technoSabbatarian

Life and Art

2009-11-02T13:27:00.001-08:00

OK, did the news today that the Oasis of the Seas had made its way out to see stir any thoughts in anyone else of a certain Pixar movie that came out last year?

I find the whole Oasis of the Seas a bit disturbing in light of Axiom.

Here's the deck (no pun intended) of a Washington Post article on the ship:

A ship so big it has seven neighborhoods, four pools, an amphitheater and more. Who needs to go ashore?

Here is a slideshow of some concept drawing and a photo:

Finally, the video captain's video logs are so disturbingly like the Captain's logs from Wall-E as to be worth taking a look at:

God help us all.

2009-10-18T19:54:00.000-07:00

Steve Goodman's "City of New Orleans"

2009-10-03T06:34:00.001-07:00

One of the reasons I love to hear the original songwriter sing. This is "City of New Orleans" in the original, back behind Willie's interpretation (as much as I like it) and back behind even Arlo Guthrie's (as much as I like it). Johnny Cash did it pretty well, probably because he understood trains.As much as I like all the others, I feel like I'm getting the real thing when Goodman sings it.

The Dutchman

2009-09-29T04:15:00.001-07:00

Three From Duluth

2009-09-21T19:45:00.001-07:00

Contemplative Cliff

2009-09-09T10:08:00.001-07:00

Coherence

2009-09-07T20:28:00.001-07:00

Bob Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm"

Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved.
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail,
Poisoned in the bushes an' blown out on the trail,
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Suddenly I turned around and she was standin' there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair.
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Now there's a wall between us, somethin' there's been lost
I took too much for granted, got my signals crossed.
Just to think that it all began on a long-forgotten morn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Well, the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
But nothing really matters much, it's doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

I've heard newborn babies wailin' like a mournin' dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love.
Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn?
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation an' they gave me a lethal dose.
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Well, I'm livin' in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine.
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

T.S. Eliot's "The Journey of the Magi"

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and
women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation,
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the
darkness,
And three trees on the low sky.
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the
lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Point - Counterpoint

2009-07-17T14:08:00.001-07:00

I went to a funeral today. The mother of one of our students passed away after a long battle with cancer. It was a beautiful Christian funeral, at which one of her daughters read John Donne's "Holy Sonnet X".

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

As I was listening to it, I couldn't help hearing for the first time, though I am shocked to say so, the echoes of Hamlet's famous "To be, or not to be?" speech, which I have taught to seniors for over ten years now.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

The profundity of Donne's poem was only increased for me by putting it into dialogue with this challenge from Hamlet to the Christian hope beyond the grave. In fact, reading the robustly Christian critique of death that is "Holy Sonnet X" in the context of the deeply humane but pervasively pagan Hamlet, not to mention thinking and feeling my way through this in the context of a real death and real grief, gave me an even greater appreciation for all three.

Quote of the Day 7/7/09

2009-07-07T06:11:00.000-07:00

We recognize, therefore, that the Church had good reason to be concerned about the capacity of a purely technological society to set realistic goals and to make good use of the instruments at its disposal. Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end that provides a sense both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.

Pope Benedict XVI in "Charity in Truth"

Andre and Wally

2009-06-30T12:00:00.001-07:00

In honor of Criterion's re-release of My Dinner With Andre.

You can watch the whole film on-line as well.

Easy Rider Soundtrack

2009-06-17T19:07:00.001-07:00

This has to be one of the greatest original movie soundtracks ever.

Two Photographs

2009-06-14T18:23:00.000-07:00

Chicago Art Institute, 2009

I've Got to Go to Memphis

2009-06-14T15:22:00.001-07:00

... but right now I'm in South Bend.

Thinking About...

2009-06-12T08:14:00.001-07:00

... the corresponding moral imaginations of Woody Allen and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Here's Woody's Isaac talking with Yale in Manhattan:

YALE: I'm not a saint, OK?

ISAAC: You're too easy on yourself. Don't you see?

You're... You rationalise everything. You're not honest with yourself.

You talk about you wanna write a book, but in the end you'd rather buy a Porsche.

You cheat a little bit on Emily and you play around the truth with me.

The next thing you know you're in front of a Senate committee naming names.

YALE: You are so self-righteous. I mean, we're just people. We're just human beings.

You think you're God!

ISAAC: I gotta model myself after someone.

You just can't live the way you do. It's all so perfect.

Jesus, what are future generations gonna say about us? My God!

You know, someday we're gonna be like him. [pointing to the skeleton of a caveman in the room]

And he was probably one of the beautiful people, dancing and playing tennis.

And now look. This is what happens to us.

You know, it's important to have some kind of personal integrity. I'll be hanging in a classroom one day and I wanna make sure when I thin out that I'm... well thought of.

And here is a monologue from Isaac near the end of the film, shortly after the scene above:

And here's Dostoyevsky's Ivan speaking to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov:

I've been sitting here now, and do you know what I was saying to myself? If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced, on the contrary, that everything is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos, if I were struck even by all the horrors of human disillusionment--still I would want to live, and as long as I have bent to this cup, I will not tear myself from it until I've drunk it all! ....

There is still an awful lot of centripetal force on our planet, Alyosha. I want to life, and I do live, even if it be against logic. Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one's heart, out of old habit. Here, they've brought your fish soup -- help yourself. It's good fish soup, they make it well. I want to go to Europe, Alyosha, I'll go straight from here. Of course I know that I will only be going to a graveyard, but to the most, the most precious graveyard, that's the thing! The precious dead lie there, each stone over them speaks of such ardent past life, of such passionate faith in their deeds, their truth, their struggle, and their science, that I -- this I know beforehand -- will fall to the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them -- being wholeheartedly convinced, at the same time, that it has all long been a graveyard and nothing more. And I will not weep from despair, but simply because I will be happy in my shed tears. I will be drunk with my own tenderness. Sticky spring leaves, the blue sky -- I love them, that's all! Such things you love not with your mind, not with logic, but with your insides, your guts, you love your first young strength.

Quote of the Day 6/05/09

2009-06-05T13:52:00.000-07:00

"I feel that I have lived on the edge even of my own life. I have made plans enough, but I see now that I have never lived by plan. Any more than if I had been a bystander watching me live my life, I don’t feel that I ever have been quite sure what was going on. Nearly everything that has happened to me has happened by surprise. All the important things have happened by surprise. And whatever has been happening usually has already happened before I have had time to expect it. The world doesn’t stop because you are in love or in mourning or in need of time to think. And so when I have thought I was in my story or in charge of it, I really have been only on the edge of it, carried along. Is this because we are all in an eternal story that is happening partly in time?"

in Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow

Quote of the Day 6/3/09

2009-06-03T05:15:00.000-07:00

It seems less even to counsel another man to break troth than to do so oneself, especially if one sees a friend bound unwitting to his own harm.

