postbreakfast not-so-jauntiness

Latest depressing development in my prayer life: iGod won't talk to me. I said 'Hello,' and the page froze. I don't even know where to begin theologically reflecting on that.

This afternoon, though, I've learned that Halloween is for Devil worshippers, and that Bush has declared war on fire.

One of those is clearly a joke: you decide.

further adventures with iGod

Me: Could I please have some more coffee?
God: I think you could, if you put your mind to it.
Me: Trouble is, I can't put my mind to things very well without coffee. It's like needing grace before I can be good, you know?
God: Are they exactly the same? Interesting comparasion.
Me: No, not exactly; without grace I'm totally depraved, whereas without coffee I'm totally groggy.
God: Precisely. Are you serious? Are you serious? "Without your space helmet Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult." -- HAL.
Me: Um, my name's not Dave.
God: Woe! Oh I'm sorry what is your name?
Me: Julie. Pleased to meet you.
God: That input matched my default category. Nice meeting you too.
Me: So, are you going to give me some coffee?
God: Take it easy. Why do you want it?
Me: I get impatient without it, impatient and cranky.
God: Where did you get it?
Me: This morning? I got it at home.
God: What does "this" refer to? Where did you get it?
Me: This = Coffee. I get coffee from a coffee pot.
God: What does "this" refer to? Where did you get it?
Me: Do you need some coffee?
God: Yes and I think Dr. Wallace wants some too.

I think we've all learned an important lesson today about the vulnerability of iGod, particularly if s/he hasn't had enough coffee.

random phrase generator

try it.

troubling

There's a lot more going on with the story about Juanita Bynum than I understand. She's a Pentecostal preacher who married another Pentecostal preacher, after having preached a pretty conservative message on abstinence and sexual fidelity, and perhaps wifely submission as well. Her husband beat her up in a parking lot, and now she's filing for divorce.

I keep reading it argued that the message she preached leads women into abusive relationships. Maybe so. Pam does a particularly good job of getting into the stickiness of criticizing the message she preached on femininity without saying that the abuse was her fault.

Pam links to this article on the story from the New York Times, which just made me angry:

Conservative critics among the evangelical clergy have accused her of exploiting the attack for publicity, calling her “loud,” “angry,” “aggressive” and “out of control”...

I wish the author had cited particular conservative critics, so that I could write them each an email explaining why it is inappropriate to belittle a battered woman for being 'aggressive.' Loud, maybe; she's a prophetess, and somehow I doubt those critics were belittling her for being loud when she was preaching on abstinence. But angry? aggressive? She ought to be angry, perhaps even more at evangelical clergy who would ask her to shut up than at her own husband. And slamming a battered woman for being 'aggressive' is... sickening.

nostalgia

Does anyone else remember giggling while ending a hymn title with 'under the covers'? Like this:
Be Firm and Be Faithful (under the covers)
Take Me As I Am (under the covers)
Be Thou My Vision (under the covers)
Nearer, Still Nearer (under the covers)
To the Work! (under the covers)

Did anyone else do this, or was I just a particularly bad kid?

fun

this.

PS: it smells like autumn today.

sitting at Rita's desk, again

I'm sleepy- didn't sleep well last night, kinda groggy, and wanting some coffee before my evening class. Oh, and today was the first Common Meal of the semester, so I made an ass of myself. Just like last semester. I guess someone has to be graceless and groggy so that everyone else feels at home.

That's it: it's not total lack of poise and tact, it's a ministry of hospitality.

So, sitting here at the desk in my cute skirt, reading stuff online. Last semester's beginning poem was The Layers, which turned out to be an appropriate choice for both the semester and the summer. Still sorting the layers from the litter. This poem that I found on Hugo's blog will hopefully not be equally appropriate to this semester, but I do like it:

Account

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,
Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle’s flame.

Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,
The little whisper which, thought it is a warning, is ignored.

I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride,
The time when I was among their adherents
Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting.

But all of them would have one subject, desire,
If only my own — but no, not at all; alas,
I was driven because I wanted to be like others.
I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me.

The history of my stupidity will not be written.
For one thing, it’s late. And the truth is laborious.

--Czeslaw Milosz

Other reading from the afternoon has included this Harper's article on dolchstosslegende, a story via Digby on clowns at a KKK rally, and a slideshow via apostropher on a 200-yard spider web.

More to come, perhaps.

Update: Also Is There Anything Good About Men?, Art for our sake, India's middle class failure, Hey Folks, You're Spending My Inheritance, and The elegant assissin.

omphaloskepsis

From Evolving Thoughts:
Let's set the scene with some philosophical definitions. A scientific question is one that evidence can tell for or against. All else is a philosophical question, or as it is popularly known, navel gazing.

The article goes on in an interesting fashion, but I was reminded of one of my favorite parts of the OED: omphaloskepsis, or navel-gazing.
Here's a link for the OED-challenged.

sitting at Rita's desk

I'm sitting at Rita's desk today. For those of you not familiar with the ESR community, I've dressed up very professionally and am spending the day pretending to be a very competent and outgoing receptionist. It's fun for moonlighting, but I wouldn't want to do this every day. And no, I haven't really been asked to make coffee, although I've sure been drinking it.

There's not much to do- I cheerfully and graciously answer the phone when it rings, and then transfer the lucky callers to whomever might be able to actually help them. The unlucky ones get lost somewhere in the system, and I return to two important tasks:
a) looking competent
b) updating various things on the internet.

So, I've changed my Facebook status and updated my books, changed some Myspace stuff and left some comments, tinkered with my email, and now I've updated my Blogger list of books I want to read. It's in the top right hand corner, just in case you ever come into a large amount of money and want to spend some on me. I'm also updating my articles list, which I think I haven't touched since last semester. At some point, I will stop everything to search out more coffee, and perhaps redo my hopefully competent looking hair- if I've learned anything from working at the Roadhouse, or from preaching, it's that looking like you know what's going on is half the battle.

