Busy Day

And what constitutes a busy day for a stay-at-home Mom, on a Saturday that Dad's home too? Holding sick children all day, dealing with sick-in-need-of-sleep children in the evening when Dad is going out to play poker. Putting cranky (all of the above) children into bed when they need it but don't want it. Deciding whether to go to bed myself because I'm emotionally exhausted or get some "me" time in, so maybe I'll sleep. I'm tempted to put in a workout video, because my exercise for the day involved shifting child/ren on my lap and changing diapers. I did get somewhat of a mental workout however. Twenty three pages of The Idea of The Labyrinth by Penelope Reed Doob. Basically, the intro and a couple pages into chapter one. Reads like a masters or doctoral thesis. 129 pages into Labyrinths & Mazes by Jeff Saward, whom the book says is the "leading authority in his field." Given that I've spent about an equal amount of time reading both books, it might lead an observer to conclude Saward's book is more accessible. His book is certainly an easy read, simply a survey of labyrinth occurances geographically and historically. I'll probably finish his book first, with 76 pages left (do you think??). I'm glad I read some of Penelope's first because they are two very different viewpoints on the subject and already contradict one another :) Yea! I have a feeling that I'll like her book better because it is more information like I wanted - specifically, the meaning of labyrinths historically and culturally. Matt's latest post also provoked a flurry of reading. We have Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament a great greek resource of unmatched breadth and depth. Its age (original publish date 1964) means there are some things that have been updated since, but the scholarship is great. Kittel's is renowned for not only examining the use of particular words in the Bible, but also available extrabiblical literature, ie. how other greek authors used the words. It's a great thing for looking up words like "gune" from 1 Timothy 3:12. Thirteen pages of very small type. Very interesting, I learned more in thirteen pages of Kittel than I did in 4 hours of reading on the internet after Julie's bloglink to N.T. Wright. Of course, I found more diversity of thought on the internet. Ms. Doob would have characterized Kittle as mid-level reception, "interpretations of texts and visual images by skilled readers whose comments refect competence but not the idiosyncrasies fo genius..." Okay, so to dig into Kittel...I think I'll post these separately.