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National Poetry Month

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April is National Poetry Month, and to celebrate, I'm going to post a poem every Tuesday.
If you'd like to join up and do the same on your blog or Twitter, please do! Leave a link in the comments!

I'm going to start with my very favorite poem in the world. It's perfect for this time of year. It fills me with thankfulness and joy and springtime.

Library Link Round-Up

Happy Friday!

I'm always super productive on Fridays because I hate doing work (school or otherwise) on the weekends, so I try to get it all done before I go home! So I'll be wrapping up my first week of Spring quarter today. Woohoo.

Theologian Thursday: Pelagius c.354-c.420

I thought it was about time we showed some love to heretics around here, so I present to you: Pelagius.

You'll often see Pelagius pitted against Augustine in a battle about obedience: Pelagius believed that people choose to obey God or not, while Augustine said people can only obey God by God's grace. The debate stems from the idea of original sin and the "fall" of Adam. Basically, is humanity evil simply because we happen to be human?

Pelagius was condemned and anathemized by Pope Innocent I (and then pardoned and re-condemned by the succeeding pope), and most of his works were destroyed, which is unfortunate, given the rise of Arminianism, evolution, and other ideas that may actually support his ideas about free will and the nature of humanity, as well as challenge widespread Western ideas about original sin. However, most people still write Pelagius off as teaching an "unbiblical" works-based faith, and Augustine's theology has held the minds of the Western church ever since.

What you should read:

Ratings:
(To read more about my rating system, click HERE.)

Gender Equality:
Granted, it was very early in church history, and women were still basically property, but there's nothing much in anything I've read or heard that suggests Pelagius would be any different.

Environmental Sensibility:
Again, this just does not seem to be an issue for Pelagius. He was clearly worried about other things. He does have a work called "On Nature," but it's not what you think (i.e. it should be called "On Human Nature").

Heretical Tendencies:
Five stars here, because, yes, he is technically a heretic. Though, perhaps if we still had more than just fragments of his works, he could defend himself a little better.

General Badassery:
I'm going to give him a three, just for taking on Augustine, who is pretty bad-ass himself.

And a quote:

"Those who are unwilling to correct their own way of life appear to want to correct nature itself instead."

An interesting thought.

I'd love to hear your opinions on Pelagianism! Leave them in the comments si vouz plait.

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The Hunger Games, or: My First eBook

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This is a post about me succumbing to peer pressure in two ways at once.

For all my love of digital media--getting used to online-only course material, loving open-access journals, PDF articles, and all that--I had never read an ebook until this weekend. I'm not one of those staunch devotees of hardcopy print, though I do like the feel of actual books, the ability to scribble in the margins, and, yes, the smell. I just never got around to it. But with all the hype surrounding the Hunger Games movie coming out, and the fact that my mother has loved the books for years, and my student employees and friends were all raving about them, I figured I'd better have a read. At the very least because I fear irrelevance. I knew there'd be no way of checking out a copy from a library anywhere (San Diego County has over 300 in circulation, and surely they have holds lined up until the next Quarter Quell...harhar what I did there), so I decided I might as well venture into the world of ebooks and see how I like it.

Even though I know Amazon is supposed to be the bane of every library and librarian's existence, I knew I cold easily download the Kindle app for my iPad and be reading in five minutes. So that's what I did. Sure, sure, I could have done a bit more research, but I'm a slave to Zipf's Law.

Later, my boyfriend showed me this sweet deal where you can get all three books for about $3, so I downloaded Kobo (which is pretty much just as good as Kindle... maybe more "social") and got my read on.

I started Hunger Games on Thursday night and finished on Saturday night. I started Catching Fire on Sunday morning and finished on Sunday night. Woe is me, spring quarter starts today, so who knows when I'll finish Mockingjay. Hopefully sometime this week.

But you guys. I'm obsessed. It definitely lives up to the hype. Though I'm hesitant to see the movie, since, as everyone knows, the book is always better than the movie. I'll probably see it anyway. And reading an ebook wasn't so bad after all. I did end up tethered to the wall during my Sunday read-athon, but it was OK. I could even highight. I'm not about to abandon all print, but I'm far less skeptical now. This is the future, you know.

I also want to write a bit more about the book, and all the interesting themes going on there, but it will have to wait, since this post is already too long and I have yet to even look at my new course websites for the new quarter. Blerg.