It seems everywhere I look, I'm finding year-end lists of the best books different people have read this year. I'll admit, I might have forgotten that I read some of these this year if I did not keep a list of books read in the back of a notebook (a practice I began this year on a suggestion from Joseph Epstein, who though he did not quite make the list, wrote a thoroughly enjoyable book of essays, In a Cardboard Belt!).
Non-fiction -
Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn- I read a single volume abridged version of the intimidating three volume work. Beyond the amazing circumstances in which it was written (recounted here), it really is a remarkable book. It's is hard to boil down all that happens in the book into one paragraph, but I really couldn't give it a much higher recommendation.
Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher- I really haven't read any other books on economics, so I really can't compare this to anything. The book is subtitled "economics as if people mattered" and gave me a lot to think about. This may be an uninformed assertion (but isn't that what the internet is for after all?), but I would be willing to bet not many other books on economics cite papal bulls in their texts.
Shelby Foote's Civil War: A Narrative- Only read the first volume so far, but it is a very readable history. Foote was actually a novelist originally (and a lifelong friend of Walker Percy) and this shows in his writing. It probably deserves a wider readership than it has received, being too long - at three hefty, 500+ page volumes - for the casual reader and lacking the endless footnotes preferred by professional historians. This video of Foote from Ken Burns' Civil War documentary most likely will do more to recommend it to you than I can.
The Dyer's Hand by W.H. Auden- I really, really like this book. I would really, really like to recommend it to you. But, I doubt you would be interested. It's big, very "literary" for lack of a better term- lots of Shakespeare, Goethe, and Don Giovanni (by way of Kierkegaard), and unavailable at most book stores. If you have the temperment for it and can find it at a library (I checked it out from LSU's), I would suggest you leave your computer now and go get it.
Signposts in a Strange Land by Walker Percy- a volume of essays. You need to read The Moviegoer or this. I'm a big fan of the rest of his work, but these two seem to be good introductions to me.
Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright- I'm not sure if this is a word, but I would describe this book as "epiphanous" for me. Really opened my eyes to a lot of things, as I've mentioned before on this blog (unfortunately it also kind of ruined bluegrass for me, except maybe for this song, "My Bones Gonna Rise Again". In other, but not totally unrelated news, I really like this poem by Hopkins
Novels-
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole- Wonderful, very funny novel set in New Orleans. Apparently it's funny even if you aren't from around New Orleans, because it is pretty well known nationally. Benny Grunch's "12 Yats of Christmas", probably is not.
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome- Another very funny novel, but one that was written in the nineteenth century. If you have ever read and enjoyed one of Chesterton's novels, you will probably like this too. It was one of two novels this year that I purposely slowed my reading of to enjoy longer (Hannah Coulter being the other). There are many wonderful lines I could choose from as way of recommendation but in the spirit of the author, I'll simply cut and paste this one, "I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours."
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller- just your typical science fiction novel following an order of Catholic monks over a few thousands of years after a nuclear holocaust. I actually talked about this book way back in the infancy of this blog- August. You can find that here.
The Power and the Glory by Grahame Greene- when I first read this, I thought it may have been the best novel I'd ever read. I still really like it, but it hasn't stuck with me the way, say, Brothers Karamazov has.
Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry. Just a beautiful novel and really a joy to read. Very similar in outlook to the economic principles set out by Schumacher- agrarianism, small scale for local markets, appropriate technology, ect., but to call it simply a dramatization of those ideas would be a disservice to what a good novel it really is.
Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone- written by a lasped Catholic turned Communist, and then subsequently turned lasped Communist (because Communism is a sort of religion, with its own eschatology that puts hope in the proletariat) about a Communist in Mussolini's Italy who to must disquise himself as a priest after returning from exile. He eventually rewrote large portions of the work after becoming disenchanted with communism. According to The Life You Save Might Be Your Own (a book on Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, and of course Flannery O'Connor, that while enjoyable and informative wasn't really excellent and didn't make the list), it was one of Dorothy Day's favorites, which was a good enough recommendation for me.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Young, Restless, and Reformed- A failure of catechesis?
One of the big looming changes, and potential problems, facing Baptists today along with various non-denom churches is the growth of the so called "Young, Restless, and Reformed". This refers to the large group of 20- and 30-somethings who follow a Calvinist theology and are largely unsatisfied with the preaching at their churches (so they become fan-boys of one of many preachers with the first name John- Piper, McArthur, Edwards, ect.) I don't want to talk about Calvinism here however (or really anywhere on the internet as I will probably be much less charitable than I would be in person), but instead want to try and trace where this growth may come from.
As I said earlier, this new Reformed movement is chiefly drawing its ranks from among Baptist and non-denominational evangelicals and I think this might be due to some factors within these churches generally. Typically believers from these traditions reach adulthood with a hodge-podge of teachings from various preachers, youth ministers, Sunday school teachers, and untalented CCM artists, often without anything really holding it together or synthesizing it into a coherent whole.
Calvinism, for all its faults is logically consistent within itself. It follows teachings to their logical conclusion, even if that means heresy (I'm looking at you, Limited Atonement). When met with a system like this, often upon reaching college, many are attracted to it because it makes much more sense than the scattered, sometimes contradictory teachings they previously have experienced. I think it is significant that traditions that have a program of catechesis (wikipedia article here for my fellow Baptists who may not be familiar with the term) don't seem to experience this as much (but I have no real data on that, just an impression, hence my disclaimer at the outset). Say what you want about Catholics only memorizing the Church's teachings by rote bu not really believing or "feeling" them- actually don't, you will at the least be uncharitable and more often than not be wrong- but they could at least give you some reasonable explanation of what they believe without resorting to the old standby "Sunday School answers".
I probably need to do some more thinking about this and there definitely are other factors involved, such as the overwhelmingly Reformed domination of the blogosphere (a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg perhaps), but I thought I'd throw it out there. And just in case I didn't offend any and all Reformed readers who may have happened upon this blog or alert the discerna-bloggers to my presence, let me add this- I really like N.T. Wright.
Civil War and Civil Unions
The Civil War pretty decisively settle the question of state's rights leading to the much increased power of Federal government over the states self-determination. Two places where this dynamic between state rights and federal authority are particularly contentious are the issues of gay marriage and abortion, with constitutional ammendments being proposed in both cases in order to settle the issues at a federal level. My concern here is not to argue the specific merits of each case, as that has been done endlessly elsewhere, but to ask how much a strong states rights position makes sense here. While I do agree that something approaching a consensus is much more easily reached at a state level, I wonder how much this makes sense given the advancements in transportation technology. The interstate system has had a well known leveling effect on the country, making for a much more homogenized culture. A civil war along state lines would be unimaginable these days because of the erosion of a regionalized mindset. Furthermore there are well documented cases of people simply moving to another state to get around laws (gay couples flocking to Massachussets and Vermont for example). So does a strong states' rights position still make sense?
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
British Government Now Determines who is Jewish
From First Things.
Alarming link of the week- The British Supreme Court has ruled that preferential enrollment in Jewish schools for Jewish children is racist. An Orthodox Jewish day school in England was sued for denying enrollment to the child of a woman who converted to Judaism in a "progressive synagogue" who did not fit their criteria for conversion. The ruling effectively makes it impossible for Jewish law, which traces descent matrilinealy, unable to determine who is considered Jewish in a legal sense. Jewish schools will now have create other criteria than religious law which has been in place for some 3,500 years to determine the legal status of Jews; essentially a "non-Jewish definition of who is Jewish."
Bad stuff in Britain. The Catholic Church there has been pretty vocal in their support for the Jewish position; the Anglicans have been said to remain "smugly silent", which seems unfair, I doubt Rowan Williams sat around suppressing a smirk as he resolved not to speak out on the travails of Jewish day schools, but I really don't know. The law may be changed in the future, but in the meantime it makes things very difficult for the Jewish community. It would be nice to see common-sense prevail here, but that's probably a bit too much to ask.
Alarming link of the week- The British Supreme Court has ruled that preferential enrollment in Jewish schools for Jewish children is racist. An Orthodox Jewish day school in England was sued for denying enrollment to the child of a woman who converted to Judaism in a "progressive synagogue" who did not fit their criteria for conversion. The ruling effectively makes it impossible for Jewish law, which traces descent matrilinealy, unable to determine who is considered Jewish in a legal sense. Jewish schools will now have create other criteria than religious law which has been in place for some 3,500 years to determine the legal status of Jews; essentially a "non-Jewish definition of who is Jewish."
Bad stuff in Britain. The Catholic Church there has been pretty vocal in their support for the Jewish position; the Anglicans have been said to remain "smugly silent", which seems unfair, I doubt Rowan Williams sat around suppressing a smirk as he resolved not to speak out on the travails of Jewish day schools, but I really don't know. The law may be changed in the future, but in the meantime it makes things very difficult for the Jewish community. It would be nice to see common-sense prevail here, but that's probably a bit too much to ask.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Obama and Peace
First, read his Nobel acceptance speech here.
Now I'm tempted to tear into this, go on and on about how there can be no basis for peace when you don't acknowledge the fundamental value of human life, including those of the unborn, how he obfuscates and covers over the use of violence to make it seem to be in the service of peace, but I won't. Instead, I'm going to let T.S. Eliot and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn do my talking for me.
Obama, drawing on Kennedy, talks about a "gradual evolution of human institutions" to eliminate evil.
To which T.S. Eliot, the former American, sends in this preemptive strike some seventy-five years in advance (because after all, preemptive strikes are the American way- don't turn the other cheek, slap the other person before you have to),
And as this guy at Touchstone magazine points out (by way of Christianitytoday), this would place the responsibilty in the hands of someone higher up rather than individuals. One can imagine Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who experienced this kind of thing first hand, adding,
And finally another quote from Solzhenitsyn, this about the use of violence in general,
Now I'm tempted to tear into this, go on and on about how there can be no basis for peace when you don't acknowledge the fundamental value of human life, including those of the unborn, how he obfuscates and covers over the use of violence to make it seem to be in the service of peace, but I won't. Instead, I'm going to let T.S. Eliot and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn do my talking for me.
Obama, drawing on Kennedy, talks about a "gradual evolution of human institutions" to eliminate evil.
To which T.S. Eliot, the former American, sends in this preemptive strike some seventy-five years in advance (because after all, preemptive strikes are the American way- don't turn the other cheek, slap the other person before you have to),
"They constantly try to escape-T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock
From the darkness outside and winthin
By dreaming up systems so perfect that no one will need to be good"
And as this guy at Touchstone magazine points out (by way of Christianitytoday), this would place the responsibilty in the hands of someone higher up rather than individuals. One can imagine Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who experienced this kind of thing first hand, adding,
"This is surely the main problem of the twentieth century: is it permissible to merely carry out orders and commit one's conscience to someone else's keeping? Can a man do without ideas of his own about good and evil, and merely derive them from the printed instructions and verbal orders of his superiors? Oaths! Those solemn pledges pronounced with a tremor in the voice and intended to defend the people against evildoers: see how easily they can be misdirected to the services of evildoers and against the people!"-A. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
-This passage comes at the end of a chapter entitled "The Kids with Tommy Guns" about the young, indoctrinated guards of the Gulag. The guards were never allowed to speak with any of the prisoners, only given leave to shoot any of them. He relates the story of one guard who believed a prisoner was about to run out of the column he was marching. The guard squeezed off a burst that killed five men. When other guards' testimony had shown the column to be marching quietly along, he was given the punishment- fifteen days detention (in a heated guardhouse) for killing five men.
And finally another quote from Solzhenitsyn, this about the use of violence in general,
"Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle."
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
A few various things and a poem from Hopkins
Update: As one commenter pointed out, I neglected to provide a link to Jacobs blog at The New Atlantis, Text Patterns. Good stuff there too.