Faramir to Frodo in JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

Thinking About...

2009-05-25T06:38:00.000-07:00

... the preservation of the Incarnation in the mystery of the Ascension.

The Resurrection was a bodily resurrection.

The Ascension was no less a bodily ascension.

There's a deep mystery in there somewhere about the presence of Christ in the Cosmos linking the Creation, the Image of God in Man, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Ascension and the Triumphal Return in one great Story.

Thinking About...

2009-05-23T09:58:00.001-07:00

... the role of hope in the Christian vision for the world.

Something came up in my global issues course the other day as we discussed the AIDS crisis in Zimbabwe. The young lady giving presentation pointed out that without adequate treatment options, of the biggest causes of the spread of HIV is that those who are infected take an "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow I die" attitude. This would, of course, be interrupted if they told their sexual partners that they had AIDS and some don't even go to get tested for this reason.

We started talking about the fact that monogamy - a tenet of basic Christian morality - would end the AIDS crisis in one or two generations.

But one student asked a probing question, "Yea, so you can tell someone who doesn't have AIDS, 'Don't have sex with more than one partner or you'll get AIDS and die,' but what are we are Christians supposed tell the person who already has aids and is already going to die?"

Gosh, I'm going to miss teaching these kids ...

2009-05-22T14:24:00.000-07:00

One of my eighth-grader's year-end definition of poetry:

"Poetry is something that exposes the root of beauty - namely love."

A Poem In Its Infancy

2009-05-20T21:51:00.000-07:00

"May 19, 2009"

Swallows,
like nymphs and children,
can catch a midsummer breeze
and frolic

on the lightest wind.

And in a good autumn gust
even the ravens
put aside their Nevermores
to play with Elsewhere

for a while.

But today
the winds blew so hard
that three vultures
over a field of last year's stubbled corn,
set aside their slow circling
mortal cycle

to dance.

Blue on Blue on Blue with Spatial Disorientation

2009-05-17T18:16:00.001-07:00

Thinking About...

2009-05-15T04:51:00.000-07:00

... the Kingdom of God as community, culture, society, city and institution.

"Ellis Unit One" -- Steve Earle

2009-05-11T18:57:00.001-07:00

lyrics here

Discovered this song listening to Pandora tonight while I was grading papers.

It brought tears to my eyes and I really wanted to say, "Yes. Yes. Jesus does live on Ellis Unit One" -- not as a contradiction to the song, but simply in hope.

OK, I'll just put up the song...

2009-05-07T17:38:00.001-07:00

Quote of the Day 5/07/09

2009-05-07T04:19:00.000-07:00

How long can I stay in this nowhere café before night turns into day?
I wonder why I’m so frightened of the dawn.

All I have and all I know
Is this dream of you which keeps me living on.

There's a moment when all old things become new again,
But that moment might have come and gone

All I have and all I know
Is this dream of you which keeps me living on.

in Bob Dylan's "This Dream of You"

Thinking About ...

2009-05-07T04:05:00.001-07:00

... the adjective "biblical." What, if anything, is gained by using this - or it's more common sister "unbiblical" - to describe a thought, principle or practice?

"Romance in Durango"

2009-05-05T05:14:00.000-07:00

OK, I love Dylan's new album. It may be one of his top ten and is certainly one of his most listenable - just make sure you listen to the lyrics as well.

I think the closest analog from his past work is this gem from the Rolling Thunder Review days.

For a challenge, listen for the New Covenant - New Creation language in the midst of the south-of-the-border rock. Then check out the lyrics here.

The Results Are In

2009-05-04T01:38:00.000-07:00

And the overwhelming response at Balsbaugh7 was that people feel sick to their stomach at the thought of losing that old book smell. Here things were a little different ... smaller sampling and all ... and more polarized. One impending second mortgage and a lot of excitement balancing out the general sentiment of loss.

So what is it about the physical book that makes it so important to Tao of Reading?

Is it mere "sentimentality" or "nostalgia" as one commenter suggests? Or is there something more?

Quote of the Day 5/02/09

2009-05-02T13:32:00.000-07:00

The Sympathetic Mind leaves the world whole, or it attempts always to do so. It looks upon people and other creatures as whole beings. It does not parcel them out into functions and uses. The Rational Mind, by contrast, has rested its work for a long time on the proposition that all creatures are machines. This works as a sort of strainer to eliminate impurities such as affection, familiarity and loyalty from the pursuit of knowledge, power and profit.

Wendell Berry in "Two Minds"

Cow and Boy - Berry and Earth Day

2009-04-30T04:11:00.000-07:00

I was having a discussion with my sisters recently about what Wendell Berry might think of something like "Earth Day." I would put myself more in the Wendell Berry camp than the "Earth Day" camp, as I think the latter probably leaves a larger 'carbon footprint' through advertising than anything else and is more hype than hope whereas what Wendell Berry is doing has some significant integrity and merit. (Though, I must confess, my feelings for Berry's project are also ambiguous.)

At any rate, I saw this Cow and Boy comic on Sunday and couldn't help posting it.

click to see full sized

Together Through Life

2009-04-28T21:45:00.001-07:00

It's a great album.

I've only had time to give it one listen, but it's got some exceptional tracks and a really nice sound overall. Hand clappin' music, most of it. An evening down on the border somewhere in a seedy little hole in the wall.

Furthermore, the deluxe set is really worth it for the second CD, which is an edition of Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour called "Friends and Neighbors" -- for those of us who don't get XM radio.

Just For Fun

2009-04-28T15:27:00.001-07:00

Thinking about my "Thinking About..." I ran across this: "Twenty One Ways You Might Be an Evangelical" For those of us with at least a measure of self-deprecating humor. :-)

Thinking About ...

2009-04-27T20:52:00.000-07:00

... whether or not the word 'evangelical' isn't perhaps wearing itself out, starting to feel, as Bilbo would put it, "like ... butter scraped over too much bread."

Something I Unambiguously Embrace

2009-04-27T14:32:00.000-07:00

Häagen-Dazs Five - especially the flavor above

Well it would clear up some living room space ...

2009-04-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

Stephen King with his Kindle

A friend of mine was over last night and, noticing the rather cluttered condition of my overflowing bookshelves, asked, "So do you just live by the principle that you're going to have twenty percent more books than you have room for?"

Well ... maybe soon that will never be a problem for humanity again! We'll all have the Kindle!

