Outline View & Harbor of Rest

This week I learned how to use the Outline View feature on MS Word. I even took the little tutorial they provide online. Today, I revised my dissertation outline using this tool. I had already copied and pasted the various parts of two previous outline versions, but was finding it hard to get a bird's eye view with five pages of text. So this morning, I printed the mishmashed outline and worked at the kitchen table figuring out my new chapter titles and ordering the chapters. Then I went down the entire outline and assigned the subtopics to the new chapter titles. I put my head in my hands a few times due to feeling overwhelmed by all of the details that needed sorting. Finally, I sat down at the laptop and entered the new chapter titles in outline view as 'level 1' text and the subtopics as 'level 2' text. Once that was done, I was finally able to see areas of overlap which I knew were there over the course of many writing sessions, a problem I knew needed to be addressed, but was dreading. After eliminating the repetetive subtopics, I organized the remaining ones, placing some as 'level 3' text. Now I am thinking of taking all that I have written so far - about 90 pages - and integrating it into one file (with chapter divisions of course). Once that is done, the text will not be very cohesive, but I can see where the gaps are and I think I will be encouraged to see how much work has already been done.

My latest research has been fairly exciting as I found some Syriac background to the 'Harbor of Rest' language that Macarius uses (in Greek). One source is a study of funerary inscriptions from a Syriac monastery which found that all nine patriarchal tombs contained the theme of 'harbor' and/or 'ship'. The tombs had lengthy inscriptions with theological content. It was an article by Dr. Amir Harrak who teaches at the University of Toronto. I wrote him an e-mail to query him further. The other interesting source was posted from SyriacMusic.com, quite an amazing site. You can see the Syriac text for various hymns and liturgical chants, as well as listen to them as mp3 files. What was interesting for my dissertation is that on the evening of Palm Sunday, a special ceremony takes place called 'Nahiré' also known as 'Reaching the Harbor'. The priests/deacons walk around the sanctuary with candles, they read and discuss the parable of the Ten Virgins, and reflect on death. They also chant about 'knocking at the door' which is a theme in Macarius as well. In reading these texts, there is a connection between 'reaching the harbor' and death. For Macarius, dying and passing into Heaven is one way to attain the harbor of rest, but he also teaches that this rest can be experienced, albeit incompletely, in the present. The body will not attain Rest until Heaven, but the soul can begin to experience it now. Rest is incomplete here as Satan will continue to attack while we live on earth. My next step is to read Jacob of Sarug's homily on Palm Sunday as I'm wondering if it will cover any part of the harbor theme.

This afternoon, I'm going to see a French film featuring Kristen Scott Thomas entitled 'Il y a longtemps que je t'aime'. This can be translated as "I've loved you for a long time" or as one blog posted "more accurately as "I have been loving you for a long time". It's about two sisters who are reunited after at least 15 years' apart. The older sister played by KST has spent those years in prison for a unspeakable crime, unbeknownst to her younger sister. Apparently, there are some interesting themes such as: is it possible to change one's life, the nature of sisterhood, the strength of women, and more that I look forward to discovering this afternoon.