explode!

This moment of not working on the New Testament final is in honor of Mr. Miro. I ran "faith explosion" through Google Images...



You, too, could own your own Faith Explosion brooch. Wouldn't that be fantastic? You should definitely buy one for everyone that you dislike, just to watch the remnants of their exploded faith wing through the cheery sky like shot skeet.




Or you could use this handy honeycomb Meta-Faith Explosion chart to remember some major religious symbols, none of which are likely made happy by being smashed onto the same chart. It's like the family reunion from hell, except that no party is allowed to leave their leg-scrunching Miatas while arguing over the existence of said hell. So it's even worse, since I'm pretty sure that hell is a long, awkward theological argument conducted inside a Miata.

I don't even know what a lot of these symbols refer to, but I'm really intrigued by the three parallel lines with the space in the middle. It looks like someone sat down with a ruler and made a rough draft of an interstate, and then it accidentally morphed into a major religious symbol of some sort.

Anyway, what are you waiting for?

distractions

Here's some neat stuff I've been reading, in lieu of doing schoolwork or finding a job:
Forgiveness is an inhuman quality
In praise of boredom
There are no athiests in foxholes...
The music of self-justification
All taken from Arts and Letters Daily, except for the one on athiests in foxholes.

Here's a baby named Urhines Kendall Icy Eight Special K. (h/t j-walkblog)

Life advice from Augustine, copied from the post on athiesm: There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity...It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us of nothing and which man should not which to learn.

It sounds better from CCEL: In addition to this there is another form of temptation, more complex in its peril. For besides that concupiscence of the flesh which lieth in the gratification of all senses and pleasures, wherein its slaves who “are far from Thee perish,” there pertaineth to the soul, through the same senses of the body, a certain vain and curious longing, cloaked under the name of knowledge and learning, not of having pleasure in the flesh, but of making experiments through the flesh. This longing, since it originates in an appetite for knowledge, and the sight being the chief amongst the senses in the acquisition of knowledge, is called in divine language, “the lust of the eyes.” [..] Hence do we proceed to search out the secret powers of nature (which is beside our end), which to know profits not, and wherein men desire nothing but to know. Hence, too, with that same end of perverted knowledge we consult magical arts. Hence, again, even in religion itself, is God tempted, when signs and wonders are eagerly asked of Him,—not desired for any saving end, but to make trial only.

Curiosity can be a form of grasping, I guess. Augustine's a funny fellow.

The pictures are of the star nosed mole, one of my favorite animals. Some probably live in my backyard, but I've never seen one except in pictures. I think they look like flowers.


This is pretty much the coherence level that my brain has been at all day. It's a wonder I've managed to hold any conversations. Or maybe I haven't been successful at social interaction, and friends have just been kind to me.

In conclusion, I like star nosed moles.

klingon

I had thought it was fun to read my hermeneutics assigment in the Wycliffe New Testament, but I've since discovered that I can procrastinate more efficiently while trying to read it in Klingon.

ostriker

Two poems, both by Alicia Suskin Ostriker! What a deal!

From an article on Cobain:

Passing that fiery tree—if only she could
Be making love,
Be making poetry,
Be exploding, be speeding through the universe
Like a photon, like a shower
Of yellow blazes—
She believes if she could only overtake
The riding rhythm of things,
Of her own electrons,
Then she would be at rest
If she could forget school,
Climb the tree,
Be the tree,
Burn like that.
She doesn’t know yet, how could she
That this same need
Is going to erupt every September
And that in 40 years the idea will strike her
From no apparent source,
In a Laundromat
Between a washer and a dryer,
Like one of those electric light bulbs
Lighting up near a character’s head in a comic strip—
There in that naked and soiled place
With its detergent machines,
Its speckled fluorescent lights,
Its lint piles broomed into corners as she fumbles for quarters
And dimes, she will start to chuckle and double over
Into the plastic baskets’
Mountain of wet
Bedsheets and bulky overalls—
Old lady! She’ll grin,
beguiled at herself,

Old lady! The desire to burn is already a burning! How about that!

