un·fath·om·able

fath·om

n.

A unit of length equal to 6 feet, used principally in the measurement and specification of marine depths.

tr.v.

1. To penetrate to the meaning or nature of; comprehend.

2. To determine the depth of; sound.

How do we, with finite minds and limited vocabulary, express our absolute inability to understand the enigmas of our lives? We say that we cannot . . .

• grasp them

• get a handle on them

• wrap our heads around them

Even in the origins of the word "fathom," we find the sense of "stretching out the arms" to "embrace."  We are saying of the unfathomable, "I cannot get my arms around you!"

In expressions like these, we cry,  

"I am using every ounce of myself -- 

my mind, my heart, even my body -- 

to figure this out!"

In reply, the synonyms of "unfathomable" (bottomless, boundless, endless, fathomless, horizonless, illimitable, immeasurable, indefinite, limitless, measureless, unbounded, infinite, unlimited) shout back,  

"It is beyond you!"

The poet gives up and writes,

We are so tired; my heart and I

Of all the things here beneath the sky

Only one thing would please us best -

Endless, unfathomable rest.

~ Mathilde Blind

We long for that "unfathomable rest" because we know that it is both blessed and sure. While we wait, though, we are faced with our inabilities and the need to find rest for our souls.

Come to Me, 

all you who labor and are heavy laden, 

and I will give you rest.

~ Matthew 28:11

Dearest Lord, 

Surely You are the only one who fathoms what none of us can. You are infinite, sovereign over all, ever wise and unconditionally loving. Let me join my voice with this sweet one and sing . . .

From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea
Creation's revealing Your majesty
From the colors of fall to the fragrance of spring
Every creature's unique in the song that it sings, all exclaiming

Indescribable, uncontainable
You placed the stars in the sky
And You know them by name
You are amazing God

All powerful, untamable
Awestruck we fall to our knees
As we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God

Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go
Or seen heavenly storehouses laden with snow
Who imagined the sun and gives source to its light
Yet conceals it to bring us the coolness of night, none can fathom

Indescribable, uncontainable
You placed the stars in the sky
And You know them by name
You are amazing God

All powerful, untamable
Awestruck we fall to our knees
As we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God
Yes, You are amazing God

Indescribable, uncontainable
You placed the stars in the sky
And You know them by name
You are amazing God

You are all powerful, untamable
Awestruck we fall to our knees
As we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God

You are indescribable, uncontainable
You placed the stars in the sky
And You know them by name
You are amazing God

Incomparable, unchangeable
You see the depths of my heart
And You love me the same
You are amazing God
You are amazing God

~Laura Story

~ End Quote

Note:

Beneath one online dictionary entry was the question,

"What made you want to look up unfathomable?"

I thought, "Got a few days?"

Monkey Cage at Nightfall

This afternoon, in the midst of some cyberstrolling, I discovered an article entitled "Taming the Mind Monkey." I have a pretty vivid imagination, and I immediately thought,

"Mind Monkey! That is my brain!"

How many times have I described my mind as that of a storm, or a ping-pong game, or a cacophony seriously lacking an "off" switch? I went straightway to the chapter in the book and read a little, lighting upon another phrase: "mind chatter." How very apropos . . . how very moi!

Being unfamiliar with the author and with the terms, I just assumed she had coined the phrases. Not so. The phrase "mind monkey" or "monkey mind" comes from Chinese and Japanese words that mean "heart-/mind-monkey" and the phrase is defined as "unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable." Now, when I feel like my mind is "monkin' around" (to borrow some Jungle Book movie lyrics), not all of that definition would apply, but "unsettled" and "restless" would be pretty accurate.

C. H. Spurgeon, in his sermon "The Peculiar Sleep of the Beloved," describes the inability to sleep this way: "You imagine if you fix your mind upon a certain subject until it shall engross your attention, you will then sleep; but you find yourself unable to do so. Ten thousand things drive through your brain as if the whole earth were agitated before you. You see all things you ever beheld dancing in a wild phantasmagoria before your eyes. You close your eyes, but still you see; and there be things in your ear, and head, and brain, which will not let you sleep." (Phantasmagoria* -- now that's a new one for this logophile!)

What a comfort it is to know that there is One who can give sleep to those He loves,

"…for so He gives His beloved sleep."

~Psalm 127:2

that restlessness is not forever, that my very soul can find rest in Him.

