Terri Schiavo died this morning. The headline says she died of thirst, but she died of murder. I am too sad and angry to think of anything clever or insightful to say. This should never have happened to a woman who was not dying and whose only “crime” was depending on others for the simple necessities of food and water.

I noticed that Google (you don’t expect me to take time to make you a link for that, do you?) was sporting a nifty van Goghish look, a la Starry Night.

Here’s a coffee mug I bought for Steve last year at the thrift store, also indebted to Mr. van Gogh for its not-so-unique design:

“Starry Night” by Vincent van Cow

They’re going to hate us in the beginning, but we’ll get them in the end. You know why? Because we’re going to sell them cheap books and legal, addictive stimulants. ~Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail

In case you missed it, there is some excellent analysis, full of common sense, about Terri Schiavo and the important issues raised by her tragic, government-sanctioned murder, by Dr. Edwin Viera, Jr., Ph.D., J.D. and Douglas W. Phillips, Esq. Their sensible commentary is refreshing in light of the inane, ridiculous and perverse line of reasoning of some reformed thinkers, who either take their Republican enthusiasm or their Libertarian (with a big “L”) leanings too far here, here and here.

As Pieter pointed out to me this evening, all the Christians who are aghast at the idea that the governor of Florida should ignore the unbiblical (therefore, unlawful) death sentence for Terri and use his constitutional authority to save her, are the same ones who say they would have defied the German government and rescued Jews slated for death in concentration camps during World War II. What’s the difference, except that both the chief executive brothers have the legal authority to intervene, whereas a Corrie ten Boom in occupied Holland did not. If you do not agree that Jeb Bush at least bears some responsibility for the starvation of Terri Schiavo, riddle me this: who has the authority over the police who zealously guard the doors of the hospice and arrest little homeschooled boys who try to carry in a cup of water?

Dr. Viera says:

Of course, “the right to die” (or, as it was applied in Terri Schiavo’s case, “the duty to die” at the demand of someone else) must be introduced by indirection–deliberately, but slowly–to prevent the frogs from realizing that they are being boiled. So, the government does not itself impose “the right to die”. No. In the spirit of “public service”, it merely recognizes “the right to die” as an “individual right” and permits it to be exercised. “The right to die” is a matter of personal “privacy”, an aspect of “choice”, a “fundamental right”. The courts are simply facilitating the compassionate “choices” of the killers and those whom they intend to kill in “privacy”. Moreover, no one else has any cause, let alone legal right, to interfere, because that would violate “the rule of law” (which is whatever some judges say it is).

Obviously, this strategy works because, no matter what Florida’s Legislature, Congress, and the Bush Brothers did (except, of course, for taking Terri Schiavo into custody, which they apparently had no intention of doing), the powers that be keep pushing the matter back across the legal river Styx into the dark underworld of the courts, which keep ruling for her death.

Is it, therefore, merely the product of political paranoia to wonder whether the whole business was nothing more than a Punch and Judy Show staged to give the appearance that politicians are “battling” over the issue, when in fact–and as intended by everyone behind the scenes–their defeat at the hands of “the law profession culture” was the very point of the exercise?

Doug Phillips says:

Sir William Blackstone correctly noted that “This is what is called the law of nature, which, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is, of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries at all times. No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid, derive all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.”[iv]

The lesson of the Nuremburg Trials was that even acting under authority, government officials may not trump the moral law of God. Courts do not have the authority to order the killing of innocent people.

With the indispensable help of my muscle-boy Benjamin, I finished packing up the last of my bookstore today and disassembled the shelves. It was the perfect bookstore for almost three years—I didn’t have to work there, only put books on the shelves and wait for them to sell, and only the kinds of books I like. But it’s time to both step back and move on. I need to conserve my energy by making fewer trips to town, and I want to concentrate more now on selling books on my website. I put the shelves from my store along one wall in my library, and filled them up this evening with books to list for sale. It will be so much easier to do it now that they are where I can see them rather than hidden in boxes. Tomorrow I will begin updating my sale page.

I’m a rather sendentary person, but totin’ those boxes of books has given me pretty good muscle tone in my arms. Besides book-lifting, I’ve discovered another sport in which I may be qualified to compete: the book cart precision drill team. You may not have heard about this sport before, but it is spreading across the nation, and there is even—surprise—a book devoted to teaching its finer points. I wonder if the spectators are allowed to shout encouragement, or if they get a stern look and a “shhh!” from the drill team participants.

