UM Honors Blog 2021-2022

     As humans, we are not perfect and we often make poor choices in life, all of which have consequences that we must live with, whether it be good or bad. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, the Mariner makes the decision to shoot the albatross, a creature that causes the breeze to blow for the sailors. The albatross was a pure creation from God, and the death of the innocent creature could not go unpunished. The sailors were thrown off path and became stranded, and as they thought they were being saved by an upcoming ship, the occupants of the ship were actually Death and Life-In-Death. Death took all of the souls of the sailor with the exception of the Mariner, who was claimed by Life-In-Death, The Mariner would now spend the rest of his days searching for a way to be released from the weight of his sins, but he never asks God for forgiveness so he does not receive redemption.      In life, we cannot continuously make unacceptable decisions and expect...

I love the style and the content of this poem. Reading this poem invoked a great deal of emotion for me. It definitely feels like a poem from the era of Romanticism. This is when authors and writers would focus on the beauty of nature and man’s emotional reaction to this beauty. William Wordsworth is doing an excellent job of this while also capturing concepts that are relatable to most people. One of these concepts I gleamed from the poem was the tendency to run away and towards something else versus running intentionally towards something because you love it. In lines 72-73, He writes this, “Wherever nature led: more like a man/ Flying from something that he dreads, than one/ Who sought the thing he loved” (Wordsworth). The way that I understand this is now that he is grown, he returns to the banks of Wye, not because he is running away from something, but because he truly loves this place. This is such a beautiful concept. I am sure most people experience the need to be away from so...

     Note to self before we begin: NEVER try to disprove superstition to a superstitious lot of people, especially if we are out in the middle of the ocean! It seems as though our mariner character didn't catch that memo, and decided that the wisest thing he could do with a perfectly good crossbow bolt is to just shoot the bird (no, not the kind with the finger), and as a result, he is ridiculed by the entire crew thereafter. In fact, right up until the crew runs into some much more sinister trouble, that remains to be the dynamic between the mariner and the rest of the crew. How fitting, then, is it that the mariner is the only member that is left alive on the ship, all just to force him to have to live with the rash decision he made: "Each turn his face with a ghastly pang, And cursed me with his eye. Four times fifty living men, (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, They dropped down one by one. The souls from their bodies fly, They fled t...

      Romanticism focuses on inspiration, often from nature,  subjectivity, emotions, and the celebration of the individual. Wordsworth describes poetry as the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility," and his poems reflect such a definition. Romantic poetry is beautiful. The concept of the sublime and the eloquently written reaction to it is beautiful. The sad thing is in romantic poetry we are focusing solely in the sublime of creation. The reverence and awe for the creator appears to be lost.       Wordsworth in "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" writes, " O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods, /  How often has my spirit turned to thee!" (Wordsworth 58-59). The Wye is a river which runs near Tintern Abbey. And "sylvan" means wooded. Thus, the narrator's spirit is turned towards the river or to the woods. No longer does reflecting on nature bring one to realize the power of the creator a...

 I will be honest, the first time I wrote this poem, I was completely lost. I thought it was a poem about a man that found his way to God and was trying to get away from the sea. And I was very, very wrong, let's get that out of the way. But now, a few years removed from reading it and picking it back up again, it's meaning is still elusive to me, as it taken me several read throughs to get the shaky understanding I have of it now. Form my understanding, the whole thing comes down to the Albatross -- the Albatross is the centerpiece of the story that the Ancient Marnier is trying to tell. The Albatross is given a spiritual being about it, and it is hailed by the crew as some kind of harbinger of good fortune. Unfortunately, that does not stop the Ancient Marnier from shooting it with his crossbow, which brings great misfortune about the members of the ship. I believe this is meant to show just how fragile life and beauty is, as the Ancient Marnier shoots the poor bird and spend...

      In Friedrich Schleiermacher's first speech, he poses an interesting argument. He claims that the attempts to systematize religion cheapens its character. "...Religion is as far removed, by its whole nature, from all that is systematic as philosophy is naturally disposed to it," he says (pp. 18-19). This is an interesting view that ties back to the discussion that Paradise Lost brings up about the accumulation of knowledge. It seems that Schleiermacher would be in agreement with Raphael's admonishment of Adam for wanting to know all the answers of the universe. He tells Adam that he ought to be "lowly wise" and seek not to know all the answers because God's creation is not meant to know every detail of what the Creator Himself has designed. Similarly, Schleiermacher thinks that trying to understand all facets about the unfathomable God and the particulars of all His plans prevents one from achieving the understanding in this life that can be reveale...

In the readings provided for the class held on October 5, the authors address different topics, and each of the three may seem to have little in common with the other two. There is one point, however, upon which all the works ultimately come to bear: the effect of the fallen state of mankind. First, this point is most evident in the words of John Wesley. To quote, "it is now quite unfashionable to talk otherwise, to say anything to the disparagement of human nature; which is generally allowed, not withstanding a few infirmities, to be very innocent, and wise, and virtuous! | But, in the meantime, what must we do with our Bibles?     for they will never agree with this." ( The Natural Condition of The Natural Man , par. 3-4.) Second, one can distinguish the fall's effects in Richard Baxter's description of man's propensity to neglect a heavenly outlook on life, because it his hard to go against the laziness of his depraved flesh. "But to separate our thoughts ...