Backpacks full of cumbersome textbooks that add up to half the body weight of a seventh grader? Gone!

Shelves full of titles waiting to be read sometime in the next decade? Gone!

Libraries? Bookstores? Acid-free paper? First Editions?

Gone! Gone! Gone!! Gone!!!

Think it won't catch on? Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos says sales of the Kindle have "exceeded our most optimistic expectations."

The Wall Street Journal ran a piece this week called, "How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write." Take a look at it.

This, too, is a sign of the approaching Singularity.

What do you think? Good? Bad? Neutral? Frightening? Exciting? Take the poll in the right hand column.

There is great promise and opportunity in the digital-books revolution. The question is: Will we recognize the book itself when that revolution has run its course? - Steven Johnson, WSJ

Quote of the Day 4/24/09

2009-04-24T09:50:00.000-07:00

"I used to carry a bag just like yours, but we always wore it on the left side, so that you could get to it quickly with your right hand; if you wear yours on the right like that, it won't be so easy to get to."

Alyosha began with this practical remark, without any premeditated guile, which, incidentally, is the only way for an adult to begin if he wants to gain the immediate confidence of a child, and especially a whole group of children. One must begin precisely in a serious and practical way so as to be altogether on an equal footing. Alyosha instinctively understood this.

in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

More brilliance from another expert on piracy

2009-04-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine (who runs a great blog called Christian Integration, by the way) sent me this update on pirates, this time from Notre Dame Law Professor and "Piracy Expert," Professor Mary Ellen O'Connell in response to an insightful reporter's probing question, "Piracy has been around a long time hasn't it?"

Professor O'Connell: "Oh, yes. Piracy has been around as long as ships have plied international waters and robbed other ships."

Well, it happened.

2009-04-21T20:45:00.001-07:00

Our grandchildren will attend school with clones.

And what are you going to do, really? They won't be distinguishable as clones. They will be human persons. There is absolutely no other way to treat them.

Maybe one of my grandchildren will even marry a clone -- knowingly or unknowingly. It's not exactly going to be on the birth certificate.

"Beyond Here Lies Nothing"

2009-04-21T20:14:00.000-07:00

There's a 'video' of Dylan's new "Beyond Here Lies Nothing" at Amazon.com.

It's really a photo montage though, and an interesting one, fit well, I think to the song.

Seven more days.

Paradise - John Prine

2009-04-17T08:07:00.002-07:00

Thinking About...

2009-04-17T08:07:00.001-07:00

... the sophisticated theological aesthetics of C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces.

Quote of the Day 4/14/09

2009-04-14T07:55:00.001-07:00

Dylan on Obama:

He's got an interesting background. He's like a fictional character, but he's real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas, though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot-type heritage--cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean, it's just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You kind of get past that, though. And then you're into his story. Like an odyssey, except in reverse.

Bob Dylan in an interview with Bill Flanagan

Quote of the Day 4/11/09

2009-04-11T07:01:00.001-07:00

The experience of beauty is a knowledge of creatureliness and a hunger that can never have done with the things of earth. It is also an insatiable hunger for God. Apart from the language of beauty, then, and all it may allow one to say, theology becomes destitute and fruitless. Only with regard to beauty and the "openness to being" it both answers and provokes, can Christian thought say adequately how it is that the Light that "shineth in the darkness" is also "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."

David Bentley Hart in The Beauty of the Infinite

OK, Pirates aren't really funny, but ...

2009-04-09T14:35:00.000-07:00

... this article is almost Onion newsworthy.

It includes some great quotes by Secretary of State Clinton:

"Apparently, the lifeboat has run out of gas;" and "The world must come together to end the scourge of piracy."

Another article contains this helpful piece of advice:

"Action to evade pirates usually consists of steaming the ship under attack at full speed, making quick and unpredictable course changes, and blasting the ship's fire hoses at points on the hull where the pirates might try to throw grappling hooks and ladders."

Just in case you're ever being chased by pirates.

And this article reports officially that "the pirates were in a 'very, very tight spot,'" according to "piracy expert Roger Middleton of the London based think tank Chatham house." (What? A piracy expert from a London based think tank??? And that's the best he could come up with????)

Quote of the Day 4-07-08

2009-04-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

If you are repentant, it means that you love. And if you love, you already belong to God ... With love everything is bought, everything is saved.

Father Zosima in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

(Yes, it's that time of year again.)

Quote of the Day 4-06-09

2009-04-06T14:40:00.000-07:00

Even as I travel the cities, I'm more at home in the vacant lots.

Bob Dylan in a interview with Bill Flanagan

Feel a Change Comin' On

2009-04-06T14:39:00.000-07:00

Newsweek is previewing "Feel A Change Comin' On," one of Dylan's songs from the new album, Together Through Life.

Definitely read his excellent interview with Bill Flanagan as well. Parts One and Two are here and part three is temporarily at the Newsweek site here.

Sometimes Sad Can Be Beautiful, Too

2009-04-06T09:08:00.001-07:00

Thinking About ...

2009-04-02T13:28:00.001-07:00

The power of Jesus's authority in Luke 19

When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, "Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, Why are you untying it? you shall say this: 'The Lord has need of it.'"

So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, Why are you untying the colt? And they said, The Lord has need of it.

Maybe this is the key to living in the power and authority that he has passed on to us, being able to say boldly, "The Lord has need of it."

Thinking About ...

2009-03-24T09:01:00.002-07:00

... whether or not this striking note from John 6, "Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand,"

has anything to do with images like "He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters" (Psalm 23) and other such pastoral imagery of YHWH from the Old Testament.

Mark Your Calendars

2009-03-24T09:01:00.001-07:00

April 28th

I'm an INTP

2009-03-18T18:24:00.000-07:00

Normally, I don't like this sort of thing at all.

But after talking with a colleague and becoming interested, I took a personality text at www.mypersonality.info and it gave some intriguing results! I tried to take it quickly and intuitively rather than overthink it and get irritated (which is what I usually do).

Apparently I am an "INTP" according to Jung's personality types.