I might be disqualified from the competition, though, considering my cranky position about statist funding of people’s reading habits. I never told you how I voted on the library parcel tax; I was agin’ it. The books which we boxed up in our store are going to be the seed of a private homeschool library at a local church. Private and membership libraries were once the norm in America’s pre-egalitarian days. Some other cranky folks started a membership library in smalltown Ester, Alaska in 1999, and it appears to be doing quite well with donations, memberships and volunteers. It’s open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Sunday. You’ll have a hard time finding a tax-financed “public” library with those kind of hours. If you want a chuckle, read a bit about the history of the cranky little “People’s Republic of Ester” here and here. We could use a lot more of that kind of crankiness.

Of course, beauty is not random, it’s deliberate, which is the point of this post. But my thoughts about it tonight—mostly links—are random.

I’ve long had issues with the aphorism, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Such a subjective view of the subject has led to a lowest-common-denominator view of culture. But I have not been able to articulate my objective view of beauty. Not surprisingly, Dr. Louise Cowan is much more articulate than I, and she has tackled the daunting task, which you can read in this transcript of her lecture, “The Frail Strength of Beauty.” While I don’t share her enthusiasm for the benefits of universal education, and I have more reservations about the modern media being used to transmit culture, she makes a very strong case for the transcendent source of beauty. Here she quotes Augustine:

This metaphysical beauty then is not to be found in the transient gratification of the senses; the surfaces of so-called beautiful things do not satisfy our spiritual hunger. We have to find their inner reality. St. Augustine tells us in his Confessions that after he had vainly sought God in material objects, flowers and other pleasurable objects, he found the source of beauty: “Late have I loved you,” he writes, “beauty so old and so new: Late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things that you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you: I tasted you and I feel that hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.”

(Buried Treasure shovel tip to JavaMom, who pointed me to the Dallas Institute site where I found the lecture.)

I am forever indebted to Edith Schaeffer for pointing out the beauty and nobility in everyday things, especially that which is in our homes. In Hidden Art she talks about how art that is beautiful points people to God, because God is the perfect Artist, perfectly expressing truth and perfectly communicating His message about the world and about Himself:

God, the Artist! We read in the New Testament in the book of Colossians: “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible.” All things! Visible! The things my eyes can see—the poinsettia plants in Bermuda lanes and the blue gentians on Alpine paths, the deep brown eyes of a human friend, and the transparent green wings of a grasshopper, the gnarled cypress of the California coast, and the orderly palms of Montreaux’s quay, the varied patterns of individual snow flakes, and the breathtaking beauty of a full moon lighting up snow-covered peaks and valleys. All things! Invisible! The things I know are there, but cannot see—wind and gravity, atoms and electrons, oxygen and sound waves. He also ceated beings visible to us—men; and beings invisible to us—angels.

The one time I heard Edith Schaeffer speak and met her briefly, at a prolife banquet, she was in her 70s, and she was one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. Now the dear lady is 92, and her family is battling the medical establishment in Switzerland to obtain care for her there while she’s in hospital with some serious ailments. How tragic that a woman whose husband was intrumental in waking up Christians about the dangers of slippery slope relativism is now battling the very forces of darkness against which he warned. Please pray for her.

(Buried Treasure shovel tip to Dory for pointing out the news about Mrs. Schaeffer.)

One of our daily joys is listening to our daughters practice the piano. If (when) life is especially chaotic in the house, especially on rainy days, the piano practice can also be a daily trial adding noise to the general cacophony, but since we moved the piano into the new “parlor” from the center of the house, distance makes the heart grow fonder. We are coming to appreciate more the home-grown music which comes from the fingertips of our beloved girls rather than from the professional musicians via our stereo speakers. One song our oldest mini muffin has been practicing is especially beautiful and it makes a fitting addition to my topic du jour:

For the Beauty of the Earth

1. For the beauty of the earth,
For the glory of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies.

Refrain: Lord of all to Thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.

2. For the wonder of each hour,
Of the day and of the night,
Hill and vale, and tree and flower,
Sun and moon, and stars of light.
(Refrain)

3. For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child,
Friends on earth and friends above,
For all gentle thoughts and mild.
(Refrain)

4. For the church, that evermore
Lifteth holy hands above,
Offering upon every shore
Her pure sacrifice of love.
(Refrain)

5. For Thyself, best Gift Divine.
To our race so freely given,
For that great, great love of Thine,
Peace on earth and joy in Heaven.
(Refrain)

(If you click on the link in the title, it will take you to an mp3 demo of part of the song from Indelible Grace.)

Stacy McDonald understands beauty and conveys it in whatever she touches. She and her creative family have started a new venture, opening a store in Katy, Texas to sell books, music and other accoutrements which enrich life by upholding civility and Christian courtesy. If you go to visit the McDonalds there, please tell them I said hello and drink a toast with your tea to me!

(Note: The McDonald’s have Dr. Cowan’s excellent book, Invitation to the Classics, on sale for an excellent price. How’s that for coming full circle? Maybe my thoughts were not as random as I thought.)