I read this today: The Peace Racket. "...we’re talking not about a bunch of naive Quakers but about a movement of savvy, ambitious professionals that is already comfortably ensconced at the United Nations, in the European Union, and in many nongovernmental organizations." Well, thank Heaven for that, at least.

And this: Enhancing Humanity "Of course, people are worried about more invasive innovations; in particular, the direct transformation of the human body. And this is where the gradualness of change is important, because as individuals we have a track record of coping with such changes without falling apart or losing our sense of self entirely. After all, we have all been engaged all our lives in creating a stable sense of our identity out of whatever is thrown at us." Narrative identity, etc. I've been reading a lot about that lately. Pieces of it will probably end up in my credo; my credo, in fact, is mostly pieces of things I've come across over the summer that I thought were interesting. It probably says more about my faith in its form than in its content.

And then this, from my hero Ben Witherington: Ignorance is Bliss? Biblical Illiteracy in the West. "Well of course part of the problem is the very nature of the modern and western church. It is all too often narcissistic and self-serving to the core. It spends the vast majority of its budget on itself-- its own buildings, its own clergy, its own self-help and nurture programs. The church has ceased almost altogether to be what it was at its inception-- an evangelistic movement, that also did some nurture and training of converts. Instead we are nurture institutions that might have a missions committee. Talk about placing the emphasis on the wrong syllable as the culture becomes increasing less Biblical. [...] What's wrong with needs based preaching? First of all in a culture immersed in constant advertisements and sales pitches, most people in the West have no idea what their real needs are. They can identify their wants, and they mistake them for actual needs." I just like Witherington, that's all. I love the fact that he has a blog, and that he uses bad grammar on it.

Ok, time to find more coffee.

overheard at Sacred Grounds

Spike Haired Fellow: Well, I don't know much about economics, but I've heard the argument that the economic success we saw under the Clinton administration was really due to Reagan and Bush, but we just have such a short view of things that we don't really think about long term effects. At least that's how it gets reported in the media, you know?

Baldy: So the economic success of the Reagan Administration should be attributed to the Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, right?

Spike Haired Fellow: Well, um, well that's where I don't know much about economics.

What Spike meant was "well, that's where I don't know enough about economics to be able to twist whatever evidence I have into my right-wing mold," but he had to stop mid-sentence to thoughtfully sip his drink.

I thought that was funny and blogworthy, but now that I've written it I'll probably see them at Convocation as new Bethany students. Hopefully they won't recognize me as the young woman who was laughing at them at the coffeehouse.

carnival of the feminists no. 43

Link. Good stuff- I keep forgetting that these awesome carnivals exist.

anxious men

From Pandagon:

The insistent EP theory that men want to [make love to] everything in sight while women simply have some sort of wedding dress-and-fidelity gene is exposed as, if nothing else, too ridiculously simple to be real science and too obviously wishful thinking on the part of some anxious men.

Take that, Steve Pinker. I want to find a copy of the book Amanda's reviewing.

happy

I saw an Indigo Bunting, yesterday. They make me happy.

It's been a happy summer all around.

homeyness

I called my mom this afternoon and found out, among other things:
-the dog died and the cat disappeared
-my aunt Shirley probably hasn't died yet
-my sister dinged up both vehicles while practicing parallel parking

No word on said sister's motorcycling adventures, but I'm sure they'll be glorious.

'cause I stopped the slaughter of turnips

...by killing five men in a rage.
Link.

mail check 2

Junk mail, in various designs of paper-wastiness. Also can be taken as metaphorically exploring the ultimate meaning of life, but I'm in too good a mood.

mail check

Today I received a wedding invitation, a flyer about this summer's family reunion, and a fundraising letter from the cemetary association that manages the spot up the road from my parents' house where many of my relatives are buried.

That pretty much covers the important life events that one might find notice of in the mail. It was a bit overwhelming, but I survived.

what makes me happy?

Sunshine on the back of my neck makes me happy.

Also, banana chips. I used to go to camp every summer at High Braes, which is about a half hour drive from my house. It was (and still is) free for the kids who attend, and mostly supported by area congregations. I'm sure there were many things that my mom liked about sending me to camp, but every year I would look forward to eating banana chips at lunch. I never saw them outside of High Braes, so I thought of them as a special 'church camp' item that only the cook at the Braes could find. They fascinated me; I understood that raisins were dried grapes, and prunes were dried plums, and I had seen other dried fruits, but dried bananas just seemed magical.

At some point, perhaps in high school, I found a tub of banana chips at the grocery store. It was shocking, paradigm shifting- I could just buy banana chips on my own, without going to church camp! I could eat banana chips all year 'round! I could eat them in the hay! I could eat them every day! I could eat them on a boat! I could eat them with a goat! (but I wouldn't share them with the goat, because I like them too much.)

Anyway, I like banana chips. I got a box from my mom yesterday that had banana chips and yogurt raisins in it, among other things. I like yogurt raisins, but the tub of banana chips was the most exciting thing I've seen all week.

Hooray for banana chips. And sunshine- they go together.

straw person

I've mentioned this before, but I like Fred's weekly exegesis of the Left Behind series.

I'll note, though, that due to the sinister tentacles of feminism reaching into even evangelical colleges, I learned about the 'straw person' argument instead of the 'straw man' argument.

future assistant manager

I think I can sum up large chunks of high school by noting that I think this comic is funny.

Really funny. 'Laughing out loud in the computer lab' funny, even though I'm pretty sure that makes me an awful person.

Not that the career track that I'm on is much better, but, um, I've been to school a lot. That should count for something.