"Come to Me, all you who labor

and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

~Matthew 11:28

Before I close, I will let Mr. Spurgeon give you the entire introduction to that sermon. It's longish, but good. Even before I let him speak, though, I would invite you to listen to Mr. Ortega as he prays in song . . .

(Please pardon the 10 second wait at the beginning of this.)

Jesus, King of angels, heaven's light,

Shine Your face upon this house tonight.


Let no evil come into my dreams;


Light of heaven, keep me in Your peace.

Remind me how You made dark spirits flee,

And spoke Your power to the raging sea.

And spoke Your mercy to a sinful man;


Remind me, Jesus, this is what I am.

CHORUS:


The universe is vast beyond the stars,


But You are mindful when the sparrow falls,

And mindful of the anxious thoughts

That find me, surround me, and bind me . . . .

With all my heart I love You, Sovereign Lord.


Tomorrow, let me love You even more.


And rise to speak the goodness of Your name

Until I close my eyes and sleep again.

CHORUS

Jesus, King of angels, heaven's light,


Hold my hand and keep me through this night.

~Fernando Ortega

"The sleep of the body is the gift of God. So said Homer of old, when he described it as descending from the clouds and resting on the tents of the warriors around old Troy. And so sang Virgil, when he spoke of Palinurus falling asleep upon the prow of his ship. Sleep is the gift of God.

We think that we lay our heads upon our pillows, and compose our bodies in a peaceful posture, and that, therefore we naturally and necessarily sleep. But it is not so. Sleep is the gift of God; and not a man would close his eyes, did not God put his fingers on his eyelids; did not the Almighty send a soft and balmy influence over his frame which lulled his thoughts into quiescence, making him enter into that blissful state of rest which we call sleep.

True, there be some drugs and narcotics whereby men can poison themselves well nigh to death, and then call it sleep; but the sleep of the healthy body is the gift of God. He bestows it; he rocks the cradle for us every night; he draws the curtain of darkness; he bids the sun shut up his burning eyes; and then he comes and says, "Sleep, sleep, my child; I give thee sleep."

Have you not known what it is at times to lie upon your bed and strive to slumber? and as it is said of Darius, so might it be said of you: "The king sent for his musicians, but his sleep went from him." You have attempted it, but you could not do it; it is beyond your power to procure a healthy repose. You imagine if you fix your mind upon a certain subject until it shall engross your attention, you will then sleep; but you find yourself unable to do so. Ten thousand things drive through your brain as if the whole earth were agitated before you. You see all things you ever beheld dancing in a wild phantasmagoria before your eyes. You close your eyes, but still you see; and there be things in your ear, and head, and brain, which will not let you sleep. . .

O my friends, how thankful should we be for sleep. Sleep is the best physician that I know of. Sleep hath healed more pains of wearied bones than the most eminent physicians upon earth. It is the best medicine; the choicest thing of all the names which are written in all the lists of pharmacy. . .

Ye know not, my friends, how much ye owe to God, that he gives you rest at night. If ye had sleepless nights, ye would then value the blessing. If for weeks ye lay tossing on your weary bed, ye then would thank God for this favour. But as it is the gift of God, it is a gift most precious, one that cannot be valued until it is taken away; yea, even then we cannot appreciate it as we ought."

~C.H. Spurgeon

"May the Lord of peace Himself give you peace always in every way."

~ II Thessalonians 3:16

As my mother and her mother would say,

"Sweet dreams!"

~ End Quote

*The word originated early in the 19th century as the name of a "magic lantern" exhibition, taken from the French word, "phantasmagorie" ("image" + "assembly"). The word is defined as "a shifting scene of many elements." Pretty boring definition, if you ask me. The word sounds and feels like so much more! Go on, say it aloud. Isn't that rich?

1517

[just another little Photoshoppish creation]

Martin Luther (not King, the other one)

It is as impossible to separate works from faith as burning and shining from fire.

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

First I shake the whole apple tree that the ripest might fall. Then I climb the tree and shake each limb, and then each branch, and then each twig, and then I look under each leaf.

Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.

You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.

There is no justification without sanctification, no forgiveness without renewal of life, no real faith from which the fruits of new obedience do not grow.

Grant that I may not pray alone with the mouth; help me that I may pray from the depths of my heart.

I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.