And the second poem, Boil:

Boil over—it’s what the nerves do,
Watch them seethe when stimulated,

Murmurs the man at the stove
To the one at the fridge—

Watch that electric impulse that finally makes them
Fume and fizz at either

Frayed end. If you could grasp a bundle
Of nerves in your fist like a jumper cable, and sense that

Python’s writhe, or a garden hose when the pressure’s
High and it wilfully weaves about

Trying its best to get away from you—
You’d see how nothing is passive,

We’re all—I mean from our elephant sun, ejaculant
Great-grandfather, cascading down

To weightless
Unstoppable neutrinos

Leaving their silvery trace
In vacuum chambers, in

Effervescent lines, twisted
Madly in our madhouse jackets,

Rules, laws, which we are seething to break
Though to rupture them might be of course to die,

Or, possibly,
To change:

Boil, it’s what water
And everything else teaches.

explanations

I read and enjoyed this review of Why?, by Charles Tilly... during Theological Reflection. I couldn't formulate a coherent post last night, and my mind is too gooey now to write an interesting and accurate synopsis of the review, but you should check it out if you ever spend significant amounts of time wondering why two people (or groups of people) can't understand one another.

In short, though, the review (and probably Tilly as well) argues for four different categories of reason-giving: conventions, stories, codes (high level conventions), and technical accounts (high level stories).

The reviewer, Malcolm Gladwell, gives an example of a small boy named Timothy who wants to tell his mother a story about his brother, and hears in return a convention: Don't be a tattletale. The story form of reason-giving was truthful, for the boy, but inappropriate with regard to the power differences between himself and his mother. His father can tell his mother stories about his brother's poor behavior, but the boy cannot. Gladwell writes,

The fact that Timothy's mother accepts tattling from his father but rejects it from Timothy is not evidence of capriciousness; it just means that a husband's relationship to his wife gives him access to a reasongiving category that a son's role does not. The lesson "Don't be a tattletale," which may well be one of the hardest childhood lessons to learn, is that in the adult world it is sometimes more important to be appropriate than it is to be truthful.

I'm excited about sermonizing on the dark underbelly of grace, but now I'm tempted to change my topic to Tattletaling Prophets.

In addition, you should read this article on vodka, which I also got from Arts & Letters Daily.

How can we stop drinking with a climate like ours?

Good question, Russians.

robespierre

Except for his spectacular absent-mindedness – he once served the soup onto the tablecloth, not noticing the absence of a bowl – he was like other people.

I never thought I'd feel such an affinity with Robespierre.

Unrelatedly, I would not have guessed the meaning of Wing-dings:

U.S. slang. A fit or spasm, esp. as simulated by a drug addict; freq. in phr. to throw a wing-ding. Also in weakened sense, a furious outburst.

Am I misremembering, or is this the name of the crazy Windows font?

procrastination

I've got a sermon to write. The working title is "The Dark Underbelly of Grace," but that's as far as I've gone with it. Here's what I've done instead:

I am Philip Melancthon.
You are Philip Melancthon, author of the Augsburg Confession and colleague of Luther at Wittenberg. You were the most prominent among the Lutheran theologians seeking reconciliation with the Catholic Church.

I'm also Jurgen Moltmann.
The problem of evil is central to your thought, and only a crucified God can show that God is not indifferent to human suffering. Christian discipleship means identifying with suffering but also anticipating the new creation of all things that God will bring about.
I came out high on Luther, Calvin, Anselm, Schleiermacher and Tillich, as well.

It's too beautiful outside to be productive- I'm going to go continue scoring a sunburn.

fullness

On the Wednesday of Holy Week, I led worship and preached during the school chapel time.
On Maunday Thursday, I went to Love Feast at the Richmond Church of the Brethren.
On Good Friday, I attended service at Reid Presbyterian Church.
On Holy Saturday, I joined my friends in waiting worship and potlucking.
On Easter Sunday, I went to a sunrise service at White Branch Church of the Brethren, and then played at the regular Sunday service at Central Baptist.

