Scribbles, &c.

Origen

The Office of Readings today included a portion of a homily by Origen on Leviticus. At Mass yesterday, the Gospel for the second scrutiny was read: the story of the man born blind. Eyes, seeing, and light are - not surprisingly - taking center stage as we build up to Easter. Eyes have been on my mind lately quite a bit as well: I’m dealing with a pernicious and annoying problem in one eye that has sorely tested my wherewithal for patient suffering.

There is a deeper meaning in the fact that the high priest sprinkles the blood towards the east. Atonement comes to you from the east. From the east comes the one whose name is Dayspring, he who is mediator between God and men. You are invited then to look always to the east: it is there that the sun of righteousness rises for you, it is there that the light is always being born for you. You are never to walk in darkness; the great and final day is not to enfold you in darkness. Do not let the night and mist of ignorance steal upon you. So that you may always enjoy the light of knowledge, keep always in the daylight of faith, hold fast always to the light of love and peace.

Added to my reading stack: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, thanks to slowly growing interest in Lisp. I’ve also been looking at Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation and working through a few tutorials. I am not likely to make a mid-career change to Lisp developer, but I am thoroughly enjoying thinking about computers and programs a bit differently. Quite a bit differently, actually. Just as a purely mental exercise it’s been worth the effort so far. If I could just get used to emacs keybindings now…

In other, semi-related tech news: I tweaked my at-home Linux setup to use the i3 tiling window manager. So far so good. Having to break a few habits related to xfce’s workspace switching, but otherwise I think it’s going well. Some radio apps aren’t particularly well-suited to tiling, or I haven’t figured out how to make them so. There’s always float mode, I suppose.