Here are several quotes about the INTP from the site (they give you these for your personality type after you take the personality test):

"INTPs are relatively easy-going and amenable to most anything until their principles are violated, about which they may become outspoken and inflexible. They prefer to return, however, to a reserved albeit benign ambiance, not wishing to make spectacles of themselves."
- INTP Profile (TypeLogic)

"The INTP is above all a thinker and his inner (private) world is a place governed by a strong sense of logical structure. Every experience is to be rigorously analysed, the task of the INTP's mind is to fit each encountered idea or experience into a larger structure defined by logic."
- An INTP Profile (intp.org)

"INTPs live in the world of theoretical possibilities. They see everything in terms of how it could be improved, or what it could be turned into. They live primarily inside their own minds, having the ability to analyze difficult problems, identify patterns, and come up with logical explanations. They seek clarity in everything, and are therefore driven to build knowledge. They are the "absent-minded professors", who highly value intelligence and the ability to apply logic to theories to find solutions."
- Portrait of an INTP (The Personality Page)

"The Architects' distant goal is always to rearrange the environment somehow, to shape, to construct, to devise, whether it be buildings, institutions, enterprises, or theories. They look upon the world -- natural and civil -- as little more than raw material to be reshaped according to their design..."
- The Portrait of the Architect Rational (iNTp) (Keirsey)

"INTPs contribute a logical, system-building approach to their work. They like being the architect of a plan, because of the scheming and thinking involved, far more than being the implementer of that plan. Implementation tends to be drudgery. They are content to sit back and think about what might work, given their view of the situation. INTPs may ignore standard operating procedures. The hours that they spend are not what is important to them, but rather the completion of their thought process"
- INTP - The Wizard (Lifexplore)

"likes solitude, not revealing, unemotional, rule breaker, avoidant, familiar with the darkside, skeptical, acts without consulting others"
- Jung Type Descriptions (INTP) (similarminds.com)

I would ultimately leave it to those who know me better than myself to judge how accurate such descriptions are.

If I had to give an assessment, I would say ... 86% accurate ... given my current mood.

Maybe I'll go back and manipulate the test to see if I can get a more accurate self-reflection out of it.

Comcast Jingles the Singularity

2009-03-15T17:43:00.000-07:00

As if I wasn't already worried enough about the negative sociological effects of approaching the Singularity, Comcast comes out with these:

For those who don't know anything about it, "The Singularity" is a theoretical point in the near future at which, depending upon your definition, our technological inventions will surpass us in intelligence, we will be thoroughly integrated into our surrounding technology and it into us, or we will experience a quantum leap in technological advances so unlike anything that we have seen before that it will transform our very understanding of what it means to be human.

Poke around at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Ray Kurzweil's site, or the Acceleration Watch. If you're interested, you can become a full blown Transhumanist as you work towards a Transhuman future.

Or just Google it on your hand-held wireless device using hands-free voice recognition software while your car parallel parks itself.

There is a huge part of me that wants to to form some sort of Christian Neo-Luddite movement in response to this - start smashing Bluetooth devices in the streets or something. Or sometimes I want to do what Wendell Berry did - move away from it all and bide the end on some self-sustaining farm in the upper South, growing beets organically and killing chickens with an ax ground at a human powered wheel.

On the other hand, leading advocates of continuing down this technological path as far as we can will counter, "Which medical advances that we already have would you roll the clock back on?"

And that's a tough question. Every critique of rapidly developing technology faces that huge intellectual hurdle. Which cure would you deny humanity? Which technology? Which advantage? And why?

So ... can we just accept technological progress towards functional immortality? Towards a point at which we move beyond the restraints of biological existence? Should we?

If you could download your neural net into a non-biological humanoid ... would you?

What was once science fiction can no longer be so easily dismissed. How do you think about technological advancement and the future?

If you have some time and you haven't already done so, read what Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy had to say about some of these problems in an article for Wired magazine.

Thanks Highchair Theology for putting me on to the jingles.

Thinking About ...

2009-03-12T14:48:00.001-07:00

... the durability of being and the Scholastic associations between substance, time and space.

OK ... I get paid to do this. It's my job.

This "Thinking About..." was from a conversation in my 12th grade Humane Letters class yesterday and the other two sprung out of our faculty seminar discussion of Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club. So it may not be cooking but I am bringing home the bacon - the Francis Bacon that is. And, honestly, I can hardly believe that I found a way to get paid to do this. What a blessed vocation.

Thinking About...

2009-03-10T08:27:00.001-07:00

... metaphysics versus metanarratives.

Thinking About...

2009-03-09T05:12:00.001-07:00

... Pragmatism, Post-Modernism and Presuppositional Apologetics

Quote of the Day 3/3/09

2009-03-03T09:34:00.000-08:00

Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.

They were gentleman-magicians, which is to say they had never harmed any one by magic – nor ever done any one the slightest good. In fact, to own the truth, not one of these magicians had ever cast the smallest spell, nor by magic caused one leaf to tremble upon a tree, made one mote of dust to alter its course or changed a single hair upon any one's head. But, with this one minor reservation, they enjoyed a reputation as some of the wisest and most magical gentleman in Yorkshire.

in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell

Everything's amazing, and nobody's happy.

2009-03-02T14:43:00.000-08:00

My sister alerted me to this Conan O'Brien interview that has significant technoSabbatarian overtones.

What do you think?

An Old Song for Our Times

2009-02-27T14:11:00.000-08:00

2009-02-25T10:48:00.001-08:00

Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing you have made
and forgive the sins of all who are penitent:
Create and make in us new and contrite hearts,
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wickedness,
may obtain of you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

This morning I attended my first Ash Wednesday service with the four older kids.

The readings for the day together with the recitation of Psalm 51 formed a very powerful reflection upon penitence, mercy and forgiveness.

But the most powerful part of the service was the imposition of the ashes.

There were only a dozen or so people there, all of them older, several of them very elderly. The pastor, himself an older, kindly man with a deeply humane sense for the realities expressed in the liturgy, moved about the silent room, stopping at each person to impose the ashes, addressing them by name and saying with the first pass of his thumb across the forehead,

"Remember that you are dust..."

and with the second,

"... and to dust you shall return."

"Nora, remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

"Jon, remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

"Anna, remmember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

"Dietrich, remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

"Emily, remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Then we took communion together.

Most merciful god,
your love compels us to come in.
Our hands were unclean
our hearts were unprepared;
we were not fit even to eat the crumbs
from under your table.
But you, Lord, are the God of our salvation,
and share your bread with sinners.
So cleanse and feed us
with the precious body and blood of your Son,
that he may live in us and we in him;
and that we, with the whole company of Christ,
may sit and eat in your kingdom.

Amen.

Giving up for Lent ...

2009-02-24T19:09:00.001-08:00

... in the technoSabbatarian vein, googling, wikpedia and non-family blogs.

Hedge of Protection

2009-02-24T11:19:00.001-08:00

In honor of Ben R., friend of mine and blog reader, who did an excellent stand-up bit at our People of Praise men's retreat that reminded me of Tim Hawkins -- as far as I can tell, one of the funniest decent comedians around at the moment.