Today, I still feel full. Liturgy gives me a buzz, and I think it will take me a while to sort out my various reflections and scrappy journal entries. It's so satisfying, though, to hear the same story told in widely varying contexts.

Word of the day: Apocatastasis. Discussion?

Also, I found this interesting. What's up with all the Quakers in Alaska? Is it just the relatively low Alaskan population rate, or is there a hard-working Alaska Yearly Meeting behind this?

bunnies

My pa sent me this picture of my sisters in an Easter email. I'm pretty sure neither of them could shoot a bunny without crying, but they sure pose tough.

Rumor has it that ma wasn't thrilled about the egregious display of 2nd Amendment rights, but you didn't hear that from me.

easter eve

Easter Eve, by Anton Chekhov.

stonework

My alma mater has been on a blogspot ball. The religion and philosophy department has a blog, so I've found myself thinking about this post from John Brittain:

Have we created a new kind of “wisdom” of practicality and a different kind of “sign” of instant gratification that impairs our ability to deal with the intensely theological “word of the cross”?

Relatedly, I miss Dr. Brittain's sermons.

In other words, a group has started up a journal, too, called Stonework. It looks like it's all going to be published on blogspot... maybe I'm misunderstanding it. I didn't read the page very carefully, but I did find poetry from Linda Mills Woolsey, which makes me very happy.

This post brought to you by school pride, or something.

different query

If you'd perfer not to electronically discuss the potentially negative effects of electronic relationships, come up here. Tell me what works of literature you understand as essential to a complete, classically liberal education. If you were in charge of the education of a high school student, what would you be sure to assign?

Feel free to move beyond literature as such- there may be entire genres of education that you see as neglected, and this is the place to complain about it.

Appropos of nothing, Christianity Today has an article critical of Hannah Arendt.

poem

MOSSBAWN: SUNLIGHT

There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed

in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall

of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove

sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.

Now she dusts the board
with a goose's wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails

and measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.

And here is love
like a tinsmith's scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.

-- Seamus Heaney (1975)

humph

Mr. Miro's curiosity has been stoked by this Beliefnet article by Johann Christoph Arnold (of Bruderhof fame) on the destruction of community by the Internet. Instead of talking to him about the article- he's sitting maybe 4ft away from me- I intend to post thoughts online and hope that he comments.

Of course, it's a bit ironic that one would publish written work in a popular online forum to complain about the influence of the internet on community. The tension is heightened by the Bruderhof's decision last December to delete their large, popular, resource-rich websites and leave up only contact information. Bring Back Bruderhof directs us to Plough Publishing for copies of the free e-books that were listed on Bruderhof.org, if you're interested in checking it out- I particularly recall appreciating Jane Tyson Clement's book of poetry.

This is all rather off track- my point is just that the Bruderhof in general and Arnold in particular hold an odd relationship with the internet already.

I'm not sure that Arnold has read Neil Postman (or maybe Malcolm Muggeridge), but my inner sociologist is quite the pessimist and inclined to agree with Arnold's overall thesis.

Technology is our Achilles heel, which in the end will be worse than any weapon of mass destruction. It will destroy us from within. This frightening trend can only be reversed if more and more citizens listen to their consciences and say, "Enough is enough." Technology puts the "I" in the center and ignores the fact that life is only worth living if "I" depend on my neighbor.

The classics were once an integral part of education. Just about every student read writers such as Aristotle, Novalis, Shakespeare and Dickens. Now, in schools in which every child has access to a computer, children are not even being taught the basic skills of life, such as how to express their thoughts and feelings in writing.

But, but, but... he's personifying technology, and this also makes my inner sociologist squeamish. "Technology" does not put anything anywhere- technology is not an active, willful force. Powerful, yes. Exerting power beyond human control- most techno-shamans would not even go that far. Even thinking of technological progress as an addiction is problematic for those of us with a free-will fetish.