Just a few quick things here:
1. I've been a tiny bit upset by the spectacular fall in quality at The American Scene lately, to the point where I've removed it from the links. Things started to go downhill for me when Alan Jacobs left (who was the reason I started reading in the first place). I would say more about this and speculate about why this has happened, but the truth is I very rarely go there and do not care to figure out what has happened. There still are some good back-logged posts by Jacobs on topics such as Lewis, the meaning of the symbols (and whether or not, for instance, some Southerner's self-determination of the meaning of the Confederate flag as a non-racist symbol really makes it so), or T.S. Eliot's decision not to publish Animal Farm when given an early crack at the manuscript; or you could click on a more recent post, like one from today that claims to link to a "fascinating post on molasses". It's really your call.
2. A little over a month ago I put up a post about St. Anslem's ontological argument for the existence of God. A few things have been troubling me about it. First, I said something about Christ not being able to be thought about in terms of perfection "as touches His manhood" which of course would seem to be in conflict with the Athanasian Creed (not written by Athanasius by the way): "perfect man, perfect God." The point I was trying to make, though I may not have made it clearly enough, was that because the pre-Resurrection body was subject to death and not aesthetically perfect, as Isaiah summed up "we esteemed Him not", we can't perhaps talk of him as materially perfect. But this is not to say He was not morally perfect or sinless. The confusion comes because in trying to speak of Christ in His human nature without regard to His divine nature, we divide what cannot be divided but exists as a hypostasis, to use the fancy theological term. Secondly I kinda dogged Anselm for putting forward his argument, but I was perhaps wrong to do so. I have since read that he described his project as "faith seeking understanding", which is to say that he did not hope to convince people that God became man in Christ, but as a Christian sought to understand and support his faith. This is, I think, the real use for such apologetic work and in fact, it seems this is where it gets its most use; many more Christians have bought The Case for Christ than so-called "seekers". I'm very sceptical of this kind of work to bring people to faith, which I think is of a different kind than what one may be argued into through an apologetic, but I do think it has its place for encouragement of the Christian and allowing them to see how firm the foundation is that they have built upon. So my apologies to St. Anselm and any of his descendants who may have been offended.
3. The main thing I wanted to though was point you to this poem by Hopkins. Besides having the awesome middle name "Manley", he is a good poet, and at times a very profound religious thinker. He gets carried away sometimes in his poetry and uses so many musical devices at the expense of coherence that I wonder if he even knew what he was talking about sometimes. This is not one of those however, and seems a good thing to read and think about during Advent.
Just a few quick things here:
1. I've been a tiny bit upset by the spectacular fall in quality at The American Scene lately, to the point where I've removed it from the links. Things started to go downhill for me when Alan Jacobs left (who was the reason I started reading in the first place). I would say more about this and speculate about why this has happened, but the truth is I very rarely go there and do not care to figure out what has happened. There still are some good back-logged posts by Jacobs on topics such as Lewis, the meaning of the symbols (and whether or not, for instance, some Southerner's self-determination of the meaning of the Confederate flag as a non-racist symbol really makes it so), or T.S. Eliot's decision not to publish Animal Farm when given an early crack at the manuscript; or you could click on a more recent post, like one from today that claims to link to a "fascinating post on molasses". It's really your call.
2. A little over a month ago I put up a post about St. Anslem's ontological argument for the existence of God. A few things have been troubling me about it. First, I said something about Christ not being able to be thought about in terms of perfection "as touches His manhood" which of course would seem to be in conflict with the Athanasian Creed (not written by Athanasius by the way): "perfect man, perfect God." The point I was trying to make, though I may not have made it clearly enough, was that because the pre-Resurrection body was subject to death and not aesthetically perfect, as Isaiah summed up "we esteemed Him not", we can't perhaps talk of him as materially perfect. But this is not to say He was not morally perfect or sinless. The confusion comes because in trying to speak of Christ in His human nature without regard to His divine nature, we divide what cannot be divided but exists as a hypostasis, to use the fancy theological term. Secondly I kinda dogged Anselm for putting forward his argument, but I was perhaps wrong to do so. I have since read that he described his project as "faith seeking understanding", which is to say that he did not hope to convince people that God became man in Christ, but as a Christian sought to understand and support his faith. This is, I think, the real use for such apologetic work and in fact, it seems this is where it gets its most use; many more Christians have bought The Case for Christ than so-called "seekers". I'm very sceptical of this kind of work to bring people to faith, which I think is of a different kind than what one may be argued into through an apologetic, but I do think it has its place for encouragement of the Christian and allowing them to see how firm the foundation is that they have built upon. So my apologies to St. Anselm and any of his descendants who may have been offended.
3. The main thing I wanted to though was point you to this poem by Hopkins. Besides having the awesome middle name "Manley", he is a good poet, and at times a very profound religious thinker. He gets carried away sometimes in his poetry and uses so many musical devices at the expense of coherence that I wonder if he even knew what he was talking about sometimes. This is not one of those however, and seems a good thing to read and think about during Advent.
Nondum
Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.’ -Isaiah xlv. 15
God, though to Thee our psalm we raise
No answering voice comes from the skies;
To Thee the trembling sinner prays
But no forgiving voice replies;
Our prayer seems lost in desert ways,
Our hymn in the vast silence dies.
No answering voice comes from the skies;
To Thee the trembling sinner prays
But no forgiving voice replies;
Our prayer seems lost in desert ways,
Our hymn in the vast silence dies.
We see the glories of the earth
But not the hand that wrought them all:
Night to a myriad worlds gives birth,
Yet like a lighted empty hall
Where stands no host at door or hearth
Vacant creation’s lamps appall.
But not the hand that wrought them all:
Night to a myriad worlds gives birth,
Yet like a lighted empty hall
Where stands no host at door or hearth
Vacant creation’s lamps appall.
We guess; we clothe Thee, unseen King,
With attributes we deem are meet;
Each in in his own imagining
Sets up a shadow in Thy seat;
Yet know not how our gifts to bring,
Where seek Thee with unsandalled feet.
With attributes we deem are meet;
Each in in his own imagining
Sets up a shadow in Thy seat;
Yet know not how our gifts to bring,
Where seek Thee with unsandalled feet.
And still th’unbroken silence broods
While ages and while aeons run,
As erst upon chaotic floods
The Spirit hovered ere the sun
Had called the seasons’ changeful moods
And life’s first germs from death had won.
While ages and while aeons run,
As erst upon chaotic floods
The Spirit hovered ere the sun
Had called the seasons’ changeful moods
And life’s first germs from death had won.
And still th’abysses infinite
Surround the peak from which we gaze.
Deep calls to deep, and blackest night
Giddies the soul with blinding daze
That dares to cast its searching sight
On being’s dread and vacant maze.
Surround the peak from which we gaze.
Deep calls to deep, and blackest night
Giddies the soul with blinding daze
That dares to cast its searching sight
On being’s dread and vacant maze.
And Thou art silent, whilst Thy world
Contends about its many creeds
And hosts confront with flags unfurled
And zeal is flushed and pity bleeds
And truth is heard, with tears impearled,
A moaning voice among the reeds.
Contends about its many creeds
And hosts confront with flags unfurled
And zeal is flushed and pity bleeds
And truth is heard, with tears impearled,
A moaning voice among the reeds.
My hand upon my lips I lay;
The breast’s desponding sob I quell;
I move along life’s tomb-decked way
And listen to the passing bell
Summoning men from speechless day
To death’s more silent, darker spell.
The breast’s desponding sob I quell;
I move along life’s tomb-decked way
And listen to the passing bell
Summoning men from speechless day
To death’s more silent, darker spell.
Oh! till Thou givest that sense beyond,
To shew Thee that Thou art, and near,
Let patience with her chastening wand
And lead me child-like by the hand
If still in darkness not in fear.
To shew Thee that Thou art, and near,
Let patience with her chastening wand
And lead me child-like by the hand
If still in darkness not in fear.
Speak! whisper to my watching heart
One word-as when a mother speaks
Soft, when she sees her infant start,
Till dimpled joy steals o’er its cheeks.
Then, to behold Thee as Thou art,
I’ll wait till morn eternal breaks.
One word-as when a mother speaks
Soft, when she sees her infant start,
Till dimpled joy steals o’er its cheeks.
Then, to behold Thee as Thou art,
I’ll wait till morn eternal breaks.
—Gerard Manley Hopkins
Friday, December 4, 2009
Vodka Pills and Venn Diagrams
Just found this post on one of the occasionally wonderful First Things blogs. Apparently a Russian scientist developed a way to turn alcohol into a powder that could be stored in pills. While this sounds like an absolutely terrible idea, it did have the happy consequence of producing this great opening sentence to a post with the equally great title "How to Get Drunk Like George Jetson", "If you drew a Venn diagram of 'Things you wash down with orange juice' and 'Things the world doesn't need', this would be in the center: vodka in a pill form."
The post in which I rip-off C.S. Lewis while doing my best Rob Bell impersonation
I'm fixing to smush a couple of posts into one here. Two things are going to happen here, first I want to talk about humility and competition in a roundabout way like Mr. Bell might (for one of my previous impersonations of him look here), then I will discuss what I think he is doing by going about things in the way he does. Don't look at it as having an extra long post to read (or not), look at it as getting a little lagniappe, like getting snow two years in a row South Louisiana (maybe). Oh and before I continue you might as well just read Mere Christianity as what I will write here, because that's where I stole most of it from.
I don't have an alarm clock in my room.
I.
Like.
It.
This.
Way.
(perhaps that's going a bit overboard on the po-mo formatting, sorry)
Anyway I have found that this is the best way, for me at least, to set things up. See, I'm a really light sleeper. Any noise is liable to wake me up and because of this I have often found myself waking up in the middle of the night. Previously, I had a clock nearby, so everytime I woke, I looked to see what time it was. No matter what time it happened to be, I found myself dissatisfied with having woken up at that particular time. After I while I realized why this is the case.
There is no "right time" to wake up in the middle of the night.
If I woke up at say 2am, I would think to myself, "Crap. I've been asleep for like an hour and half. That's like a nap. Now I'll never get back to sleep." Or if I woke up later at 5 or so, I would think to myself, "Crap. There's like an hour til daylight. Now I'll never get back to sleep." If I split the difference and woke up 3:30, I would think to myself, "Crap. It's 3:30. I need to pee. Now I'll never get back to sleep." No matter where I was at, I wasn't satisfied.
And that's kind of like our lives isn't it.
We can't be smart enough, or popular enough, or handsome or pretty enough, or whatever enough. We aren't satisfied with what ever our place is because we put it in competition with others. We don't want to be good-looking, we want to be the best looking man in the room. We are quite content with our own humor, but when someone else is funnier at the party, we think them to be chasing after attention too much.
Humility and self-deprecation are not the same thing however. Too many pretty girls go about trying to convince themselves and others that they are really quite plain; too many talented or intelligent men go about dismissing the abilities that could serve others. This often leads to a sort of falseness in revealing and acknowledging our abilities. It has come to be expected that the musician, when asked to perform in some private setting should act bashful, dismiss his skills, and perhaps even decline to play a few times before he begins; knowing all the while that what he would most like to do at that moment is perform, perhaps not even for selfish reasons, but because he knows the others will enjoy it as much as he. Humility is not a process of denying the blessings one has been given, or if privately acknowledging them, doing one's best not to let others no that this is the case. Instead, the humble man acknowledges his own quality, thanks God, and then does not think much more about it. Pride can't exist in a vacuum. It feeds on competition with others. When I find someone else superior to myself in whatever it is I take pride in, this pride is capable of producing hatred of the other. And hate of course is tantamount to murder, because it wishes the other did not exist.
Humility is not like this, it is often a sort of happy indifference. The kind that helps you sleep at night.