~ End Quote

Brand Spanking New

Man's mind, stretched by a new idea,
never goes back to its original dimensions.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The original sense of brand is 'a burning piece of wood in or just taken from a fire'; other senses (e.g., 'a mark made by burning with a hot iron'; 'an identifying mark (of any sort)'; and 'a distinctive kind, class, etc.') all derive from this.

The expression brand-new literally means 'new as if fresh from the fire'. It is first found in the late sixteenth century. A semantically similar expression is fire-new, which is found in Shakespeare ("Your fire-new stamp of honor is scarce current"--Richard III) and elsewhere from the sixteenth century onwards.

The spelling bran-new is surprisingly common; it is recorded as early as 1715 in the works of the playwright John Gay and pops up frequently thereafter ("He adjusted his hat upon his head with as much care, real or pretended, as if it were a bran-new one of the most expensive quality"--Dickens, Nicholas Nickelby (1839); "We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and a bran-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and..."--Twain, Huckleberry Finn (1884)). It is, however, now generally regarded as an error. The spelling is a folk-etymology that arises from the pronunciation; the -d- in brand-new is not really pronounced, and the origin of brand isn't clear, so we see bran-new. A similar phenomenon leads to ice cream or ice tea: the -d in iced isn't pronounced and gets dropped.

Since someone is bound to ask about the phrase brand spanking new: This spanking, which is of uncertain though possibly Scandinavian origin, is a seventeenth-century word with such meanings as 'quick; vigorous'; 'unusually fine, large, striking, etc.'; and as an adverb 'exceptionally; strikingly'. There is also a much earlier (thirteenth-century) expression span-new (also, in combination with our phrase, brand-span-new), where this span is a word of Old Norse origin meaning 'a chip of wood'; span-new is now chiefly dialectal.

Thanks, Random House!

~ End Quote

Full Heart, Empty Page

The writer's joy is the thought
that can become emotion,
the emotion that can
wholly become a thought.
~ Thomas Mann






The setting: Filled with what I think are thoughts that I want to share, I sit down to write, and suddenly I am staring at a blank page – sometimes I stare at it for a very long time. I type a little, delete some or all, type some more, and edit, edit, edit. At times, I don’t even get that far – it’s just me, my full heart, and my empty page. I have never been concise, but it seems that the older I get, the more difficult it is for me to pin down exactly what I want to say, regardless of the length of my writing. My handwritten letters didn’t get edited, and they seemed to be far more successful than my email endeavors at communicating how I feel. What gives?

Sometimes the things I feel, especially those that I feel most deeply, do not translate perfectly into words. I just don’t believe there exists a measure of words for every feeling. Perhaps there once did; if so, then over time those words have become hollow through overuse, abuse, and/or redefinition – to the extent that they fall short of what I want to say, what I wish I could say, what someone else might long to hear me say.

It’s not that I have not searched my existing vocabulary, ransacked the plethora of thesauri at my disposal, and even prayed. I have wearied myself countless times doing just that; still, despite all of my efforts, I only come close, at best, to finding the words that hold my thoughts. They seem to hover just out of reach like the water and fruit before Tantalus.

[Yes, I know that the analogy is somewhat weak. The comparison begins and ends with the inability to have what is so, so close. I can feel those words, but I cannot reach them. It is maddening.]

Maybe I need music . . .

So, here I sit, writing again . . . hoping that my words represent, at least to some degree, what I am feeling and thinking (about feeling and thinking). At the close of my own meditation, I sought to find what others had to say about my topic . . . something for the header . . . something for the sidebar. I was surprised at what I discovered after I had finished writing.

Enough of me . . . it’s their turn.

~ End Quote


from the sidebar . . .

Words make you think a thought.
Music makes you feel a feeling.
A song makes you feel a thought.
~ E. Y. Harburg

The good writer, the great writer, has what I have called the three S's: the power to see, to sense, and to say. That is, he is perceptive, he is feeling, and he has the power to express in language what he observes and reacts to.
~ Lawrence Clark Powell

Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.
~ Christopher Pearse Cranch

Feeling is deep and still;and the word that floats on the surface
Is as the tossing buoy,that betrays where the anchor is hidden.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
“Evangeline” (pt. II, sc. 2, l. 212)

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.
~ Carl Jung

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.
~ James A. Michener

Raising the (Side)bar

Start early and begin raising the bar throughout the day.