Christian Engagement in the World

2009-02-23T07:12:00.000-08:00

The following is a teaching I gave at a recent men's retreat for the People of Praise.
________________________________

This morning it’s my job to provide a few principles for you to think about regarding Christian engagement in and with the world.

This is a tricky topic. There are a lot of ways in which Christian engagement with the world can go very wrong and has gone very wrong in the past. But we have also come to one of those exciting if somewhat frightening times in history when a lot of creative work needs to done. For 2000 years we’ve been working out what Christian engagement in the world should look like. But what is it going to look like in the new millennium?

But even before we start thinking about the Christian and the world, we must first recognize that all humanity is God's special creation. Not only are each of us are individually created in his image but as humankind we have also been given by God unique authority and power in his world.

This is what Genesis 1 is getting at when we are given a glimpse into the purposes of God in creating us:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. (Genesis 1:26 – 29)

That’s for everyone – whether they know it or not. God intended humankind to be the world-shaping agents of his ongoing activity in creation, so whenever and wherever we see this world-shaping activity, we see the purposes of our God being worked out! There is something of the stamp of God so permanently upon us that we cannot erase it. We are builders, makers, shapers, problem solvers because God created us to be!

When federal investigators researched and studied the collapsed 35W bridge to find out what had happened and why, they were doing the work of God in the world. When a team of people sat down to design a new bridge over the Mississippi, one that would be safe and that would beautify the city, they were doing the work of God in the world – no matter how many of them were professing Christians. When the contractors and builders and craftsman worked to finish the project ahead of time so traffic flow could improve, so that people could get home earlier and more peacefully from work to spend time with their families, they were doing the work of God in the world – even if some of them were doing it unknowingly.

Our Father wants us to have good bridges, good government, healthy lives, to create beautiful music and art, and to live in peaceful societies. And those are the things He has set for us to do.

And yet, we also know that we have fallen from the original beauty and integrity of that purpose. Turning away who we were supposed to be and what we were supposed to do, we turned to our own interests or even the interests of the enemy. Pride, rebellion, chaos, violence, envy and destruction then entered our pattern of life and infected our work.

Because of this, the cities we have built, the systems we have constructed, the work we have done in the world is sometimes dangerously faulty and even evil.

The first expression of this in the scriptures takes place on the plain of Shinar, when the inhabitants of that area say to themselves "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth" (Genesis 11:4) They did make a name for themselves. It was Babel. And it is not hard to hear echoes of their plans in our present own hunger for a man-made security.

Similarly, the book of Daniel records this boast of Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, as he looked upon the city he ruled over: "Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?" (Daniel 4:30). Hear again, it’s easy to hear echoes of this in our sense of everything we have accomplished in the last hundred years or so.

And so in the scriptures, Babylon becomes the great symbol for every instance of humankind shaping for itself a whole system of power and authority that opposes itself to God by turning away from Him to serve its own interests. Think of how this has continued throughout history.

Roman imperial pride.

Nazi nationalism.

South African apartheid.

Nor are we free from this in our own United States.

Sometimes as Americans, we have mistaken our liberty for the right to do whatever we want in whatever way we want to do it. We have turned the good principles of democracy and freedom into a radicalized individualism that is in the end only self-destructive.

We have taken an effective economic system, free-market capitalism and made for ourselves a golden idol of consumerism and a fantasy of the American dream.

Because we believe we have pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps, we have neglected the poor, saying to them, “You have two hands. If we did it, you can do it, too.”

And even the good things of the world – the 35W bridge for instance – are not complete until they are recognized them as part of God’s providing for us – and that is not often our attitude.

Of course, here’s where it gets tricky. What is a Christian man to do in and with this kind of world? How should we relate to the larger project out there, to all the good, world-shaping activity that is often laced with sin, corruption, and self-destruction? How is Christian society to respond to that tension?

Well, the first thing we must do is to constantly remind ourselves that God is at work in the world. It is far too easy and no help at all to just stand outside the circle and throw stones. But don’t need to do that. In a very real way, we are not opposed to the world. We are for it. When Joseph was in Egypt, a pagan country with many false gods, it was his wisdom that saved not only the nation but the entire region from a devastating famine. Similarly, when Daniel was in Babylon itself with all its imperial pride and arrogance, he rose to the position of King’s advisor and helped shape public policy for the empire across administrations. We have a similar responsibility not to abandon this aspect of God's work. We must be salt and light in the world.

On the other hand, we must also be aware of the corrupting powers at work in the world's systems. We do no good either if we naively participate in the world’s project on the world’s terms in the world’s way. Everyone knows how easy of a trap that is to fall into and how tempting it is if we are not careful.

But we are a new creation in Christ. And in the world we must be agents of new creation. We can and must work with and alongside the world, but as agents of new creation we cannot compromise with the principles of the old. We cannot sacrifice justice, righteousness and our first responsibility to Christ our Lord. If the salt loses its saltiness, it is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled upon.

Jesus Christ, our Lord, our savior, and our older brother, is renewing and will renew all things, and so all things must eventually come up against his standard. And it is us, full of the Holy Spirit, who bear that standard with us and bring it into the world.

When you go into the world, you carry Jesus Christ with you as your ally, your advocate, your friend and the one who is behind you, cheering you on in your own world-shaping activity. This should give us tremendous confidence to simply be sons of our Father in his world. As the apostle Paul asks, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31). It is not easy to be at work in the world as sons of God, but we do so with the example, the help and the promises of Him who has gone before us and has conquered even death.

Finally, there does also come a time, with discernment, to act counter-culturally. When some aspect of the world's system is failing, there comes a time for Christians to create something new. When the world's way of doing business collapses into nothing but greed for profit, perhaps we have to find a new way of doing business. When the education system fails to accomplish its mission, perhaps we have to find a new way of doing education. When communities lose their way and cease to be communities, perhaps we need to find a new way of building community.

But even as we act counter-culturally, we act for the world. We shape a Christian life together so we can hold it up as a good example of how God wants the whole world to be. It’s never a perfect example, but it is one full of the Holy Spirit, one that really works. We want to say to the world, “Look how good life together can be!”

Everything we do together or individually in the world, full of the Holy Spirit and supported by our life together, is for the world, both as an example and as an invitation. In this way, our men’s groups are for the world. Our areas are for the world. Our businesses are for the world. Our school is for the world. "A city that is set upon a hill, cannot be hidden" (Matthew 5:14). And we are a city set on a hill – not a hidden compound, tucked away and protected.

There’s a lot for us and for Christians everywhere to do in working these things out with discernment, freedom, conversation and courage.