Shifting gears a bit, I would like to talk about what I think Rob Bell does when he does things like this (albeit much better than I just did, not that I'm jealous). Now some folks think I don't like Rob Bell because I've voiced some pretty strong disagreements I have with some things he said in the past. This post, with it's tongue-in-cheek absurd illustration probably only reinforced that perception. But in fact, I like what he does. He seems like a cool enough guy too, if a bit metro. I can't see him coming along on one of the famous "man night" bbq and action movie nights of the undergrad days, but I think we'd probably get along alright. Furthermore, I like what he does and I'm going to tell you why. In a new paragraph.
Rob Bell reverses the typical ADD non sequiturs that typify alot of amateur writing. If for instance, he start talking about church and his vision of Christianity and then all of sudden said, "By the way, church reminds me of jumping on a trampoline" (to use an example from Velvet Elvis) his editor would hopefully cut it, and may start to reconsider giving him a book deal. Instead he opens by talking about trampolines, or music, or something like that and relates this to some aspect of Christianity.
Going about it in this way gives his metaphors the effect of revelation. When he finally comes around to it, one says, "Ah, trampolines. They're bouncy. Alot like Christianity with a pretty generous, non-exclusionary orthodoxy." This has, at its far end, the effect of redeeming the secular world for the religious life for, if nothing else, a source of inspiration in understanding religious life. Ideally, this split would not exist, and as Luther said, "Milkmaids [would] milk to the glory of God." But there is a split. Rob Bell with all his far-fetched, creative, and sometimes tenuously connected metaphors helps re-introduce the religious life into a secularized day-to-day.
And so I'd like to tip my hat to him.
Metaphorically.
I don't have an alarm clock in my room.
I.
Like.
It.
This.
Way.
(perhaps that's going a bit overboard on the po-mo formatting, sorry)
Anyway I have found that this is the best way, for me at least, to set things up. See, I'm a really light sleeper. Any noise is liable to wake me up and because of this I have often found myself waking up in the middle of the night. Previously, I had a clock nearby, so everytime I woke, I looked to see what time it was. No matter what time it happened to be, I found myself dissatisfied with having woken up at that particular time. After I while I realized why this is the case.
There is no "right time" to wake up in the middle of the night.
If I woke up at say 2am, I would think to myself, "Crap. I've been asleep for like an hour and half. That's like a nap. Now I'll never get back to sleep." Or if I woke up later at 5 or so, I would think to myself, "Crap. There's like an hour til daylight. Now I'll never get back to sleep." If I split the difference and woke up 3:30, I would think to myself, "Crap. It's 3:30. I need to pee. Now I'll never get back to sleep." No matter where I was at, I wasn't satisfied.
And that's kind of like our lives isn't it.
We can't be smart enough, or popular enough, or handsome or pretty enough, or whatever enough. We aren't satisfied with what ever our place is because we put it in competition with others. We don't want to be good-looking, we want to be the best looking man in the room. We are quite content with our own humor, but when someone else is funnier at the party, we think them to be chasing after attention too much.
Humility and self-deprecation are not the same thing however. Too many pretty girls go about trying to convince themselves and others that they are really quite plain; too many talented or intelligent men go about dismissing the abilities that could serve others. This often leads to a sort of falseness in revealing and acknowledging our abilities. It has come to be expected that the musician, when asked to perform in some private setting should act bashful, dismiss his skills, and perhaps even decline to play a few times before he begins; knowing all the while that what he would most like to do at that moment is perform, perhaps not even for selfish reasons, but because he knows the others will enjoy it as much as he. Humility is not a process of denying the blessings one has been given, or if privately acknowledging them, doing one's best not to let others no that this is the case. Instead, the humble man acknowledges his own quality, thanks God, and then does not think much more about it. Pride can't exist in a vacuum. It feeds on competition with others. When I find someone else superior to myself in whatever it is I take pride in, this pride is capable of producing hatred of the other. And hate of course is tantamount to murder, because it wishes the other did not exist.
Humility is not like this, it is often a sort of happy indifference. The kind that helps you sleep at night.
Shifting gears a bit, I would like to talk about what I think Rob Bell does when he does things like this (albeit much better than I just did, not that I'm jealous). Now some folks think I don't like Rob Bell because I've voiced some pretty strong disagreements I have with some things he said in the past. This post, with it's tongue-in-cheek absurd illustration probably only reinforced that perception. But in fact, I like what he does. He seems like a cool enough guy too, if a bit metro. I can't see him coming along on one of the famous "man night" bbq and action movie nights of the undergrad days, but I think we'd probably get along alright. Furthermore, I like what he does and I'm going to tell you why. In a new paragraph.
Rob Bell reverses the typical ADD non sequiturs that typify alot of amateur writing. If for instance, he start talking about church and his vision of Christianity and then all of sudden said, "By the way, church reminds me of jumping on a trampoline" (to use an example from Velvet Elvis) his editor would hopefully cut it, and may start to reconsider giving him a book deal. Instead he opens by talking about trampolines, or music, or something like that and relates this to some aspect of Christianity.
Going about it in this way gives his metaphors the effect of revelation. When he finally comes around to it, one says, "Ah, trampolines. They're bouncy. Alot like Christianity with a pretty generous, non-exclusionary orthodoxy." This has, at its far end, the effect of redeeming the secular world for the religious life for, if nothing else, a source of inspiration in understanding religious life. Ideally, this split would not exist, and as Luther said, "Milkmaids [would] milk to the glory of God." But there is a split. Rob Bell with all his far-fetched, creative, and sometimes tenuously connected metaphors helps re-introduce the religious life into a secularized day-to-day.
And so I'd like to tip my hat to him.
Metaphorically.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Princeton Professor Craves "Funky Love"
By way of First Things this article on Cornell West's ghost-written memoir. The highlight for me is the following paragraph, taken from the book,
The basic problem with my love relationships with women is that my standards are so high -- and they apply equally to both of us. I seek full-blast mutual intensity, fully fledged mutual acceptance, full-blown mutual flourishing, and fully felt peace and joy with each other. This requires a level of physical attraction, personal adoration, and moral admiration that is hard to find. And it shares a depth of trust and openness for a genuine soul-sharing with a mutual respect for a calling to each other and to others. Does such a woman exist for me? Only God knows and I eagerly await this divine unfolding. Like Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship in Emily Bronte’s remarkable novel Wuthering Heights or Franz Schubert’s tempestuous piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat (D.960) I will not let life or death stand in the way of this sublime and funky love that I crave!”This may the most breathtakingly horrendous thing I have read in recent memory.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Google Books
This may be old news to some, but I just discovered Google books. It has all sorts of full version books available if they are over 100 or so years old. It also has preview versions of more recent works. Good stuff if you have an interest in the classics- Austen, Dickens, Hawthorne, ect are all there for free.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Advent Odds and Ends
I feel a smattering of posts coming on, but this one is going to deal specifically with Advent.
Advent is one of my of my favorite times of the year. In South Louisiana the weather is cold enough to be a nice change and make you feel "all Christmas-y" but isn't nasty and wet like it typically gets later in the winter (with the nastiness invariably reaching it's peak during Mardi Gras no matter if it comes early or late). That said and with the risk of sounding like Charlie Brown in his Christmas special, I don't like Christmas before Christmas day, all the commercialism and crappy music (a Bob Dylan Christmas album? I mean really, is that necessary?), the whole month long parade of terrible Lifetime movies being shown on tv and traffic filling the roads as parents buy far too much for their little darlings at home. Anyway Advent is one of the places where I feel the Baptists are missing out the most by not really using the church calendar. You may get a four week sermon series on "Reclaiming Christmas" or an occasional diatribe about the evils of abreviating the season X-mas, but as for putting things in context where things make sense and anticipating the Second Advent, you are largely on your own.
So, I thought I'd post some links and things here about Advent and resources you might could use. I'll probably post more later. If you find something you would like to share through this blog, feel free to put it in the comments section (I'm not sure if you can hyperlink or not there, if not, I can copy and paste the link into a post).
1. First a good article from First Things about how Advent saves us from the month long exhaustion of ballooning commercial Christmas. First Things will probably have much more in the future, good catholic magazine that they are, but you might also want to check up on Christianity Today periodically, I remember them having a good Advent calendar last year.
2. Let me first say that I usually do not like most Christmas music I hear. It is usually cheesy, campy, or just plain, good ol' fashioned awful. The more Santa Claus is involved in a song, generally the worse the song becomes. I feel like Christmas albums are probably very easy to make, but they are hard to make well. Adding to this problem is the sheer number of albums out there; artists feel like they need to make their album unique to stand out from the rest of the pack and this can lead to some spectacularly bad decisions. With that lengthy disclaimer out of the way, I will now proceed to plug a Christmas album. I really like Sufjan Stevens Christmas album. I'm not proud of this, but I listened to a few songs before Thanksgiving this year, something I am generally oposed to. There are moments when the album reaches just about the perfect tone. And this is because its a weird album, and Sufjan is a weird sounding artist. The Incarnation should sound mysterious, and that is why we always feel something when we go to a candlelit Christmas Eve service and sing songs like "What Child is This?"; God become man needs to cause wonder or you really don't understand what is going on. Sufjan's cd has moments like this. It also has ridiculous but fun songs like the wonderfully titled "Get Behind Me, Santa!" or "Come on! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance". Anyway you can listen to it online here ("What Child is This?", "Three Ships", the first version of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel", and "Star of Wonder" are standouts).
3. Finally something I did intermittently last year and hope to be more consistent about this year is reading the Daily Office. These readings come from the Book of Common Prayer and are divided for separate morning and evening readings if you desire to do so, but I usually read it all at once. Typically the Psalms are read first followed by two readings in the morning and one in the evening. If you split it up, the Gospel is usually read in the morning every other year, flip-flopping with the other New Testament reading. The bracketed portions are considered optional extensions of the reading. It is good to remember that these are simply the suggested readings, you may extend them as you wish. I'll post the first week here and hopefully will remember to put the others up later. The reading starts with this coming Sunday, tomorrow.
Sunday Psalms 146, 147 * 111, 112, 113
Isa. 1:1-9 2Pet. 3:1-10 Matt 25:1-13
Monday 1,2,3 * 4,7
Isa. 1:10-20 1Thess.1:1-10 Luke 20:1-8
Tuesday 5,6 * 10,11
Isa. 1:21-31 1Thess. 2:1-12 Luke 20:9-18
Wednesday 119:1-24 * 12,13,14
Isa. 2:1-11 1Thess. 2:13-20 Luke 20:19-26
Thursday 18:1-20 * 18:21-50
Isa 2:12-22 1Thess.3:1-13 Luke 20:27-40
Friday 16,17 * 22
Isa 3:8-15 1Thess.4:1-12 Luke 20:41-21:4
Saturday 20, 21:1-7(8-14) * 110:1-5(6-7), 116, 117
Isa 4:2-6 1Thess.4:13-18 Luke 21:5-19
Advent is one of my of my favorite times of the year. In South Louisiana the weather is cold enough to be a nice change and make you feel "all Christmas-y" but isn't nasty and wet like it typically gets later in the winter (with the nastiness invariably reaching it's peak during Mardi Gras no matter if it comes early or late). That said and with the risk of sounding like Charlie Brown in his Christmas special, I don't like Christmas before Christmas day, all the commercialism and crappy music (a Bob Dylan Christmas album? I mean really, is that necessary?), the whole month long parade of terrible Lifetime movies being shown on tv and traffic filling the roads as parents buy far too much for their little darlings at home. Anyway Advent is one of the places where I feel the Baptists are missing out the most by not really using the church calendar. You may get a four week sermon series on "Reclaiming Christmas" or an occasional diatribe about the evils of abreviating the season X-mas, but as for putting things in context where things make sense and anticipating the Second Advent, you are largely on your own.
So, I thought I'd post some links and things here about Advent and resources you might could use. I'll probably post more later. If you find something you would like to share through this blog, feel free to put it in the comments section (I'm not sure if you can hyperlink or not there, if not, I can copy and paste the link into a post).
