Systematic Theology

I love theology. I love dogmatics and doctrine. I love knowing the whys and wherefores of my faith. As I journeyed to Orthodoxy over the years, a lot of my understanding of the doctrines of the faith came from reading the Fathers of the Church and the great theologians in a piecemeal fashion. That is, as I encountered something within the Church, I went to these sources to discover where it came from. I never read in any systematic fashion, but I just nibbled here and there off the sides of what is a HUGE cake. 

Mice Eating Cake

I think I may have found a way to remedy my scattershot knowledge of the works of the Fathers of the Church. There is a website (there is always a website) by a couple of Protestant laymen who came up with the formula that if one reads seven pages a day for seven years, you can read the Fathers. All of them.

Seven pages a day is not a lot. At least not for me.  I can read seven pages of just about anything in no time at all. And I've done a lot of things over the past seven years that took a heck of a lot more time out of my day. The writings are available free online as well. It's a win-win situation.

So this is my new project. I like having intellectual projects. I got my Masters degree after all. I would LOVE to be able to turn this into a career in a theological library. 

So here I go again!

Relevant Reading

Read the Fathers

Early Church Fathers

Defining My Librarianship

There’s that phrase which chases us around the libinfosphere, a variant on:

‘You don’t become a librarian because you like books.’

Well, actually, many of us do. Let’s be more accurate:

‘You don’t become a good librarian because you just like books.’

You become -and stay – a good librarian by liking other things, too. You like people; computers; metadata; gin. You have a passion for teaching or research. You see the void which exists between a person and the information they need, and you have to fill it.

Sometimes, that void is filled by books. Sometimes it’s filled by information about books. Don’t put barriers in the way of either of them. Don’t make future generations crawl around in the electronic equivalent of a dusty old storage room, hunting through obsolete data formats. Don’t make them have to put in a request.

Set My Data Free

Lord have mercy on me a sinner

Master of Library Science...Cum Laude!

I have received the Masters of Library Science from North Carolina Central University School of Library Science with all the rights, privileges and honors pertaining thereto!

Praise God! It has been a long time coming, especially this semester. It seemed as if the entire universe was conspiring to keep me from attaining this goal that I had set for myself last year.

The Lord has been so good to me. He has fought so many of my battles for me, provided all of the things I needed (and some of the things I wanted) for myself and my son. He has surrounded me with so many good and loving friends who have stood by me and encouraged me through thick and thin. Without my friends I would be in dire straits, believe you me.

There is no way I can ever thank Him enough for all He has done thus far. He has indeed proven Himself strong to me. He is indeed faithful and true, in spite of what I feel or think, and He has shown that no matter what, He is able to make things intended by others for evil to become good.

Almighty God, our Help and Refuge, Fountain of wisdom and Tower of strength, who 

knows that I can do nothing without Your guidance and help; assist me, I pray, and direct me to divine wisdom and power, that I may accomplish the tasks set before me, and whatever I may undertake to do, faithfully and diligently, according to Your will, so that it may be profitable to myself and others, and to the glory of Your Holy Name. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: now and ever, and unto ages of ages.

Amen 

Please pray that I may obtain this, most-holy Lady and Birth-giver of God, through your intercessions and mediations, by the grace and exceeding great love of your Only-Begotten son, my Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ, to Whom is due, with the eternal Father and the All-Holy, Good and Life-Giving Spirit, all honor and glory and worship, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. 

Amen.

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner

Relevant Reading

2 Chronicles 16:9 (NKJV)

Hebrews 10:23

Isaiah 54

Just Received the Following Email

Date: Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 5:23 PM
Subject: Congratulations!
Mailed-by: XXXXXXX

To: XXXXXXX

All Graduands:

Congratulations to all of you on your success! You have been cleared for the December 2011 Graduation contingent upon successful completion of the courses that you are currently enrolled in or the removal of any deficiencies. I have included the Graduation Readiness Checklist-Fall 2011 for your review.If I may be of further assistance, do not hesitate to contact me.

  

Best,

Virginia Purefoy Jones, M.L.S.

University Librarian and Assistant to the Dean

School of Library and Information Sciences

North Carolina Central University

Durham, North Carolina  27707

 
Lord have mercy on me, a sinner!

My Degree: A Short Explanation

[The degree of Reader in Invisible Writings] involves the large-scale use of Hex, the thinking machine in the High Energy Magic Building. It is tasked with casting large numbers of Search spells (such as Weezencake's Unreliable Algorithm) vitually simultaneously (impossible for human wizards), trawling through L(ibrary)-space looking for fragments of written material. This way Hex can read any book ever written, any book that will be written at some point and books that were planned for writing that were not, as well as any book that could possibly be written.

"The thaumic mathematics are complex, but boil down to the fact that all books, everywhere, affect all other books." From there the nature of bi-directionalism is revealed to demonstrate that any book ever to be written can be found in any book not yet written. In mathematical terms, as noted in The Science of Discworld, L-Space represents a form of phase space. This made possible the study of invisible writings (also based on a similar theory to do with the infinite nature of Pi, and the ways in which, if one was to transcribe alphabetical values to the numbers of Pi, one could hypothetically find the contents of every book ever written).

One of the first books to come through as a complete entity was How to Dynamically Manage People for Dynamic Results in a Caring Empowering Way in Quite a Short Time Dynamically. Fragments of this turn up so often that we are forced to believe that either it was either going to be an amazingly popular book or - possibly - that it was actually different books written almost identically.

(Lifted and edited shamelessly from The Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki)

Lord have mercy upon me, a sinner.

Relevant Reading

L-Space

Library - Unseen University

The Librarian

.303 Bookworm