I want to end by simply putting one of the prayers of the Psalmist as a banner over our work. It’s a prayer that should probably be unpacked and meditated upon. But for now, just listen to it as you think about your work and our work in and with the world.

Let Your work appear to Your servants,
And Your glory to their children.
And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us,
And establish the work of our hands for us;
Yes, establish the work of our hands. (Psalm 90:16 – 17)

Quote of the Day 2/22/08

2009-02-22T17:09:00.001-08:00

The older I grow the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.

Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery

Thinking About...

2009-02-19T15:55:00.000-08:00

... the sunlight during the golden hour.

His "Why I'm not on Twitter" is My "Why I'm not on Twitter"

2009-02-10T04:21:00.000-08:00

And there is some other really excellent stuff here as well.

Quote of the Day 2/09/09

2009-02-09T20:11:00.001-08:00

Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore
You may not see me tomorrow.

in Bob Dylan's "Oh, Sister"

What Has to Happen in Education

2009-02-06T08:37:00.001-08:00

Creation in Conversion

2009-02-03T05:12:00.000-08:00

1 There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him." 3 Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." 4 Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" 5 Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit." 9 Nicodemus answered and said to Him, "How can these things be?" 10 Jesus answered and said to him, "Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? 11 Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. F14 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but F15 have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. 18 He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."

Holy H20 Batman!!!

2009-01-31T15:48:00.000-08:00

Liquid dihydrogen oxide running down the alleys!!!

This is something we haven't seen outside for quite a while, as it hadn't gotten above 32 degrees for 32 days before today – a balmy, shirt-sleeves inducing 47!

Has a song ever hit you at just the right moment?

2009-01-28T09:06:00.000-08:00

This morning I was driving into work for my 6:30 meeting and decided to start listening straight through Dylan's concert album, Hard Rain.

As the disk flipped over from "Maggie's Farm" to "One Too Many Mornings" I knew the song was hitting me at just the right moment, catching me at a point of profound sympathy with the artist.

"One too many mornings and a thousand miles behind ..."

Can anyone give an existential-Amen to that? At least some days? Certainly today began as a "one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind" day for me.

Then I realized moving from "One Too Many Mornings" to "Stuck Inside of Mobile, with the Memphis Blues Again" how carefully crafted the song-list for Hard Rain really is! Not only was the song that first grabbed me a perfect expression of my state of mind, the whole album is a careful working out of that state of mind: its reasons, roots, unfoldings and implications.

And ... maybe this is one of the real powers of art, something that Aristotle understood and tried to explain as "catharsis" ... listening to these songs, I no longer feel "one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind."

Thinking About...

2009-01-23T18:26:00.001-08:00

... how writing and books began the process of removing information from realm of the memory and placing it in outside of the human person, and how the internet and a hand held or implanted device might complete that process.

Thoughts on an Historic Day

2009-01-20T18:18:00.000-08:00

What I thought about most watching the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States of America was what it must have been like to have been a 72 year old black man in the crowd in DC - someone who grew up in the South.

Consider. He was born in 1936 in Mississippi where there were well over 500 lynchings between 1882 and 1968. Maybe his grandfather was a slave. Both the mayor of his town and the sheriff belonged to the Klu Klux Klan - nice enough if you didn't cross them, but he knew they met and wore the white sheets.

He was 18 in 1954 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education.

And the next year, he cheered, but quietly, when Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus as required by city ordinance.

But when he was 20 the Coalition of Southern congressmen called for massive resistance to Supreme Court desegregation rulings and 21 when the Arkansas Governor used the National Guard to block nine black students from attending a Little Rock School.

At the age of 24 he followed the news as four black college students staged a sit-in at lunch counter of a Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth's restaurant.

His next year was the year the Freedom Rides began from Washington, D.C., into Southern states.

And not that things weren't ugly before, but in 1962 President Kennedy had to send in federal troops to the University of Mississippi so that the school's first black student could attend, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was unconstitutional in all transportation facilities, and the the Department of Defense ordered full integration of military reserve units (excepting the National Guard).

When he was 27, starting to make a living for his kids, getting by, following things on the news, Civil rights leader Medgar Evers, a fellow Mississippian, was killed by a sniper. His killer would escape conviction until 1994 because two all-white juries could not reach a verdict. But as the song says that man, Byron de la Beckwith, "He was only a pawn in their game."

That same year Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech to the assembled at the March on Washington. (Where a musician I have a certain soft-spot for also performed.) Maybe that 72 year old man in the crowd today made the trip there 45 years ago, too. Who knows.

But that was also the year that the Klu Klux Klan bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, leaving four little girls dead; and the year, of course, that John F. Kennedy, a leading advocate for Civil Rights legislation, was assassinated in Dallas.

Then in 1964, at the age of 28, this man saw Congress pass the Civil Rights Act declaring discrimination based on race illegal - after 75-day long filibuster.

But then in his own back yard, three civil rights workers disappeared in Mississippi after being stopped for speeding. Their bodies were found buried six weeks later. State prosecutors refused to try the case, so the federal government stepped in. After several of the men were convicted on federal conspiracy charges, the judge sentenced them to a variety of sentences from three to ten years, saying, "They killed one n_____, one Jew, and a white man. I gave them all what I thought they deserved."

He was 29 when he listened to the news of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, of Malcolm X's death, and the riots in Watts.

Then gradually ... in 1966 Massachusetts elected the first black U.S. senator in 85 years. In 1967 Thurgood Marshall became the first black to be named to the Supreme Court and Cleveland, Ohio and Gary, Indiana elected the first black mayors of major U.S. cities.

In his 33rd year, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

He was my age when Atlanta elected the first black mayor of a major Southern U.S. city but he had to wait until he was 53 to see the first black governor elected, L. Douglas Wilder of Virgina.

What must it have felt like for that man, standing in the crowd today, to watch a black man, Barack Obama, sworn in to the most powerful political office in the world?

Call it research for a savage post-apocalyptic novel if you like...

2009-01-19T07:33:00.001-08:00

I want to know from any of my tech-savvy friends, what would it take from a hardware, software or power supply angle to completely take out the collective storehouse of knowledge we call the world-wide-web?

Think creatively. What would someone have to do if they wanted to do it?

Everything a Song Should Be

2009-01-17T05:15:00.001-08:00

Townes Van Zandt, "She Came and She Touched Me"

The song is well composed, the voice is fit to it and the lyrics are fabulous.

Illusions projected
On walls made of tiffany
Mad minuets to
A sad satin song

And harlequin mandolins
Harmonize helplessly
Hoping that endlessly
Won’t last for long

Thinking About ...

2009-01-15T06:15:00.001-08:00

... nothing more or less than the crunch of the snow beneath my feet in the -20 degree air.