1. First a good article from First Things about how Advent saves us from the month long exhaustion of ballooning commercial Christmas. First Things will probably have much more in the future, good catholic magazine that they are, but you might also want to check up on Christianity Today periodically, I remember them having a good Advent calendar last year.
2. Let me first say that I usually do not like most Christmas music I hear. It is usually cheesy, campy, or just plain, good ol' fashioned awful. The more Santa Claus is involved in a song, generally the worse the song becomes. I feel like Christmas albums are probably very easy to make, but they are hard to make well. Adding to this problem is the sheer number of albums out there; artists feel like they need to make their album unique to stand out from the rest of the pack and this can lead to some spectacularly bad decisions. With that lengthy disclaimer out of the way, I will now proceed to plug a Christmas album. I really like Sufjan Stevens Christmas album. I'm not proud of this, but I listened to a few songs before Thanksgiving this year, something I am generally oposed to. There are moments when the album reaches just about the perfect tone. And this is because its a weird album, and Sufjan is a weird sounding artist. The Incarnation should sound mysterious, and that is why we always feel something when we go to a candlelit Christmas Eve service and sing songs like "What Child is This?"; God become man needs to cause wonder or you really don't understand what is going on. Sufjan's cd has moments like this. It also has ridiculous but fun songs like the wonderfully titled "Get Behind Me, Santa!" or "Come on! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance". Anyway you can listen to it online here ("What Child is This?", "Three Ships", the first version of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel", and "Star of Wonder" are standouts).
3. Finally something I did intermittently last year and hope to be more consistent about this year is reading the Daily Office. These readings come from the Book of Common Prayer and are divided for separate morning and evening readings if you desire to do so, but I usually read it all at once. Typically the Psalms are read first followed by two readings in the morning and one in the evening. If you split it up, the Gospel is usually read in the morning every other year, flip-flopping with the other New Testament reading. The bracketed portions are considered optional extensions of the reading. It is good to remember that these are simply the suggested readings, you may extend them as you wish. I'll post the first week here and hopefully will remember to put the others up later. The reading starts with this coming Sunday, tomorrow.
Sunday Psalms 146, 147 * 111, 112, 113
Isa. 1:1-9 2Pet. 3:1-10 Matt 25:1-13
Monday 1,2,3 * 4,7
Isa. 1:10-20 1Thess.1:1-10 Luke 20:1-8
Tuesday 5,6 * 10,11
Isa. 1:21-31 1Thess. 2:1-12 Luke 20:9-18
Wednesday 119:1-24 * 12,13,14
Isa. 2:1-11 1Thess. 2:13-20 Luke 20:19-26
Thursday 18:1-20 * 18:21-50
Isa 2:12-22 1Thess.3:1-13 Luke 20:27-40
Friday 16,17 * 22
Isa 3:8-15 1Thess.4:1-12 Luke 20:41-21:4
Saturday 20, 21:1-7(8-14) * 110:1-5(6-7), 116, 117
Isa 4:2-6 1Thess.4:13-18 Luke 21:5-19
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Tintern Abbey
Here’s an excerpt from Wordsworth’s wonderful poem with the wonderfully long and typically British title, “Lines Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour.” If you understand what he is talking about when he writes about the mood “In which the burden of the mystery/ In which the heavy and the weary weight/ Of all this unintelligible world,/ Is lightened,” then you can come camping with me anytime. If not, I don’t know what to tell you. Go take a walk through the woods or something and rethink your life.
In this passage he talks about how the memory of his last visit to the banks of the Wye has served him. This probably should remind you of C.S. Lewis if you’ve read him talking about Joy or Beauty (which he always capitalizes).
These beauteous forms
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: - feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:- that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,-
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Freedom in Obedience
O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom: Defend us, thy humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in thy defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.- Collect for Peace, Book of Common Prayer
I want to look at the phrase in this collect "whose service is perfect freedom". It interests me (as the italics I inserted probably should've tipped you off to). It seems counter-intuitive, how is service freedom? James says something along same lines in his epistle speaking of the "law that gives freedom" or "the law of liberty" depending on what translation you're looking at. This is what I want to discuss, and to do that I want to go back to Genesis and the Garden.
After creating man, God gives him three commands: to be fruitful and multiply, to subdue the earth and have
dominion over its creatures (both Gen. 1:28) and not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now this last command stands out from the rest for several reasons, not least of which is that it is the one Adam and Eve fail to do. It is the only prohibitive command, the other two are positive in that they tell man what he should do. But more than that, and here is where I begin to steal from C.S. Lewis' wonderful novel Perelandra that reimagines the Fall in a different setting, the command not to eat is the only one not immediately recommended to them by their own nature; man naturally desires to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth and thrive upon it (and we still don't seem to struggle too much with these two). This prohibitive command is actually the source of their freedom however, because in it they have the freedom to choose obedience, to love. If God had simply made obedience completely congruent with their natural desires, love for Him could not be shown through obedience as it would merely be acting in self-interest. It is what seems at first to be the arbitrariness of the command, because after all, the fruit is "good for food and a delight to the eyes and the tree was to be desired to make one wise," it is this arbitrariness of asking obedience outside of one's appetites that makes true obedience out of love possible. Which of course brings up a big problem- is the command, in fact, arbitrary?
Well the short answer is no, but it is important to see how and why we get there. You could perhaps argue that the choice of that particular tree was arbitrary, that the act of disobedience rather than some special property of the tree is what imparted the knowledge of evil to those who had previously only known the goodness of God and of His Creation, but that is not the core of the issue (no apple-related pun intended). We can see that obedience is not arbitrary by the effects of the Fall if nothing else. Man as "priesthood of all creation", to use Maximus the Confessor's term, affects the whole of Creation when he falls. N.B.- I realize that the sin-related account for natural evil raises alot of problems, for example, didn't hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, ect. all exist before the Fall since that is a function of how our planet regulates itself (as this clip from the Muppet Babies explains around the 6 min mark), but that is the subject of another post, one which I probably won't ever get around to writing. Obedience and the love of God is anything but arbitrary just as sin, it's inverse, is not arbitrary. Dante says something very interesting in the third canto of his Inferno, on the Gates of Hell is an inscription which reads in part,
So, all that to say that obedience allows for us to love. I could've probably just told you to go read 1 John, but then the link to the Muppet Babies wouldn't have made much sense, would it?
I want to look at the phrase in this collect "whose service is perfect freedom". It interests me (as the italics I inserted probably should've tipped you off to). It seems counter-intuitive, how is service freedom? James says something along same lines in his epistle speaking of the "law that gives freedom" or "the law of liberty" depending on what translation you're looking at. This is what I want to discuss, and to do that I want to go back to Genesis and the Garden.
After creating man, God gives him three commands: to be fruitful and multiply, to subdue the earth and have
dominion over its creatures (both Gen. 1:28) and not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now this last command stands out from the rest for several reasons, not least of which is that it is the one Adam and Eve fail to do. It is the only prohibitive command, the other two are positive in that they tell man what he should do. But more than that, and here is where I begin to steal from C.S. Lewis' wonderful novel Perelandra that reimagines the Fall in a different setting, the command not to eat is the only one not immediately recommended to them by their own nature; man naturally desires to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth and thrive upon it (and we still don't seem to struggle too much with these two). This prohibitive command is actually the source of their freedom however, because in it they have the freedom to choose obedience, to love. If God had simply made obedience completely congruent with their natural desires, love for Him could not be shown through obedience as it would merely be acting in self-interest. It is what seems at first to be the arbitrariness of the command, because after all, the fruit is "good for food and a delight to the eyes and the tree was to be desired to make one wise," it is this arbitrariness of asking obedience outside of one's appetites that makes true obedience out of love possible. Which of course brings up a big problem- is the command, in fact, arbitrary?
Well the short answer is no, but it is important to see how and why we get there. You could perhaps argue that the choice of that particular tree was arbitrary, that the act of disobedience rather than some special property of the tree is what imparted the knowledge of evil to those who had previously only known the goodness of God and of His Creation, but that is not the core of the issue (no apple-related pun intended). We can see that obedience is not arbitrary by the effects of the Fall if nothing else. Man as "priesthood of all creation", to use Maximus the Confessor's term, affects the whole of Creation when he falls. N.B.- I realize that the sin-related account for natural evil raises alot of problems, for example, didn't hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, ect. all exist before the Fall since that is a function of how our planet regulates itself (as this clip from the Muppet Babies explains around the 6 min mark), but that is the subject of another post, one which I probably won't ever get around to writing. Obedience and the love of God is anything but arbitrary just as sin, it's inverse, is not arbitrary. Dante says something very interesting in the third canto of his Inferno, on the Gates of Hell is an inscription which reads in part,
"Justice moved my Great Maker; God EternalCharles Williams gives the following explanation in The Figure of Beatrice, "If there is God, if there is freewill, then man is able to choose the opposite of God. Power, Wisdom, Love, gave man freewill; therefore Power, Wisdom, Love, created the gate of hell and the possibility of hell." So then God in allowing us to truly love, also allows for the possibility of disobedience, of sin.
Wrought me: the Power, and the Unsearchably
High Wisdom, and the Primal Love supernal"
So, all that to say that obedience allows for us to love. I could've probably just told you to go read 1 John, but then the link to the Muppet Babies wouldn't have made much sense, would it?
A Cormac McCarthy Interview
The Wall Street Journal has an interview up of Cormac McCarthy, the guy who wrote, among other things, No Country for Old Men. McCarthy's writing has been described as Flannery O'Connor without God, but the interview shows at least some interest or openness to the idea of God. Now the interest seems to be confined to at most a vague "spirituality", but still makes for an interesting read.
Monday, November 16, 2009
A quote from W.H. Auden
Over at Alan Jacobs blog, there is this wonderful quote from W.H. Auden's excellent book, The Dyer's Hand:
"All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. (Bertrand Russell). If so, then infernal science differs from human science in that it lacks the notion of approximation: it believes its laws to be exact. [. . .]
The first anthropological axiom of the Evil One is not All men are evil, but All men are the same; and his second — Men do not act, they only behave. [. . .]
One of our greatest spiritual dangers is our fancy that the Evil One takes a personal interest in our perdition. He doesn't care a button about my soul, any more than Don Giovanni cared a button about Donna Elvira’s body. I am his “one-thousand-and-third in Spain.”
One can conceive of Heaven having a Telephone Directory, but it would have to be gigantic, for it would include the Proper Name and address of every electron in the Universe. But Hell could not have one, for in Hell . . . its inhabitants are identified not by name but by number. They do not have numbers, they are numbers"
The rest of the post, which is itself in reference to a First Things post, can be found here. Jacobs' blog is worthwhile if you are interested in literature and how technology is affecting the dissemenation of knowledge. And of course I hardily recommend reading Auden, but that goes without saying.
"All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. (Bertrand Russell). If so, then infernal science differs from human science in that it lacks the notion of approximation: it believes its laws to be exact. [. . .]
The first anthropological axiom of the Evil One is not All men are evil, but All men are the same; and his second — Men do not act, they only behave. [. . .]
One of our greatest spiritual dangers is our fancy that the Evil One takes a personal interest in our perdition. He doesn't care a button about my soul, any more than Don Giovanni cared a button about Donna Elvira’s body. I am his “one-thousand-and-third in Spain.”
One can conceive of Heaven having a Telephone Directory, but it would have to be gigantic, for it would include the Proper Name and address of every electron in the Universe. But Hell could not have one, for in Hell . . . its inhabitants are identified not by name but by number. They do not have numbers, they are numbers"
The rest of the post, which is itself in reference to a First Things post, can be found here. Jacobs' blog is worthwhile if you are interested in literature and how technology is affecting the dissemenation of knowledge. And of course I hardily recommend reading Auden, but that goes without saying.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Strange Civil War Metaphors by Chinese Diplomats
From First Things. A Chinese diplomat compared pre-occupation Tibet to the antebellum South and said that Pres. Obama, being black and admiring Lincoln should support what they are doing. Tibet was a thoroughly imperfect feudal society before Chinese occupation. It is hard to imagine however that the Tibetans are all itching for freedom so they can re-impose feudalism; the government in exile in India democratically elected a prime minister in 2006. Maybe this kind of questionable logic works in China where state-run press and repressive policing gives people no chance to express their opinions. But not here in 'merica; we have Lee Greenwood and his fringed leather jacket, dang it.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Congnitive Mapping and Wickedly Swerving Free-Kicks
Watch the video before you read the post. It's less than a minute long.
