Shannon Costello

Guess what, everyone…I’m halfway through!  

This book focuses on what happens to the body and to the soul in the first death (here on earth) and the second death (eternal punishment).  

...this Latin word “moritur” [to die] cannot be declined by the grammarians according to the rule followed by similar words….But “mortuus”, though in form an adjective, is used as perfect participle, as if that were to be declined which cannot be declined; and thus it has suitably come to pass that, as the thing itself cannot in point of fact be declined, so neither can the word significant of the act be declined.  Yet, by the aid of our Redeemer’s grace, we may manage at least to decline the second.

Incredible as it may seem, I think it’s true:  Augustine made a pun!  

Augustine takes a topic and beats it to death, by which I mean that he covers it very thoroughly.  This can make him seem repetitive at times.  But then, I think that’s what good communicators do.

He is very careful to define death.  He covers at length what God meant by saying “on the day you eat of it you shall surely die”.  And he has another go at Plato.  

I like the bit about how the first death, a justly deserved punishment, while it must still be suffered by God’s people, is used by God for them as a deliverance.  That’s typical of God, to take something awful and use it in a positive way.  

Sunday morning I felt really anxious.  I had a muscle twitching in my forehead (it looked really weird) and was suddenly afraid I was having eye problems — irrational fears that present real problems when I  try to deal with them.  

This is where Augustine can come in handy.  I get very caught up in the moment:  I’m sure my current stress level has a lot to do with the start of the teaching year and the class I will be taking starting tomorrow.  The class will be over in December, the school year in July.  My perspective is too narrow.  

Augustine is thinking about time, among other things.  Time is finite, God is infinite.  He comprehends eternity, I don’t.  I think I’m always trying to define it as an extension of time, which I conceive linearly.  Augustine asserts that our existence is not an ever-repeating cycle, as the Platonists suggest.  Not only are we not repeating our lives over and over again, but we are created consciously and specifically- none of us were a surprise to God.  

Augustine helps me see myself as a part of something that is much larger than I and perfectly comprehensible to a God who is managing it all perfectly.  

The winner of the women’s marathon was 38.  

American Dara Torres, 41,  won a silver medal in swimming.  They were asking her how she would describe this to her two-year old daughter when she was old enough to appreciate this.  

Hurray for women who achieve great things after 35!!!  

I use my bread machine to make calzone or pizza dough.  The paddle attachments mix and knead while the machine itself provides a great environment for the dough to rise.  

One hour before dinner time I opened the bread machine to discover that I had forgotten to put the paddles in.  There was a small yeasty lake on the lower slopes of a dry, floury mountain, but there was no dough in sight.  

Monday I ventured alone into D. C.  

I was going to take the red line of the metro to the Tenleytown-AU stop and then take a bus to the American University campus.  

I am afraid of buses, mostly because I can’t figure them out.  Once in Mexico I needed to take a bus back to where I lived.  I was blundering around Montemorelos, Mexico looking for the bus stop when - fortunately - somebody gave me a ride.  If they hadn’t I’d probably still be looking.  Recently I had a bad dream in which I was trying to figure out a bus schedule in my home town in NY and failing miserably. So I figured I had better prepare if I wanted to conquer my fears.  I printed out the bus schedule, a map of the bus route studied a map of the area.  

It wasn’t enough.  

I was unable to locate the correct stop after exiting the metro, even though I found 4 or 5 other stops close by.  I did not understand that the route labels on the map were just that, and not stop markers, which do not generally appear on the map.  (They aren’t needed, as there are stops every couple tenths of a mile.  I learned that on the mile walk to campus.  Previously I had assumed there were only as many stops as there were headings on the schedule.)  

In addition to not understanding the bus map, I failed to locate myself correctly on the map.  I think. The metro stop in question is near Tenley Circle, where three streets come together.  That was two too many for me.  

The metro trip planner told me to take the N2 bus “toward Farragut.”  The buses are labeled in a similar manner.  However, the schedules typically give a direction.  I was not prepared for this.  In addition, I was focused on one small part of the bus route.  The directions on the schedule (eastbound-westbound) are based on the main road of the route, which I believed did not concern me.  End result:  I was puzzled as to why I was supposed to go east when I knew I needed to go west.  