~ Bruce Jenner

Hendel is there in the city
Workin’ on her blog ev’ry night and day
And I never lost one minute of sleepin’
Worryin’ where her guestbook might have been

Mouse wheel keep on turnin’
This Mole will keep on learnin’
Scrollin’, scrollin’, scrollin’ on the sidebar

Loved to read her blog on MySpace
Even ‘bout her trips down to New Orleans
But I never saw it have this much potential
Til she switched her blog to a better host scene

Mouse wheel keep on turnin’
This Mole will keep on learnin’
Scrollin’, scrollin’, scrollin’ on the sidebar

[A little music to scroll by . . .
It’s a good thing, too,
because your wonderful, new comment box
is
way
down
on
that
sidebar.
I wish you’d move it up a little higher and maybe to the left,
but it’s your party; you can sigh if you want to . . .
oops, that’s another song. . . and I will refrain.
I know you don’t really like filk,
but I think you like me.
That makes it a little more tolerable, doesn’t it?
Please say “yes,” ‘cause I have no control over it, you know. ]

Scrollin’, scrollin’, scrollin’ on the sidebar

[a little more music to help you think about it . . . the naked guy on the left is thinking, too]

If you stay down on the sidebar
Bet you gonna find some people who skim
You don’t have to worry, ‘less they’re in a hurry
People on your Blogger aren’t here on a whim

Mouse wheel keep on turnin’
This Mole will keep on learnin’
Scrollin’, scrollin’, scrollin’ on the sidebar
Scrollin’, scrollin’, scrollin’ on the sidebar
Scrollin’, scrollin’, scrollin’ on the sidebar
Scrollin’, scrollin’, scrollin’ on the sidebar


Why this?

I have a dear friend who has a habit of raising the bar whenever she applies her mind, heart, and hands to a task.
She can't help it; it's as natural to her as drinking water.

Logophile that I am, I am driven to this word play when I watch her.
I can't help it; it's as natural to me as drinking water.


~ End Quote

Foiled

"I'll be your foil, Laertes:
in mine ignorance
Your skill shall,
like a star i' the darkest night,
Stick fiery off indeed"
~ Hamlet, Act 5 Scene 2


I'll just dive right in without much introduction. Here is my favorite entry from my favorite literary reference:

A foil is literally a sheet of bright metal that is placed under a piece of jewelry to increase its brilliance. In literature, by extension, the term is applied to any person or sometimes thing that through strong contrast underscores or enhances the distinctive characteristics of another.
~ A Handbook to Literature by C. Hugh Holman

Wikipedia adds:

A foil usually has some important characteristics in common with the other character, such as, frequently, superficial traits or personal history. The author may use the foil to throw the character of the protagonist into sharper relief.

The foil is not the same as the antagonist, who directly opposes the protagonist of a story as a rival or opponent. In fact, the foil is often the sidekick of the protagonist. Some examples come to mind:

• In Lucy Maude Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, consider the “bosom friends,” Anne Shirley and Diana Barry. What a contrast, right? Placed next to her dear friend, Anne’s imagination, intelligence, and independence are shown even more brightly.

• Felix Ungar! Perhaps he would have made a fine neat freak and hypochondriac without interaction with Oscar Madison, but make them roommates and see how the close quarters sharpen the differences . . . yes, a truly odd couple.

Those are just two, off the top of my head. Examples abound, though, and why is this? As with other literary devices (irony, metaphor, conflict, comedy, tragedy, etc.), what makes a foil so effective is the mirroring of reality. What is true in fiction is often true in life. Shakespeare said,

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts. . .

Sometimes we are the protagonist, and sometimes we are the foil on this big stage.

~ End Quote

---

Little Note to Liz
You wrote, "I'm surrounded by schedule-oriented people, to be sure. How did that happen? Everyone I love and care for are A-OK with structure and predictability; in fact, they thrive on it. They can happily eat, think, do the same things every day and be perfectly happy - how can that be?? I'm dying just thinking about it." I am wondering . . . perhaps if you did not have so many foils surrounding you, being who you are in your "one percent" might not be so tough. I love you. ~Kev

Polymath

“There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.”
~ Leonardo da Vinci

I love new words, and today I stumbled upon another: polymath. It is derived from the Greek word, πολυμαθής - polymathes, which means "having learned much." If ever there was a polymath, Leonardo da Vinci was he: scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, and writer. As a child, I watched a series of movies about him, and one of the things I remembered most was that he was accomplished in many areas, but I did not recall (and it may not have even mentioned) that he was a musician and a writer. Not until today did I realize that he had so many interesting things to say.

~ End Quote