Something came up in a book I'm reading, Shopclass as Soulcraft, about currently en vogue models of brain function. The rise of computers has led cognitive scientists to conceive of the brain in terms of computing power, carrying out calculations at a rate of speed that is inferior to modern computers. (Interestingly enough the study of the brain has influenced computer design as well with artificial neural networks that make connections of varying strengths based on repetition of pathway usage similar to the way neurons function.) This modern conception of the brain as computer has some significant gaps I feel, failing to account for the intuitive use of the intellect by experts in their fields.
The video is a case in point. Either Roberto Carlos is a genius, making an incredible amount of calculations to hit a ball with the right amount of force, perfect initial direction, and sufficient spin to make the ball clear the wall and then curve back into the goal or something else is going on. As a former soccer player, I can tell you without a doubt something else is happening. When you go to strike the ball you look at the spot you want to put the ball and then look at the spot that you know you need to hit the ball; if all proceeds as planned you get a sense of having kicked the ball well, not of having carried out complicated computations. The brain and body seem to be intimately connected in this process somehow with practice creating the muscle memory, leg strength and the "knowledge" of how to hit the ball. When we conceive of the brain as simply an impressive, if now somewhat inferior, data processor, we really can't account for what Roberto Carlos is doing when he scores on poor Fabian Barthez (the French goalie in the clip). Man is not however an autonomous conscience that inhabits a body. One of the problems with Descartes separation of the conciousness from the body is that it uses the language of an embodied existence to describe a state in which the senses that supply our language are discarded in his program of radical scepticism. Language is built upon the senses. Even Helen Keller when learning language from her teacher Annie Sullivan thought in tactile terms: "This wetness running through my hand is related to the signs being made into my palm- water." Conciousness, if by nothing else than language, is tied to the body.
This is all to say that I really don't know what is going on with how the brain works in relation to the body in performing tasks that are accomplished intuitively, but I don't think the computational model is adequate.
Something came up in a book I'm reading, Shopclass as Soulcraft, about currently en vogue models of brain function. The rise of computers has led cognitive scientists to conceive of the brain in terms of computing power, carrying out calculations at a rate of speed that is inferior to modern computers. (Interestingly enough the study of the brain has influenced computer design as well with artificial neural networks that make connections of varying strengths based on repetition of pathway usage similar to the way neurons function.) This modern conception of the brain as computer has some significant gaps I feel, failing to account for the intuitive use of the intellect by experts in their fields.
The video is a case in point. Either Roberto Carlos is a genius, making an incredible amount of calculations to hit a ball with the right amount of force, perfect initial direction, and sufficient spin to make the ball clear the wall and then curve back into the goal or something else is going on. As a former soccer player, I can tell you without a doubt something else is happening. When you go to strike the ball you look at the spot you want to put the ball and then look at the spot that you know you need to hit the ball; if all proceeds as planned you get a sense of having kicked the ball well, not of having carried out complicated computations. The brain and body seem to be intimately connected in this process somehow with practice creating the muscle memory, leg strength and the "knowledge" of how to hit the ball. When we conceive of the brain as simply an impressive, if now somewhat inferior, data processor, we really can't account for what Roberto Carlos is doing when he scores on poor Fabian Barthez (the French goalie in the clip). Man is not however an autonomous conscience that inhabits a body. One of the problems with Descartes separation of the conciousness from the body is that it uses the language of an embodied existence to describe a state in which the senses that supply our language are discarded in his program of radical scepticism. Language is built upon the senses. Even Helen Keller when learning language from her teacher Annie Sullivan thought in tactile terms: "This wetness running through my hand is related to the signs being made into my palm- water." Conciousness, if by nothing else than language, is tied to the body.
This is all to say that I really don't know what is going on with how the brain works in relation to the body in performing tasks that are accomplished intuitively, but I don't think the computational model is adequate.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Catholic Bishop on Abortion Debate
This from First Things. A Catholic bishop calls out a senator who says disagreement with the church on abortion doesn't "make him less of a Catholic". First Things is a good, fairly ecumenical magazine that tends to be center-right for the most part- check out Alan Jacobs or David B. Hart articles if you go to the site, they're usually pretty good
The Mix-Tape Revolution
One of the most saddening and deplorable developments in modern society is, indubitably, the fall from prominence that mix-tapes have experienced from their lofty perch atop the courtship ritual food-chain. In the golden days, before these new-fangled computers, and napsters, and what-not made music so readily available, suitors would spend hours manually recording the newest Bon Jovi songs onto cassette. Those days have sadly left us, and now prospective targets must be wooed by other means such as personal conversation, without recourse to the eloquence of modern poets like Celine Dion or the 2 Live Crew- but how else can I communicate that (Everything I Do) I Do it for You except through the tender croonings and smooth sounds of Bryan Adams?
But all is not lost.
While in the shower mourning over the loss of the mix-tape as courting ritual and simultaneously celebrating my newly minted compilation of various artists of a country bent, I came to a startling revelation: I have a blog.
I have a blog.
A blog with a readership that must run at least into the half-dozens.
I could start a grass-roots campaign that would bring the mix-tape method of courtship back into national, nay, international prominence (I hear the cassette is still big in Eastern Europe and rural Canada, so that's a start). This will not be like other grass-roots campaigns however; Fox News will not create it, seemingly out of whole cloth, promote it daily on telecasts and through websites and then be shocked when their coverage of the completely spontaneous "movement among the people" fufills all the expectations they had placed on it as they orchestrated it over the course of several months- no, it will grow from the ground up like... like... grass... no even lower than that, lower than the grass, it will start at the roots of the grass!
And that's where you come in. Now you may say, "I already have a significant other," or "I'm really not looking," or "I'm female and not that aggressive, in-your-face, I'm-gonna-get-me-my-man type, I like the guy to come after me", or "I actually hate the idea of mix-tapes, it's a weird thing to do, couldn't you just go about it in a normal way that doesn't depend on cheesy top-40 hits"- but let me tell you something, "None of that matters". This is a grass-roots campaign and you, my friend are thinking at a grass level. We won't actually be making mix-tapes for people to try and get them to associate all the romantic feelings that "On Bended Knee" produces in them with us, instead we will be promoting mix tape awareness. The important thing is not that mix-tapes are used by musically sensitive singles to woo prospective mates, but that they are aware of the idea of using mix-tapes to woo prospective mates . You don't get rootier than that.
Let's start this thing.
But all is not lost.
While in the shower mourning over the loss of the mix-tape as courting ritual and simultaneously celebrating my newly minted compilation of various artists of a country bent, I came to a startling revelation: I have a blog.
I have a blog.
A blog with a readership that must run at least into the half-dozens.
I could start a grass-roots campaign that would bring the mix-tape method of courtship back into national, nay, international prominence (I hear the cassette is still big in Eastern Europe and rural Canada, so that's a start). This will not be like other grass-roots campaigns however; Fox News will not create it, seemingly out of whole cloth, promote it daily on telecasts and through websites and then be shocked when their coverage of the completely spontaneous "movement among the people" fufills all the expectations they had placed on it as they orchestrated it over the course of several months- no, it will grow from the ground up like... like... grass... no even lower than that, lower than the grass, it will start at the roots of the grass!
And that's where you come in. Now you may say, "I already have a significant other," or "I'm really not looking," or "I'm female and not that aggressive, in-your-face, I'm-gonna-get-me-my-man type, I like the guy to come after me", or "I actually hate the idea of mix-tapes, it's a weird thing to do, couldn't you just go about it in a normal way that doesn't depend on cheesy top-40 hits"- but let me tell you something, "None of that matters". This is a grass-roots campaign and you, my friend are thinking at a grass level. We won't actually be making mix-tapes for people to try and get them to associate all the romantic feelings that "On Bended Knee" produces in them with us, instead we will be promoting mix tape awareness. The important thing is not that mix-tapes are used by musically sensitive singles to woo prospective mates, but that they are aware of the idea of using mix-tapes to woo prospective mates . You don't get rootier than that.
Let's start this thing.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Would Montaigne be a blogger?
Instead of adding more frustrated/bitter post-game comments to facebook (because I've done enough of that already), I thought I'd put up a quick post here.
This isn't really something I've thought about much- for one thing because I don't think much about blogging, as any number of my posts will attest- but I'm wondering if in the rise of blogging we may be seeing a return of the essay. The classic essay, pioneered by Michel de Montaigne, a French guy, in the 16th century is basically a short article written by someone who is usually a non-specialist and from a personal point of view. The term comes from the French essayer through Montaigne, and means "to attempt". These attempts to grapple with a subject from a layman's perspective are more easy to understand than scholarly articles, able to cover more ground, and, with a good essayist, actually enjoyable to read. Essays kind of went out for most of the later 20th century with the rise of the cult of specialization. While this specialization and, I would say, fragmentation of knowledge is still for the most part in place, to the point that specialists in their respective fields are largely unable to converse with specialists in other fields (see for instance the opinions of your typical department head of some branch of science at a local university and their inability to speak to or even see the value in other fields of study), the rise of blogs may signal a sort of re-integration of knowledge, at least at a popular level. This is I think potentially a very good thing. The specialist culture creates two significant problems, I feel. One either is at the mercy of whatever the current opinion of the experts are ("12 servings of carbs a day huh? Well if the pyramid says so...") or one elevates one's own area of specialization to an all-encompassing world-view that fails to account for other areas or types of knowledge (see Dawkins, Richard).
Which all leads me to the question would Montaigne (or Hazlitt, or Emerson, or...) be a blogger? Is this medium one in which the essay may return to exert some kind of influence on society? Or does it just allow anyone with an internet connection the ability to air their thoughts without the annoying responsibility of having to get someone to listen to them?
This isn't really something I've thought about much- for one thing because I don't think much about blogging, as any number of my posts will attest- but I'm wondering if in the rise of blogging we may be seeing a return of the essay. The classic essay, pioneered by Michel de Montaigne, a French guy, in the 16th century is basically a short article written by someone who is usually a non-specialist and from a personal point of view. The term comes from the French essayer through Montaigne, and means "to attempt". These attempts to grapple with a subject from a layman's perspective are more easy to understand than scholarly articles, able to cover more ground, and, with a good essayist, actually enjoyable to read. Essays kind of went out for most of the later 20th century with the rise of the cult of specialization. While this specialization and, I would say, fragmentation of knowledge is still for the most part in place, to the point that specialists in their respective fields are largely unable to converse with specialists in other fields (see for instance the opinions of your typical department head of some branch of science at a local university and their inability to speak to or even see the value in other fields of study), the rise of blogs may signal a sort of re-integration of knowledge, at least at a popular level. This is I think potentially a very good thing. The specialist culture creates two significant problems, I feel. One either is at the mercy of whatever the current opinion of the experts are ("12 servings of carbs a day huh? Well if the pyramid says so...") or one elevates one's own area of specialization to an all-encompassing world-view that fails to account for other areas or types of knowledge (see Dawkins, Richard).
Which all leads me to the question would Montaigne (or Hazlitt, or Emerson, or...) be a blogger? Is this medium one in which the essay may return to exert some kind of influence on society? Or does it just allow anyone with an internet connection the ability to air their thoughts without the annoying responsibility of having to get someone to listen to them?
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Seventy Year Old Man Beats Up Journalist over Bad Article
From the American Scene.