As I left campus I saw the correct bus at an appropriate stop, just on the other side of the road. Unfortunately the signal forbade me to cross.  When it finally changed it was too late, the bus was already pulling away from the stop.  

And that, my friends, is how Shannon got her exercise for the day. 

Maria von Trap - the real one, not Julie Andrews - wrote about her family’s struggle to “make it” as a singing group in the US.  Their somber clothing led to some criticism that Maria did not understand, presumably leading her to march into a bookstore and unintentionally frighten off the clerk with her (completely serious) announcement that she was looking for a book on sex appeal.  

If you are going to be popular, appearance matters.  I’m catching on that this is a factor in the Obama movement.  For many people he looks, sounds, and acts “right”.  That’s why he and his family were on the cover of People and why his recent trip abroad resulted in huge cheering crowds.   

Sometimes I think about Benazir Bhutto and Ingrid Betancourt.   I think of Bhutto visiting her father’s tomb shortly before her assassination, and I wish she had remained in exile.  Videos of Ingrid Betancourt reuniting with her children after six years of captivity in the jungle brought me to tears.  I feel relieved that she is back in France.  Will she run for president of Colombia again?  I bet she does even while I hope she doesn’t.  

I identify with them because they are women, but I can’t relate to their sacrifices as politicians.  Notice that I can’t bring myself to term them sacrifices for the sake of their country.  That’s a difficulty I have:  if they aren’t noble patriots, must they be power-hungry politicians?  Realistically, I suppose the answer for any politician is yes. 

It’s sort of not fair to run down a politician as power-hungry, I end up implying that I’m superior because I do not chase after power.  But of course I do, in my own way.  Since most of us crave power this doesn’t even give us a convenient way to differentiate between candidates.  

“And if they were confronted with the authority of Scripture, they would maintain that something else must be meant by the words.”  

We have heard that before!  It plunges me into confusion just to think of it.  However, Augustine has his opponents down.  They ” are strangely deceived and rave in the incurable madness of impiety.”  What a fabulous line to use the next time you are involved in a theological debate!  

Does anyone care about when angels were created?  Augustine reasons that since the heavens and the earth were created in the beginning, nothing could have been created before.  Since angels were created, and were around during creation, they must have been created when God said, “let there be light.”  Augustine prefers to equate angels with light, actually.  An interpretation of Genesis I had never considered.  

Speaking of creating things, I was shocked to find Augustine discussing creation issues- though not the same ones we discuss, or in the same way, of course.  For example, is the earth created or eternal?  

Though I tend to assume he was up on just about anything there was to be up on, Augustine was not a mathematician.  I’m curious about how contemporary mathematicians of Augustine’s would have viewed his descriptions of certain numbers.  Six was a perfect number because it is “made up of its own parts” meaning that it is equal to the sum of its factors, excluding six.  And seven is perfect because it is the sum of the first odd number, three, and the first even number, four.   Curious!

On the other hand, he was an impressive logician.  In response to the suggestion that he might be deceived in believing in his own existence he said:  ”For if I am deceived, I am.  For he who is not, cannot be deceived; and if I am deceived, by this same token I am.  And since I am if I am deceived, how am I deceived in believing that I am?”  I hadn’t realized that Augustine sort of stole a march on Descartes!  

It’s funny to see a fifth century picture of a person who is sometimes intensively debating a matter of relatively low import, occasionally right on, and sometimes a little too caught up with weird mental gymnastics, numerical or otherwise.  

Or wait, is that a mirror…?

Unlike City of God write-ups, I can do this briefly.

 I think I more than met my goals for the year, which were to do a really great job keeping in touch with the parents of my students and to get better at using games in the classroom.  However, I ran into the unexpected, and it is that which frames my mental picture of this year.  Three classes of 27 students each (that’s bigger than I’ve experienced before) exposed the weaknesses in my classroom management skills.  But after all, it is knowing my weaknesses that lets me frame my goals for next year…