Notes...
Regarding the post below: when I use the language of cosmoses it just happens. It's the result of everything done up to this point. It is understanding you just have. Ability to see things and understand things. Practically, regarding it all, you just learn and do the Work. Make the efforts. Knowledge plus being equals understanding.
And for the Bible: the main goal has to be to simply read it complete once, three times, seven times. That is what gets it into your essence and enables you to have it in the spiritual realms, where you really need it. And will need it. It is the primary effort in the wake of which everything else will follow more profitably.
There is a new book out by a historian named Peter Heathers about all that confusing historical period from around 300 AD to the fall of the western Roman Empire. All that history involving the various Germanic tribes and the migrations and the beginning of the modern European states and all that. He doesn't radically differ from Gibbon, but he does see it all a 'bit' differently in that he doesn't blame Christianity as much as Gibbon does. I gather Heather is as agnostic as most Oxford historians might be these days, but I also gathered, skimming his book, that he is not juvenile towards Christianity. The virtue of his book is to organise and describe all of that historical period in a way that historians havn't in the past. It is getting high marks. The Fall of the Roman Empire : A New History of Rome and the Barbarians.
www.WordPress.com is a new (free) blogging host that is pretty good. Their templates look pretty good. They allow 'categories'. You can't mess around with the templates (adding HTML and all that), but... Unless you host the blog on your own site. But they will host the blog for free, so... (I forgot to mention they also allow you to make website type pages that are linked right from your blog, so that is different. I.e. they host the static website type page, so the blog is a blog and a website. The differences are subtle, but some things are better put on a static website page than a blog post that gets lost in the archives quickly...)
I find that when I look at books I should read they fall into three categories: (1) books that have something truly new for me to learn (they are hard to find, especially as you've gone along in life and learned to the top of the summit, for the most part; and they can be a difficult or easy read; in Kline's case - which is a good example of this category - a difficult read); (2) books that I acquire in the midst of learning-enthusiasm (like: "I must get that book" because I'm learning the subject matter and it's a classic in that subject matter meanwhile I'm learning the subject really from a thousand different sources, and I never really get around to reading the classic books I've acquired and they just sit there as I learn their contents from other sources; then... after I've learned the subject I still 'think' I should read all those classic books I've acquired, but I already know the subject by then so I never read them, but I think I should read them; but it's in the category of going over old ground at that point); yet still maybe in the future after the learning phase is clearly in the past then reading one of the valuable, big, classic books will be the thing to do, for review and consolidation; and (3) books that are just classic works in general that require effort to read and should be read without any particular driving motive other than to read a classic work; something like Thucydides falls into this category. I.e. books that you don't have a particular driving need or desire to read, yet you know they are things you should read; if for no other reason than to keep your 'reading muscles' tuned up. Like, I acquired Augustine's Confessions recently. That is a perfect example of this category (for me, anyway).
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