Here's a fun story as far as journalistic fisticuffs go. Henry Allen, a nearly seventy year old feature editor for the Washington Post Style section, got into a fist-fight with feature writer Manuel Roig-Franzia, who, I'm assuming based solely on his hyphenated last name, is a pretentious jerk. The fight apparently centered around a lazily put together "charticle" about inadvertent disclosures, drawing on a congressman recently letting slip that several colleagues were under investigation for ethics violations. The story was said to contain several factual errors- stating, for instance, that Robert E. Lee's battle plans were found wrapped around cigars in Virginia, when the event actually occurred in Maryland- but must have been quite spectacularly terrible to elicit the response it did from Allen. Upon reading it, he was said to remark, "This is total crap. It's the second worst story I've seen in Style in 43 years." This has led to much speculation as to what the worst story may be. Reports say it was a story on Paul Robeson (who has the improbable occupational listing of athlete/actor/orator/concert singer/lawyer/social activist on wikipedia, someone get that man a "Slashie").
Another Post writer gives his take on it here and gives a link to what is for his money the worst article ever to appear in Style. I was curious and took the time to read it. Without having ever read any other Style articles, I can say that this must surely be the worst thing the have ever published; it reaches impressive depths of utter crapitude. This is the type article that it actually takes a somewhat talented writer to create: a large, sprawling, nauseating mess; as if someone found a fresh steaming dog turd on the sidewalk in front of their house, took a fancy to it, and decided to spend the next week crocheting a neon orange sweater for it to wear, and then upon closer inspection of the finished product decided to screen-print it with a brightly colored image of a family of gay, effeminate, bejeweled dolphins surfacing before a field of frolicking unicorns and so bring the level of crappiness to new, unimagined heights. Words really fail to describe how awful this article is, it has everything: mazes; visions of Native Americans dispensing vague, feel-good proverbs; lens flares that are perhaps profound spiritual experiences; ridiculous new-age associations between walking through a labyrinth and improving your child's standardized test scores; and a "moving Native American funeral flute solo and song and dance." Click the link, entertain yourself, you deserve it.
Here's a fun story as far as journalistic fisticuffs go. Henry Allen, a nearly seventy year old feature editor for the Washington Post Style section, got into a fist-fight with feature writer Manuel Roig-Franzia, who, I'm assuming based solely on his hyphenated last name, is a pretentious jerk. The fight apparently centered around a lazily put together "charticle" about inadvertent disclosures, drawing on a congressman recently letting slip that several colleagues were under investigation for ethics violations. The story was said to contain several factual errors- stating, for instance, that Robert E. Lee's battle plans were found wrapped around cigars in Virginia, when the event actually occurred in Maryland- but must have been quite spectacularly terrible to elicit the response it did from Allen. Upon reading it, he was said to remark, "This is total crap. It's the second worst story I've seen in Style in 43 years." This has led to much speculation as to what the worst story may be. Reports say it was a story on Paul Robeson (who has the improbable occupational listing of athlete/actor/orator/concert singer/lawyer/social activist on wikipedia, someone get that man a "Slashie").
Another Post writer gives his take on it here and gives a link to what is for his money the worst article ever to appear in Style. I was curious and took the time to read it. Without having ever read any other Style articles, I can say that this must surely be the worst thing the have ever published; it reaches impressive depths of utter crapitude. This is the type article that it actually takes a somewhat talented writer to create: a large, sprawling, nauseating mess; as if someone found a fresh steaming dog turd on the sidewalk in front of their house, took a fancy to it, and decided to spend the next week crocheting a neon orange sweater for it to wear, and then upon closer inspection of the finished product decided to screen-print it with a brightly colored image of a family of gay, effeminate, bejeweled dolphins surfacing before a field of frolicking unicorns and so bring the level of crappiness to new, unimagined heights. Words really fail to describe how awful this article is, it has everything: mazes; visions of Native Americans dispensing vague, feel-good proverbs; lens flares that are perhaps profound spiritual experiences; ridiculous new-age associations between walking through a labyrinth and improving your child's standardized test scores; and a "moving Native American funeral flute solo and song and dance." Click the link, entertain yourself, you deserve it.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
From Colbert...
This might be the first time I've ever heard a crowd cheer on someone reciting the Nicene Creed.
This won't make sense if you don't follow the link, but I think Scalia must really be an idiot or be some kind of evil genius. The way he frames the decision should make Christians opposed to the ruling (so that the cross should not be emptied of its meaning into a general symbol for those killed in war). Looking quickly at his wikipedia page and his views on the death penalty, it appears he is simply really dumb, which is the better of the two choices I suppose. Here's the quote on the wiki page:
This won't make sense if you don't follow the link, but I think Scalia must really be an idiot or be some kind of evil genius. The way he frames the decision should make Christians opposed to the ruling (so that the cross should not be emptied of its meaning into a general symbol for those killed in war). Looking quickly at his wikipedia page and his views on the death penalty, it appears he is simply really dumb, which is the better of the two choices I suppose. Here's the quote on the wiki page:
This is not the Old Testament, I emphasize, but St. Paul.... [T]he core of his message is that government—however you want to limit that concept—derives its moral authority from God.... Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral.... I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal. Intentionally killing an innocent person is a big deal: it is a grave sin, which causes one to lose his soul. But losing this life, in exchange for the next?... For the nonbeliever, on the other hand, to deprive a man of his life is to end his existence. What a horrible act!... The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible. We have done that in this country (and continental Europe has not) by preserving in our public life many visible reminders that—in the words of a Supreme Court opinion from the 1940s—"we are a religious people, whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being."... All this, as I say, is most un-European, and helps explain why our people are more inclined to understand, as St. Paul did, that government carries the sword as "the minister of God," to "execute wrath" upon the evildoer."- (the bold is mine)Death no big deal, huh? Might want to re-read ole St. Paul on that one...
Friday, October 30, 2009
Good I-monk post
Here's a good post from Internetmonk on the culture war. Here's an excerpt:
Imagine, for a moment, that I came to your typically conservative evangelical church and asked to visit with your young people, high school through young married couples. I want to ask them some questions. -What do you think of the President?He goes on to say he would get pretty vigorous, clearly articulated responses to the first 4 questions but a lot of blank stares at the last 3. Anyway he goes on to address this problem and talk a bit about American idolatry. Good stuff.
-What is your position on abortion?
-What do you believe about the legalization of gay marriage?
-Are you in favor of any version of Federally controlled health care?
-What is your church’s definition of the inspiration and authority of scripture?
-What is a brief definition of the Trinity?
-How does your church’s beliefs differ from Roman Catholicism?
Thursday, October 29, 2009
St. Anselm goes to Rehab
Here's something I've been working out as I lay down and try to go to sleep at night, it has been a remarkably good cure for insomnia. This will probably end up being a pretty long and, for most people, uninteresting post- just so you're warned.
I'd like to discuss a little bit the ontological argument for God. Now before you go, "Whaaa??" and click away, let me explain what it is in a nutshell. The argument, first put forward by St. Anselm, is basically:
1. We can conceive of perfection (or that which no greater can be thought)
2. This perfection is an attribute of God.
3. Part of this perfection is existence (because existence is good)
4 God exists.
This idea has been poo-pooed by various philosophers ever since it was first published, including by this fellow Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, a Benedictine monk more popularly known as the "Island Guy". His refutation was basically that he could conceive of a perfect island, the existence of this island was part of its perfection, so the perfect island must exist, right? I'll be honest, the ontological argument just doesn't "do it" for me; if true, the argument only gets us to some vague philosophical conception of God, like Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, not necessarily Yahweh, much less addressing the truth of the Resurrection. But, all that said, I've never felt the isalnd think really cut it as a refutation. Thats right, this blog is about to weigh in on philosophical controversies from the 11th century. I can feel my readership exploding as I type; it don't get no more relevant than this.
The problem with the island is that an island can not be judged in the same terms as a being. We can discuss rational beings in terms of their ethical/religious character an evaluate them on such terms. One island, however can not be said to be morally superior to another (well I mean you could, it just wouldn't make sense). The island or anything else without rational intellect (a dog for example), can only be judged on aesthetic or utilitarian terms- it's beautiful, trashy, it has resources we can use, ect. and affirmed as good in it's createdness (but this is an act of faith rather than a philosophical position). It does not make sense to talk of it's perfection because any perfection would be aesthetic one. I don't know that we can speak of aesthetic perfection, because an aesthetic judgment is necessarily subjective, rely both on the object being considered and the observer. For example a perfect engine may need to be frictionless (for maximum efficency, which would ostensibly be part of its perfection) but the perfect tire obviously would not be frictionless as it must grip the road. The tire's (and the road's) "imperfections" that cause friction are in fact a function of it's usefulness.
Plato believed that there was a realm of ideas which was superior to the material plane, so that we could judge say, a desk, based on the extent to which it conform to the ideal standard of desks that exists in the realm of ideas. This system of thought influenced the Gnostic heresy, that plagued early Christianity (and I think still infects a lot of Christian circles today, but that is another post), basically that matter was bad and spirit good, which at it's far end led to the belief that Christ could not have become incarnate, but instead only appeared to be. I say all that to show clearly what dangerous ground I am on here when I say that we cannot, I do not think, conceive of perfection in material terms. Two reasons for this, first because materiality implies some sort of aesthetic judgment as part of its perfection, and second because of the corruptibility of the flesh, because of its susceptibility to death. So, before the question is asked, this means that we cannot I think talk about Jesus as being perfect as touches His manhood. This is a part of what the poem in Phil. 2 is talking about when it says He emptied Himself, He took on the frailties of man including death. This is why as Kierkegaard says, we cannot argue from the greatness of Christ or the effects of His life that He is God. There is, as he says, an infinite qualitative distinction between man and God, which is a technical way of saying that man does not exist on a continuum with God; God is essentially different than man. Which brings me nicely back around to the point I made at the outset, we cannot make an argument for God that is meaningful ultimately; faith requires an act of faith, not argumentation.
As a little postlude here, I do want to leave open the possibility for material perfection in the finally redeemed Creation. The Resurrected Christ was an anticipation of what is to come when, "God's dwelling place is with man". Now we don't really know exactly what it will be like, but then we could perhaps speak of perfections, because the diversity which God has created and so deemed good will certainly still be in place I would think. I'm totally stealing this from somewhere in the writings of Lewis, but I forget where precisely, so I'll just roll with. Goodness expresses itself in diversity, while evil is always monotonously the same. The remarkable variety of the saints when contrasted to the how incredibly similar evil men are in the end, is a case in point. N.T. Wright has some good stuff about this, and I found a pretty solid (at least based on my skimming of it) summary of some of the main points of his book Suprised by Hope here on the Relevant magazine website (but you should still read the book).
I'll end with a few lines from W.H. Auden that sum up my feelings about arguments for the existence of God.
I'd like to discuss a little bit the ontological argument for God. Now before you go, "Whaaa??" and click away, let me explain what it is in a nutshell. The argument, first put forward by St. Anselm, is basically:
1. We can conceive of perfection (or that which no greater can be thought)
2. This perfection is an attribute of God.
3. Part of this perfection is existence (because existence is good)
4 God exists.
This idea has been poo-pooed by various philosophers ever since it was first published, including by this fellow Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, a Benedictine monk more popularly known as the "Island Guy". His refutation was basically that he could conceive of a perfect island, the existence of this island was part of its perfection, so the perfect island must exist, right? I'll be honest, the ontological argument just doesn't "do it" for me; if true, the argument only gets us to some vague philosophical conception of God, like Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, not necessarily Yahweh, much less addressing the truth of the Resurrection. But, all that said, I've never felt the isalnd think really cut it as a refutation. Thats right, this blog is about to weigh in on philosophical controversies from the 11th century. I can feel my readership exploding as I type; it don't get no more relevant than this.