Furthermore, my snooty opinion as someone with one year of experience as an educator is that the definition of the classics ought to be expanded far beyond "Aristotle, Novalis, Shakespeare and Dickens." This is where most of my disagreeable energy is directed toward Arnold, even though I feel like I ought to be more clearly (and cogently) disagreeable about his other ideas. What about the Bhagavad Gita, or Three Kingdoms, or The Brothers Karamazov, or Njal's Saga, or Rumi and Hafiz, or Don Quixote? Not that those books belong together, exactly, but they are all classics that I would want any children under my teaching to read.

Nothing against Aristotle, of course. It just infuriates me that people will take the time and trouble to educate their own kids (which I support fully, if the parents have the time and energy for the task) and then only feed them a small selection of Western classics. It's like going to Ryan's Steakhouse, just for the garlic mashed potatoes.

Someone else can comment on the community issue- I intend to storm about and enjoy my own prideful sense that I'm the only one who properly understands teaching literature, even though I have absolutely no education on the subject. Homegrown minds, and whatnot. Here's a query for you: how do you see technology intersecting with community in your own life? How is it helpful, and how is it harmful?

If you want something to get your mental juices flowing, read this post by Lance Mannion. It's what I would write if I knew how to write like that.

pop psychology pigs

Some days just seem like good ones to tinker away. Start by drawing a pig and find out what your drawing of a pig says about you and your personality.

Mine says I'm a realist, direct, enjoy playing devil's advocate, neither fear nor avoid discussions, analytical, cautious, and distrustful. I'm secure, stubborn, and stick to my ideals. And I'm a good listener with a rotten sex life.

Who needs Myers-Briggs, with this pig test around?

commentary

Threats seem to be abounding. First, Brian insinuated that he might register PiecesOfFlairSucks.com, then Matt fires back with the idea of registering PizzaKingWatchSucks.com.

I just left worship, and what came up for me in the silence was this master plan: Matt should pay Brian the nickel and register PizzaKingWatchSucks.com, just for the fun of running a derivative website critiquing another website that critiques a marquee sign.

Then, some postmodern literature scholar should write their PhD dissertation on PizzaKingWatchSucks.com. An excerpt of this dissertation should be available online, so that we can find it during desperate, last minute research for overdue papers and cite it in our bibliographies.

I'm pretty sure we'd win a Nobel Lit prize, collectively.

furthermore

I keep forgetting how much I like StrongBad.

...swirly photoshop magic...

sea lion

A particularly crafty sea lion is befuddling the Army Corps of Engineers, who have come to believe the 1,000-pound mammal is either from hell -- or from Harvard.

Read on to learn why this sea lion is giving them "the flipper."

angry?

Deal with your anger by smashing plates into a wall. In the Philippines.

country wisdom

Every now and then, I hit the seek button on my truck radio and find a good sappy song to mock. Not a few of those mockery attempts end in embarrassment as I either:
a) am reminded by fellow drivers that my windows are down, or
b) slowly realize that this sappy song is about Jesus. Oops.

The latter happened on my way to our non-singing choir rehearsal, so I hit the seek button again. Across the airwaves came this lovely morsel of country wisdom, which I thought warranted sharing:

If you're going through hell
Keep on going, don't slow down
If you're scared, don't show it
You might get out
Before the devil even knows you're there

This song seems to describe a disturbingly wide swath of my seminary experience, minus the requisite Jim Bean reference:

Ask directions from a genie
In a bottle of Jim Beam
And she lies to you
That's when you learn the truth

Maybe that's what I'm missing. I lived with a crazy lady named Evelyn for a few weeks one summer, and she use to give me Jack'n'Cokes like these, only she taught me to mix them 50/50. I didn't have the heart to tell her how much I dislike drinking soda, that and arguing with crazy people is generally a bad idea.

Come to think of it, Jack has the unfortunate aftertaste of ass. Probably it wasn't just the soda that made those drinks so terrible.