Thinking About ...

2009-01-11T20:01:00.000-08:00

... theological aesthetics and sense of wonder anew in light of Josef Pieper's desire to re-integrate intellectus and ratio as articulated in his Leisure, the Basis of Culture.

Of Blogs and Books

2009-01-08T10:25:00.001-08:00

OK, 22 Words has done it again.

I understand that for some reason it is necessary to make short paragraphs on blog posts.

I also understand that this doesn't necessarily mean that people who read blogs can't read books with long paragraphs.

But... I do really fear for the future of the older classics in this new culture of techno-literacy. As people become more and more accustomed to shorter paragraphs, twitter content, IM, etc., I fear they will have completely unsuited themselves for Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Hugo ... even Steinbeck.

If this happens on a large scale, I do not think it will be a failure of education, desire or inteligence, simply a matter of habit and conditioning. That's what scares me the most. It's so easy.

And then what? As Morissey might say: "Come armageddon!
Come, armageddon! come!"

Unfortunately, only a couple days after that post on short paragraphs in blogs, I found some of these very fears disturbingly realized reading the comments of 22 Words's fairly literate readership in response to the question, "Are there any good books you don't like?"

Dickens used to appear in the newspapers for crying out loud! Now he appears on lists of books that fairly literate people couldn't get through.

It's almost enough to make me drop out altogether, like one twentieth century writer, thinker, and human being I admire an awful lot.

Every Day is Like Sunday

2009-01-05T06:02:00.000-08:00

It is interesting to hear the way Sunday is used metaphorically in this Morrissey song. There are those for whom Sunday is very different than for the practicing Christian - mere silence and loneliness, silent and grey, "a costal town that they forgot to close down."

There is a lot that could be said about the simple fact that this metaphor works for people -- a lot about the empty shell of Christendom that is the quasi-secular West, the true Christian calendar and "Christian time," even the Church's mission in the world.

(click here for lyrics)
(Or here for 10,000 Maniacs' version)

Quote of the Day 1/2/09

2009-01-02T08:42:00.001-08:00

Doctrine and Christian living, faith and life, "orthodoxy" and "orthopraxis" cannot be separated, held in balance, or even considered apart from each other. If I tell the truth apart from love and piety, I am not "doing the truth" at all–and consequently I am not telling the truth, according to Scripture….

Theologizing, in this sense, can never be "objective." It is created out of covenant commitment to the covenant God. Sovereign grace bestowed creates reciprocal responses of faith, love, and obedience. In creating a response, grace testifies to divine initiative. That the response created is reciprocal testifies to the human obligation involved….

As we have said elsewhere, too often theology has lost this praxeological dimension. It has become known as an abstract discipline, not as a "conscientizing" instrument. Brevard Childs reminds us that the eschatological "now" of our stance between the already of Christ's first coming and the not yet of His second coming can be manipulated to separate the history of redemption from our place with Peter, Paul, and John in that history [Biblical Theology in Crisis, Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970, pp. 123-28]. If theology is to be biblical theology, its focus is not simply the self-assurance of an exegetical job well done. it calls for the reappraisal of those demands and solutions we originally brought to it at the initiation of our participation in the "hermeneutical spiral." Theologizing is the task of each new generation standing in its particular moment of history, it searches the Scriptures in order to discern the will of God and strives to receive guidance on its way toward the obedient life that must be pursued within the concrete issues of the world's concrete cultures.

Harvey Conn in Eternal Word and Changing Worlds

(thanks to Peter Enns at a time to tear down | A time to Build Up)

2008 Best Of

2008-12-31T11:25:00.001-08:00

Time for a little end of the year best of!

Movie of the Year

Federico Fellini's 8½

This movie absolutely stunned me. A brilliant meditation on one man's struggle with his art, his relationships and his own ego.

The film drifts seamlessly between the present (such as it exists), reverie, dream and fantasy. Now I know how much something like Todd Hayes's I'm Not There (last year's movie of the year and soundtrack of the year) owes to 8½. In fact, the scene where Cate Blanchett's Dylan is flying like a balloon on a string (you catch a glimpse of it in the trailer)and the opening scene in the car seems to be taken directly from the opening dream sequence of 8½.

Runner Up: Craig Gillespie's Lars and the Real Girl

Book of the Year

Peter Leithart, Against Christianity

A fabulous "theological bricolage" (Leithart's description) that asks us to re-examine where the faith is at in the twenty first century. Leithart definitely owes a debt to others like Bishop N.T. Wright and Stanley Hauerwas, but brings his own spin as a Reformed (CRE) thinker who really is willing to engage history, theology and other traditions.

Leithart has helped further my thinking about the intimate relationships between cosmology, theology, Scripture, history, politics, culture and literacy.

Furthermore, he puts his thoughts into easy to digest small nuggets. This is also true of his excellent blog.

Runner-up: Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos

Album of the Year

Bob Dylan's Tell Tale Signs: Bootleg Series Vol. VIII

A fabulous collection of rare, unreleased or live versions, including my favorite on the album, "Across the Green Mountain" from the soundtrack to Gods and Generals.

As Dylan ages his voice becomes increasingly pleasing matched with the roots music to which he has returned.

The only irritating thing about this release was the 3CD set that was released at the same time. The third CD even includes an alternate version of one of my all time favorite songs, "Ring Them Bells" from Oh Mercy!. You just can't have too many versions of this song.

Alas, It almost tempts one to really bootleg.

Runner Up: All the other Bob Dylan albums I listened to this year.

Photograph of the Year

Multnomah Falls
Columbia Gorge, Oregon

Runner Up:

Bamboo Stand, Huntington Botanical Gardens
San Marino, CA

Robert Duvall with Charlie Rose on The Apostle

2008-12-29T16:30:00.000-08:00

Bad for the economy but good for the soul?

2008-12-28T20:37:00.000-08:00

Here's the Mall of America parking lot, floor five of seven, two days before Christmas. Usually a madhouse.

Thinking About ... Three Types of Boredom ...

2008-12-27T10:33:00.000-08:00

... another 22 Words inspired set of distinctions.

Abraham Piper raised the question, "Whose fault is it if you're bored?"

I think I would make the following distinction before answering the question.

You could think of 'boredom' as a simple an emotional state, an emotional state that could arise from any number of complex or interrelated causes. Like anger, boredom in this sense is not be blameworthy in and of itself.

There is another type of boredom, however, that is more deep seated. It's a way of being in the world. Call it 'ennui' if you like. This boredom is a fundamental disposition of the human person towards other people, the Cosmos, and maybe even the Creator. This second type of boredom is certainly blameworthy and, what's worse, potentially deadly to the soul. It is the opposite of openness to being. It is a corrosive evil.