The problem with the island is that an island can not be judged in the same terms as a being. We can discuss rational beings in terms of their ethical/religious character an evaluate them on such terms. One island, however can not be said to be morally superior to another (well I mean you could, it just wouldn't make sense). The island or anything else without rational intellect (a dog for example), can only be judged on aesthetic or utilitarian terms- it's beautiful, trashy, it has resources we can use, ect. and affirmed as good in it's createdness (but this is an act of faith rather than a philosophical position). It does not make sense to talk of it's perfection because any perfection would be aesthetic one. I don't know that we can speak of aesthetic perfection, because an aesthetic judgment is necessarily subjective, rely both on the object being considered and the observer. For example a perfect engine may need to be frictionless (for maximum efficency, which would ostensibly be part of its perfection) but the perfect tire obviously would not be frictionless as it must grip the road. The tire's (and the road's) "imperfections" that cause friction are in fact a function of it's usefulness.
Plato believed that there was a realm of ideas which was superior to the material plane, so that we could judge say, a desk, based on the extent to which it conform to the ideal standard of desks that exists in the realm of ideas. This system of thought influenced the Gnostic heresy, that plagued early Christianity (and I think still infects a lot of Christian circles today, but that is another post), basically that matter was bad and spirit good, which at it's far end led to the belief that Christ could not have become incarnate, but instead only appeared to be. I say all that to show clearly what dangerous ground I am on here when I say that we cannot, I do not think, conceive of perfection in material terms. Two reasons for this, first because materiality implies some sort of aesthetic judgment as part of its perfection, and second because of the corruptibility of the flesh, because of its susceptibility to death. So, before the question is asked, this means that we cannot I think talk about Jesus as being perfect as touches His manhood. This is a part of what the poem in Phil. 2 is talking about when it says He emptied Himself, He took on the frailties of man including death. This is why as Kierkegaard says, we cannot argue from the greatness of Christ or the effects of His life that He is God. There is, as he says, an infinite qualitative distinction between man and God, which is a technical way of saying that man does not exist on a continuum with God; God is essentially different than man. Which brings me nicely back around to the point I made at the outset, we cannot make an argument for God that is meaningful ultimately; faith requires an act of faith, not argumentation.
As a little postlude here, I do want to leave open the possibility for material perfection in the finally redeemed Creation. The Resurrected Christ was an anticipation of what is to come when, "God's dwelling place is with man". Now we don't really know exactly what it will be like, but then we could perhaps speak of perfections, because the diversity which God has created and so deemed good will certainly still be in place I would think. I'm totally stealing this from somewhere in the writings of Lewis, but I forget where precisely, so I'll just roll with. Goodness expresses itself in diversity, while evil is always monotonously the same. The remarkable variety of the saints when contrasted to the how incredibly similar evil men are in the end, is a case in point. N.T. Wright has some good stuff about this, and I found a pretty solid (at least based on my skimming of it) summary of some of the main points of his book Suprised by Hope here on the Relevant magazine website (but you should still read the book).
I'll end with a few lines from W.H. Auden that sum up my feelings about arguments for the existence of God.
And must put up with having learned
All proofs or disproofs that we tender
Of His existence are returned
Unopened to the sender.
-Friday's Child, W.H. Auden
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
A Trip to Barnes and Noble
The other day I went to Barnes and Noble looking for a book I had wanted to read called Shopclass as Soul Craft, a book written by your typical philosopher/motorcycle repair shop owner about the dehumanizing aspects of the modern workplace - people don't really make things anymore, a tendency to replace skilled labor with un-skilled labor so that workers lose the benefits and stability of learning a trade, how white-collar jobs are increasingly becoming thoughtless, Office Space-like operations, ect. It has been pretty good so far, much in line with what I've been thinking ever since I read Small is Beautiful this past spring (a superior book to this current one, you should go find it at a library somewhere, good stuff) and contains the somewhat troubling revelation that some new model Mercedes do not have a dipstick (we can't even check our own oil now?).
Anyway, speaking of troubling revelations, while in the store I drifted over to the fiction section for a bit (and ended up picking up Three Men in a Boat, supposedly one of the funniest novels of all time, but have yet to start it) which is near the drama section, which is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare. While looking, I overheard a sales rep talking to a mother, presumably there to buy some play for school for her kid. The sales-lady said something along the lines of, "Here is our updated Shakespeare, it has the original text side by side with the text translated into English so you can understand it." Now, I don't go around saying, "By my troth," or calling people "saucy merchants" or anything like that, but really, a translation? Beyond a few marginal notes for anachronisms, I can't see the text as too terribly difficult if you read it slowly enough and think about what is going on. If I was a English major/teacher I might be marginally depressed by all this.
Anyway, speaking of troubling revelations, while in the store I drifted over to the fiction section for a bit (and ended up picking up Three Men in a Boat, supposedly one of the funniest novels of all time, but have yet to start it) which is near the drama section, which is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare. While looking, I overheard a sales rep talking to a mother, presumably there to buy some play for school for her kid. The sales-lady said something along the lines of, "Here is our updated Shakespeare, it has the original text side by side with the text translated into English so you can understand it." Now, I don't go around saying, "By my troth," or calling people "saucy merchants" or anything like that, but really, a translation? Beyond a few marginal notes for anachronisms, I can't see the text as too terribly difficult if you read it slowly enough and think about what is going on. If I was a English major/teacher I might be marginally depressed by all this.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
G.K. Chesterton and Obi-Wan Kenobi
I frequently peruse Christianity Today's Books and Culture section; they have new articles about once a week and their reviews have steered me towards some good books in the past. Anyway two articles about G.K. Chesterton there (whom you should read if you haven't yet, especially if you like C.S. Lewis)- a general one on his recent resurgence and another, a review of a new biography of GKC (btw Baylor Press has got a book on Chesterton coming out next year by Ralph Wood, should be pretty good, I think). The former led me to Gilbert Magazine and an article about Alec Guinness, the guy who played Obi-Wan Kenobi. Apparently he also played Father Brown, GKC's priest-detective from a series of novels and short stories, in a movie in the 50s. The movie is pretty terrible from what the article says, but an incident during filming ended up having a profound effect on Guinness. While returning to his hotel in France during filming, Guinness, still dressed in the vestments of Fr. Brown, was met by a little boy, who thinking him a real priest took him by the hand and led him excitedly towards his home, talking all the way. Afraid to startle the boy with his poor French, Guinness remained silent. At a hole in a hedgerow the boy said a hasty good-bye and turned into to his house; apparently he had only wished for a safe, reassuring walk home. As Guinness writes in his autobiography, "Continuing my walk I reflected that a Church which could inspire such a confidence in a child, making its priests, even when unknown, so easily approachable could not be as scheming and creepy as so often made out. I began to shake off my long-taught, long-absorbed prejudice." Shortly after this Guinness converted to Catholicism, which is all to say that G.K. Chesterton might just change your life, you should read him.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Three Definitions of a Reader
From a working library by way of Alan Jacobs' blog Text Patterns:
The first definition is the most familiar: one who reads, or one who is fond of reading. A young girl tucked under a tree with a book in hand; an old man waiting for the bus, nose pressed into the spine; three little boys sitting on the curb sharing a newspaper, ink smudged on their knees.The second definition harks back to the single-room schoolhouse: an anthology of texts used for teaching. Here the term passes from the person doing the reading to the object being read, from reading for its own sake to reading with intent. The image of reading remains, but it becomes focused, purposeful; it becomes work.
The third definition shifts from the object to the machine: a device for reading data. No longer human, the reader becomes mechanical, the texts reduced to ones and zeros. There are no stories, only limitless information, each digit as insignificant as the next.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Church in a Railcar
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Evolution and Genesis (Now there's a loaded title)
First let me preface this by saying that this post will be wildly speculative; I will just be throwing alot of stuff out there and seeing if any of it sticks. Second, let me say that I feel there are ways in which this post is completely unneccessary. The main point is man was created somehow (through evolutionary processes or not) and suffered some kind of fall by choosing the knowledge of good and evil rather than the knowledge of God and life with Him. All that said, time to jump in. Let the controversy begin.
Before going in to the theology of all this, let me first speak to the science- and the limits of science. A confession here is in order first though, I haven't taken biology since my sophomore year in college- and then I napped in class on occassion and borrowed a textbook that I have yet to return; so I am not by any means up to date on the science behind all this. But as far as I can tell, and based on what some smart fellow Christians have said on the subject, the science points to evolution as the cause for the diversity of life on Earth. Otherwise, God has placed a lot of fairly compelling evidence for evolution, presumably in an attempt to dupe a bunch of scientists into atheism. So our options seem to be either accepting the theory of evolution as the best explanation of the available data, critique the science behind it (which many try to do, with little success), or accuse God of acting against His character by tricking us into belief in an evolutionary explanation (by hiding fossil remains in the earth for instance, so that when we found them we would interpret them as signs of man's predecessors and so be fooled). Maybe I making strawmen out of the other two options, but anyway looks like evolution is the most likely to me. So what does that give us, if anything? A means of Creation. Science cannot say anything positive or negative about the existence of God or the truth of the Resurrection. It is an approach to truth, it however cannot acknowledge something as true or not; the scientific method only rejects or fails to reject hypotheses, it is by nature (fancy theological word) apophatic. This however is not sufficient, it is not how men live their lives. An example that will perhaps help segue into the theology behind all this is our use of images in describing God. In Christian thought there have been two main ways of approach to the Truth of God in Himself which, as Paul says, we now only see "through a mirror darkly" (little explanatory aside here- back in the day they had different mirrors, made out of shiny metal rather than glass; in Paul's day it would be more like checking yourself out in whatever kitchen appliance is handy rather than walking all the way to a bathroom - you get the general idea of what's going on, but you can't pick out all the details). The two ways of approaching this truth have been through the use of images (the way of affirmation as Charles Williams used to call it)- God is a Father, Christ is a Husband, ect. and through the way of negation (apophatic theology)- God is not a Father as we conceive of fathers, not husband like we think of husbands, ect. Both ways are neccessary however, the way of affirmation so that we can think of God in human terms and the way of negation so that we do not make an idol out of our conception. As C.S. Lewis said once, "We must desire God more than we desire our conception of God."
Well it seems I have continued my habit of ballooning introductory paragraphs into such lengthy affairs. Good to be consistent I suppose. So then question becomes, "Given evolution as the most probable explanation for the origins of life on earth, what do we do with Genesis 1-3?" First let me say we should not on the one hand throw it out, or on the other be scared that it does not speak of evolution. The latter is more briefly addressed, so I'll turn to it first. The Bible is, primarily, a record of God's revelation of Himself to man and is itself a part of that revelation. He must either speak in terms sensible to man (as our Jewish friends like to say "The Torah speaks in human language") or reveal centuries of scientific knowledge and terminology to the Israelites as a preface to the Genesis account to satisfy our conceptions of what the Bible should be (which would make for an even longer introduction than the one accompanying this post). So instead the Bible uses sensible terms for its original audience (Joshua commanding the sun to "stop" being the most famous example), regardless of our satisfaction with those terms. But still the question, "What to do with Genesis?"
Two major implications are how do we tie what seems to be the narrative of a historical event, The Fall, involving two people to a species that arose and presumably arose as a species rather as two individuals and secondly how do we account for death and its existence before the Fall. Again let me reitirate that this is going to involve some speculation and is in the end, I think, unimportant; that is to say the theological importance of the fall and the explanation it provides for the human condition are vastly more important than tying the Fall to a historical event involving two historical individuals named Adam and Eve. It is much easier to for instance turn the story of Noah into an adventure on a boat or to argue the architectural viability of a boat that large made without modern materials, it is much harder to grapple with God being so distressed by humanity that he wished to destroy the creation (you could in fact translate the verb in Gen 6:6 I think it is as God repented of having created man).
