." What really seemed to jump off the page and hit me in the face was when he said that "Misconceptions like this are unavoidable, now that we've eaten of the tree of knowledge, but Paradise is locked and bolted." Now I know this is supposed to have some significant meaning but honestly I have no idea what it means, but I am just glad that I actually saw this and just didn't look past it. One of the quotes that I really liked from this passage is "human spirit can't be in error when it is non-existent." By the time I got to the third page I was completely lost. I didn't understand why he started telling stories, it just didn't make sense to me. I thought it was cool though how he said that "we see that in the organic world, as thought grows dimmer and weaker, grace emerges more brilliantly and decisively.... Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in the god." What really threw me for a loop was when he asked if we have to eat from the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence, because that would mean that they think that sinning again would take back what Adam and Eve did which is just weird and would never happen.
Partner Response March 10, 2013
I agree that the dancer thinks very highly of the puppet and I think it is because he sees an inner beauty to the puppets dance and most people don’t see it. Also I agree that the best dancer put their heart and emotion into their dance and puppets can’t do that. However, a dancer can sometimes let their emotions get in the way of their dancing and that could be where Kleist sees that the puppets not having affection could be a good thing. Later when Kleist had the characters start telling stories, I feel that he was trying to help shed light on the characters point of view on the puppets being graceful. Like when the boy posed like the statue, he only was able to do it without using his consciousness. That helped prove his point that puppets are graceful because they have no consciousness to get in the way of the way they move and dance. I don’t think Kleist was trying to say that sinning again would cancel out the previous sins of Adam and Eve. More so, I think he was trying to say that if we were to eat from the tree of knowledge again, then theoretically we would have even more knowledge that would give us infinite consciousness.
March 14 Response: The Cave
When I first read this passage I really had no idea what they were saying. When we came to class the next time, Mr. Alexander drew a demonstration of what the cave theory was and it really started making sense to me. When the men were chained and faced towards the wall I can't imagine how much that would have sucked, but they had to have something to pass the time, which meant looking at the shadows on the wall. The people looked at the wall and shadows for so long that the shadows actually became real to them. When a prisoner was let go though when he turned around and saw the actual men walking by with pots he determined that that was an illusion and was not real. When he approached the light he was in great pain from the brightness while his eyes slowly adjust to new things, he has new realizations. For example, the reflections in the water and then actually looking up from the water to see the real things. I can't imagine what it would be like to see the sun and moon and stars for the first time after spending your whole life in darkness underground. He would be like a child, having to teach the child what is what and why it is called that would be such a hard task.
Partner Response March 17, 2013
I agree that the drawing Mr. Alexander showed us in class was very helpful because it helped me figure out how the cave was setup. The way it was described in the reading was kind of confusing. When the man was released I find it interesting how he found just knocked off the real people that he saw as being an illusion. I think he did this because of the way the human mind tends to think. The prisoner in a sense had faith in his thinking that the shadow was real and that the human was an illusion. I think it would be a beautiful and amazing thing to see the sun, moon and stars for the first time after being trapped in dark cave your whole life. I like your example of the prisoner being like a child and that he has to teach himself everything over again. I agree that this would be a very hard task especially since he has to learn everything over again because his reality is actually all an illusion. To be honest, if I was in the prisoner's shoes, I would just go back and live in the cave on my own because I wouldn't want to have to relearn everything I know.
March 21 Response: Book 2
I have to be honest, although I really did read both book 1 and book 2, I still have yet to completely understand what the heck they are talking about. It is so hard for me to comprehend this type of stuff so that's why I never participate in the group discussions. What was said in class today was that Book 2 is about a group of demons who are meeting in the castle which is in Hell, which is in Chaos. That in itself is hard for me to comprehend haha. It is so weird to actually think that one man could write something like this. Like who would think to write about a group of demons talking about a plan to disrupt earth? The group of demons, if I heard Mr. Alexander say it right, are planning an all out war on Heaven by force. Throughout the book, Satan manipulates the conversation. He plants the idea of going to Eden in Beelzebub's head for him to say out loud. Satan then plays it off by saying that since he is such a good man he will go to Eden, which is what he wanted the whole time. Satan made it seem like the task was too dangerous and volunteered it seem like to take one for the team. All in all I would have never understood this much if it wasn't for the class discussions.
Partner Response March 24, 2013
I would agree with you that Book 1 and Book 2 are confusing, but you shouldn’t be worried about it because Milton is hard to read and I would say that he is the hardest author that I have ever had to read. What you gathered from the class discussion seems to be the same interpretation that I got from it. I think the reason Milton wrote about the demons meeting is because he wanted to try to tell the story from Satan and the other demons’ point of view. Most of the things we hear always tend to come from the Christian’s point of view and I think Milton just wanted to try and get some of the bias out of the stories that we have heard. I feel that Milton still thinks that Satan is evil and what he and the other demons did was wrong, but he just wants to try help people understand why Satan did what he did. I find the class discussions to be very helpful and I also get a lot from them too.
March 27 Response: Book 9-12
To me this was the easiest read to understand out of all of them, beasically because I knew what was going on so I kind of had an idea in mind of what was going on. Book 9 talks about how the fall of man came about. Eve basically wanted to split the work and separate, but Adam doesn't want to and fears that it is easier for temptation to take over either one of them. They split up and then Satan goes and finds Eve in the Garden and starts to butter her up. She is shocked to see a talking creature in the garden and Satan tells her that he got that wasy from eating fruit from the tree. He then convinces her to eat from the tree which is now the time that man has fallen. Eve goes and finds Adam to tell him what happened and she wants him to eat from the tree as well to be equal with her. Adam is horrified of the situation but decided that he can't live without her and eats the fruit. Book 11 is basically saying that God is going to send an angel down to earth to remove Adam and Eve from the garden. I thought it was so cool how it said "God accepts them." It shows that no matter how great a sin, God will accept you and love you unconditionally. He accepts the sinner, but not the sin. Michael the angel went to earth to remove them from the garden, but before they leave, Michael took Adam up a mountain and showed him the future of mankind. To me that would be so scary to know that you are in a perfect place and before you eyes you are watching the future of the world unfold and become a terrible thing. Book 12 continues with Michael and talks about how he led Adam and Eve to the gates of Paradise and made them leave. He placed a fiery sword at the entrance to protect Paradise. When this happened, Adam and Eve turned away with tears and walked to their new world. To me this would be absolutely terrible. Knowing that you were just banned from a perfect place because of one stupid mistake would make me cry for the rest of my life. I would not want to give up living in paradise for anything. It just shows how easy man is to give into temptation whenever something seems the slightest bit intriguing.
Partner Response March 31, 2013
I agree that book 9-12 was a lot easier to understand because we already know some of the story. I basically got all of the same ideas out of these as you did; we just seemed to touch on a couple of different things. One thing I like that you mentioned was about God accepting Adam and Eve. This was something I kind of overlooked, but it is very important because it does show Gods love. Also I agree that I too would be upset for the rest of my life if I had just been banished from paradise for a stupid mistake. Man does give into temptation very easily and that was our downfall and it will continue to be our downfall. It kind of sucks because I couldn't be there for the class discussion to hear all of the other people’s thoughts, but I think you had some good thoughts and I was glad to hear them.