Finally, a third type of boredom might arise simply from living passively in a technological, consumerist, info-tainment based culture. This 'boredom' is neither a blameless emotional state nor a corrosive disposition of the soul but a simple habit, a habit acquired through allowing your interest to be too often spoon fed you. As it becomes more pervasive, it amounts to a failure to rouse oneself from the slumber of being entertained by the World to the responsibility for creative, dynamic engagement in the created Cosmos. It's laziness at best, 'soul sleep' before death at worst.

It seems to me that I should keep this in mind not only for myself but also in my child rearing. What I do with my own boredom and how I handle my children's occasional announcement, "I'm bored," should be shaped by a discerning attitude towards the root and extent of that boredom. Because if these distinctions hold, it would be a grave mistake in every direction to treat all boredom alike.

Thinking about ...

2008-12-24T08:36:00.000-08:00

... those for whom the Christmas is no cheerier or better than the rest of the miserable, depressing, chest-clinching year.

Honestly, I think we run into them more often than we think. People in line at Target, the barista at Starbucks, the father resting on the bench at the mall while his wife shops.

Just yesterday, I smiled at a Macy's cashier yesterday and asked her how she was doing and got way more than I expected.

When our family was out caroling last night, the elderly man across the street shut the door on us. Then this morning he found the cookies we left in a bag on his porch and wrapped up one of his wife's cherry nut bread loaves and brought it over to apologize.

Be kind.

Say "Hi."

Smile and mean it.

And if you're the sort of person who can find it in themselves, or who can do so by the power of the Holy Spirit, really reach out. Some people are going through what this song describes, perhaps especially so at the holidays. You may be their angel before it's too late.

Thinking About ...

2008-12-23T05:28:00.000-08:00

... the difference between idleness and leisure.

Yankee Bayonet

2008-12-22T09:50:00.000-08:00

I couldn't find a decent version of the Decemberists doing this, so I found a really good cover.

Advent

2008-12-21T16:41:00.000-08:00

This is our first advent season in a high liturgical tradition and it has been very good to get to know the church calendar better and to anticipate Christmas in a new way. Advent is a season of waiting or anticipation before the coming of the King, so there is much more kneeling than usual (not that any kneeling at all wasn't new, growing up in community churches or Baptist churches). I have gained a particular insight into the way in which we live in a time of "already and not yet." The King has come. The King is also yet to come. And so we celebrate his coming. And so we look for his return.

Here was the collect of the day:

"Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one god, now and forever. Amen."

The Superiority of Christ's Resurrection

2008-12-18T12:23:00.000-08:00

John 11:43-44 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."

John 20:6-7 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.

Even the miraculous work of power that Jesus accomplished in raising Lazarus is surpassed by the first, primary, fundamental act of YHWH's New Creation - Jesus's own Resurrection, revealed to the disciples on the first day of the week.

Thinking About ...

2008-12-16T16:59:00.001-08:00

Get Out the Olive Colored Crayons

2008-12-13T09:20:00.001-08:00

A little tiff two of my young nephews were having about how to draw God, combined with some meditations I'm working through at a People of Praise conference on friends hip with God led me to this piece of advice for young Maxwell the artist.

If you want to color God, Max, what you want is some crayolas that approximate a dusty, olive-skinned look, a good sense for the Semitic profile and some rough edged Palestinian paper.

"He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father."

10,000 Chains

2008-12-08T18:08:00.001-08:00

You may have already seen this at 22 Words, but it bears relistening -- "10,000 Chains," performed by the Get Rights:

Thinking About ...

2008-12-07T17:26:00.000-08:00

... small talk again.

I used to despise small talk. Now I think it's essential to a rightly ordered human community.

Small talk seems to occupy an essential middle position between intense conversation and silence.

Thinking About...

2008-12-05T13:08:00.001-08:00

... the difference between small talk and idle chatter.

It seems to me that small talk is to moderate, adult social drinking as idle chatter is to the kind of drinking that happens at a frat party.

Happy Feast of St. Nicholas!

2008-12-04T18:38:00.001-08:00

"Six to Eight Black Men," by David Sedaris, in three parts

(It really does turn to Christmas about 4 minutes in)

Part I

Part II

Part III

One of the best things about having kids...

2008-12-02T20:26:00.000-08:00

... is getting to play amateur psychoanalyst.

My latest experiment is in reader-response criticism. If you really live in a literary world, really get into it and feel what's going on and breathe the air around you, then your responses in that world -- your affections, likes, dislikes, passions and thoughts -- say as much about you as about the world.

So nearing the end of our years in Narnia (at least the first time through), here are my eldest three children's favorite characters (excluding Aslan):

Dietrich (10): Jewel the Unicorn

Anna (8): the dryads

Emily (7): Puddleglum

Each speaks volumes if you know them.

So ... who is your favorite character?

(click for a nice full size map of Narnia)

Some Proto-Incarnational Passages from the Old Testament and Apocrypha as the Context for John's Gospel

2008-11-30T16:19:00.001-08:00

Genesis 1:1-5
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.

3 And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

Proverbs 8:22 - 30 [Wisdom speaking]
22 The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. 23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. 24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. 25 Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth; 26 before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. 27 When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, 29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30 then I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always.

Isaiah 55:10 - 11
10 For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11 so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

Sirach 24:3-6, 9, 32 [Wisdom speaking]
3 I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth like a mist. 4 I dwelt in high places, and my throne was in a pillar of cloud. 5 Alone I have made the circuit of the vault of heaven and have walked in the depths of the abyss. 6 In the waves of the sea, in the whole earth, and in every people and nation I have gotten a possession.

9 From eternity, in the beginning, he created me, and for eternity I shall not cease to exist.

32 I will again make instruction shine forth like the dawn, and I will make it shine afar.

John 1:1-5
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God; 3 all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Thinking About ...

2008-11-28T06:14:00.000-08:00

Much is made in some hymns and contemporary worship songs of staying "at the foot of the cross." But isn't that precisely what the gospel story as a whole encourages us not to do? On the basis of what was finished at the cross, we are to go out by the power of the Spirit to the ends of the earth.

This might also have applications as a theological metaphor.

The Court of the Hamadryad

2008-11-28T06:01:00.001-08:00

Here's a little something inspired by Guillermo del Toro.

Quote of the Day - Happy Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T06:13:00.000-08:00

I Chronicles 29:13-14

Now therefore, our God, We thank You And praise Your glorious name. But who am I, and who are my people, That we should be able to offer so willingly as this? For all things come from You, And of Your own we have given You.