The Eastern Orthodox (or at least our old friend Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov) have this idea of the universal culpability of man; that is, that as far as I am guilty of sin, I am responsible for all the sin in the world. I hear that they interpret Paul's talk of Adam in Romans 5 as being representative of all mankind. Since I am guilty of sin, I can no more blame Adam for the Fall than myself; we are all responsible and we are responsible for each other. Now let me say two things about this before relating it back to our main topic. First, that I like this idea very much. It explains things, shows our interconnectedness- a guy struggles with lust, a girl with body issues or eating disorders and we think these things are unrelated. It puts us in a position of responsibilty and shows how damaging sin it to the world and the impossibility of it being truly private. Second, this does not sit easily with the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin. It shifts the blame from an inherited propensity to sinfulness to the personal sinful act. But I find it impossible to judge between the two. Human memory functions in such a way that we seem to begin life in media res, the story is already in progress by the time we get to it; that is to say, I can't remember myself not being or my entering into conciousness, neither can I remember my first beginning to sin. So whether we sin because we inherit the taint of Original Sin or we just start sinning early on, on our own steam so to speak, the result is the same- a loss of fellowship with God.
Now if I remember right, in the opening chapters of Genesis, Adam is referred to as "the adam"- the man or the dirt-guy (adamah the Hebrew word for earth is where we get adam from) and Eve is called the woman, they don't have proper names. So then perhaps the story becomes instead of a historical account of specific people, a general account of what man and woman always choose to do- desire to be God and fall out of fellowship. This then is where our idea about universal culpability comes into play, we all are Adam choosing to fall. After the Fall is when they receive their proper names I think, after that we can talk of historical people in what we can recognize as historical settings. The first chapters of Genesis are unique in that they portray a mode of being that is different from what we experience. As far a part as my life is from say, Abraham, I can imagine myself in his setting, dealing with the same problems; I can not imagine life in the Garden. This is why I don't see the point in tying Adam and Eve to individual people in a recognizable setting, we could not relate to them before the Fall anyway. The theological truth, that we are fallen and that we carry some sort of guilt over are exile is what is important.
The other big question is death before the Fall, a big subject. But I have written for far too long by now anyway and will leave that, for now, to a later post.
Before going in to the theology of all this, let me first speak to the science- and the limits of science. A confession here is in order first though, I haven't taken biology since my sophomore year in college- and then I napped in class on occassion and borrowed a textbook that I have yet to return; so I am not by any means up to date on the science behind all this. But as far as I can tell, and based on what some smart fellow Christians have said on the subject, the science points to evolution as the cause for the diversity of life on Earth. Otherwise, God has placed a lot of fairly compelling evidence for evolution, presumably in an attempt to dupe a bunch of scientists into atheism. So our options seem to be either accepting the theory of evolution as the best explanation of the available data, critique the science behind it (which many try to do, with little success), or accuse God of acting against His character by tricking us into belief in an evolutionary explanation (by hiding fossil remains in the earth for instance, so that when we found them we would interpret them as signs of man's predecessors and so be fooled). Maybe I making strawmen out of the other two options, but anyway looks like evolution is the most likely to me. So what does that give us, if anything? A means of Creation. Science cannot say anything positive or negative about the existence of God or the truth of the Resurrection. It is an approach to truth, it however cannot acknowledge something as true or not; the scientific method only rejects or fails to reject hypotheses, it is by nature (fancy theological word) apophatic. This however is not sufficient, it is not how men live their lives. An example that will perhaps help segue into the theology behind all this is our use of images in describing God. In Christian thought there have been two main ways of approach to the Truth of God in Himself which, as Paul says, we now only see "through a mirror darkly" (little explanatory aside here- back in the day they had different mirrors, made out of shiny metal rather than glass; in Paul's day it would be more like checking yourself out in whatever kitchen appliance is handy rather than walking all the way to a bathroom - you get the general idea of what's going on, but you can't pick out all the details). The two ways of approaching this truth have been through the use of images (the way of affirmation as Charles Williams used to call it)- God is a Father, Christ is a Husband, ect. and through the way of negation (apophatic theology)- God is not a Father as we conceive of fathers, not husband like we think of husbands, ect. Both ways are neccessary however, the way of affirmation so that we can think of God in human terms and the way of negation so that we do not make an idol out of our conception. As C.S. Lewis said once, "We must desire God more than we desire our conception of God."
Well it seems I have continued my habit of ballooning introductory paragraphs into such lengthy affairs. Good to be consistent I suppose. So then question becomes, "Given evolution as the most probable explanation for the origins of life on earth, what do we do with Genesis 1-3?" First let me say we should not on the one hand throw it out, or on the other be scared that it does not speak of evolution. The latter is more briefly addressed, so I'll turn to it first. The Bible is, primarily, a record of God's revelation of Himself to man and is itself a part of that revelation. He must either speak in terms sensible to man (as our Jewish friends like to say "The Torah speaks in human language") or reveal centuries of scientific knowledge and terminology to the Israelites as a preface to the Genesis account to satisfy our conceptions of what the Bible should be (which would make for an even longer introduction than the one accompanying this post). So instead the Bible uses sensible terms for its original audience (Joshua commanding the sun to "stop" being the most famous example), regardless of our satisfaction with those terms. But still the question, "What to do with Genesis?"
Two major implications are how do we tie what seems to be the narrative of a historical event, The Fall, involving two people to a species that arose and presumably arose as a species rather as two individuals and secondly how do we account for death and its existence before the Fall. Again let me reitirate that this is going to involve some speculation and is in the end, I think, unimportant; that is to say the theological importance of the fall and the explanation it provides for the human condition are vastly more important than tying the Fall to a historical event involving two historical individuals named Adam and Eve. It is much easier to for instance turn the story of Noah into an adventure on a boat or to argue the architectural viability of a boat that large made without modern materials, it is much harder to grapple with God being so distressed by humanity that he wished to destroy the creation (you could in fact translate the verb in Gen 6:6 I think it is as God repented of having created man).
The Eastern Orthodox (or at least our old friend Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov) have this idea of the universal culpability of man; that is, that as far as I am guilty of sin, I am responsible for all the sin in the world. I hear that they interpret Paul's talk of Adam in Romans 5 as being representative of all mankind. Since I am guilty of sin, I can no more blame Adam for the Fall than myself; we are all responsible and we are responsible for each other. Now let me say two things about this before relating it back to our main topic. First, that I like this idea very much. It explains things, shows our interconnectedness- a guy struggles with lust, a girl with body issues or eating disorders and we think these things are unrelated. It puts us in a position of responsibilty and shows how damaging sin it to the world and the impossibility of it being truly private. Second, this does not sit easily with the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin. It shifts the blame from an inherited propensity to sinfulness to the personal sinful act. But I find it impossible to judge between the two. Human memory functions in such a way that we seem to begin life in media res, the story is already in progress by the time we get to it; that is to say, I can't remember myself not being or my entering into conciousness, neither can I remember my first beginning to sin. So whether we sin because we inherit the taint of Original Sin or we just start sinning early on, on our own steam so to speak, the result is the same- a loss of fellowship with God.
Now if I remember right, in the opening chapters of Genesis, Adam is referred to as "the adam"- the man or the dirt-guy (adamah the Hebrew word for earth is where we get adam from) and Eve is called the woman, they don't have proper names. So then perhaps the story becomes instead of a historical account of specific people, a general account of what man and woman always choose to do- desire to be God and fall out of fellowship. This then is where our idea about universal culpability comes into play, we all are Adam choosing to fall. After the Fall is when they receive their proper names I think, after that we can talk of historical people in what we can recognize as historical settings. The first chapters of Genesis are unique in that they portray a mode of being that is different from what we experience. As far a part as my life is from say, Abraham, I can imagine myself in his setting, dealing with the same problems; I can not imagine life in the Garden. This is why I don't see the point in tying Adam and Eve to individual people in a recognizable setting, we could not relate to them before the Fall anyway. The theological truth, that we are fallen and that we carry some sort of guilt over are exile is what is important.
The other big question is death before the Fall, a big subject. But I have written for far too long by now anyway and will leave that, for now, to a later post.
Father Damien just got canonized...
I hadn't actually heard of him before, but Father Damien, a Belgian priest who ministered to lepers in Hawaii, just got canonized this past Sunday. He's a "martyr of charity", he eventually contracted leprosy and died of it from his years of ministry to them. Anyway here's his wikipedia article, good to see stuff like this.
Friday, October 9, 2009
And because it's just that kind of night....
Another poem. YAY!
This one has a weird story accompanying it: I wrote it while I was (almost) asleep. It was one of those long mornings where I had a late class and could lounge around in bed, floating in and out of sleep. Anyway as seems to often happen to me, upon waking- and here I use the term pretty loosely- I had a song stuck in my head, except that what I had was not exactly a song but that fake interview David Crowder does at the end of his A Collision album with the clueless interviewer. In it, you hear the violin piece, "The Lark Ascending" (the part Crowder uses comes about 5 min. in) which is based on a poem by George Meredith, which I found online, (or just watch this video of lava lamp and skip to about 7 min in)
This one has a weird story accompanying it: I wrote it while I was (almost) asleep. It was one of those long mornings where I had a late class and could lounge around in bed, floating in and out of sleep. Anyway as seems to often happen to me, upon waking- and here I use the term pretty loosely- I had a song stuck in my head, except that what I had was not exactly a song but that fake interview David Crowder does at the end of his A Collision album with the clueless interviewer. In it, you hear the violin piece, "The Lark Ascending" (the part Crowder uses comes about 5 min. in) which is based on a poem by George Meredith, which I found online, (or just watch this video of lava lamp and skip to about 7 min in)
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.
For singing till his heaven fills,
'Tis love of earth that he instills,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes.
Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings
Anyway I was kind of thinking about that and how Crowder said he often didn't feel like the lark and how un-larky I myself felt. I then somehow, and here is where my memory gets a bit hazy, composed a poem in my head about my non-larkishness, thought about it a bit as I lay there, thought it worthwhile enough to write down, got up, wrote it, and promptly fell back asleep. Weird. Anyway the poem doesn't really have a title, although I thought about using the horrendously cheesy pun "Birds of Pray". I ended up not because I thought someone might:
a) think I really thought that was a legitimate title and was myself horrendously cheesy
or
b) say to themselves, "Birds of Pray, hmm, you know I like that"
either of which would miss the point. The relation between God and man is at some level comic (and not just in the old Shakespearean sense that it all ends in a wedding). There is something so incongruous about approaching God in prayer that makes us all seem a bit ridiculous- like being a bit under-dressed somehow (a feeling me and my flip-flops have often experienced), but yet he takes us seriously, helps us in our weakness. Anyway the poem which shall remain nameless...
It seems prayers not personified
take up alien, avian forms
Some are ascending larks
or wandering woodcocks
strongly winged eagles
or light descending doves
but mine often take the form
of fat, self-satisfied pigeons
squat, couched carriers who've forgotten
their vocation and wander about low,
close to the ground and winging weakly
til fast-rushing Pneuma comes, meets
bears upward to ancient, holy skies.
-1/12/09
Poetry: A post you should probably just go ahead and skip....
So it's been awhile since I posted much of anything, it's been even longer since I put up any poetry. Let me preface this by saying that I am not a poet. I'm too lazy. I like to explain things too much. And I just don't have that certain je ne sais quoi, as the French and pretentious English speakers say, that makes a person a poet. So what you get is somewhat crappy free verse with no sense of meter (and I'm not saying this out of false modesty, hoping someone will contradict me- "Oh, they're not so bad"- they are bad- as poetry at least). Nonetheless I do like to write it because it allows me a mode of expression that communicates more than simple description could. The following poem, which I wrote almost exactly a year ago, is a case in point; I could say that I wrestle with God and that my thoughts are somehow tied up with everything I feel about my dad (a prospect which terrifies me about my own future kids- but that's probably a ways off... a long ways) or I could show it. This poem is by no means an allegory, I really did used to wrestle with my dad when I was little (though we probably called it wrasslin') and I did like to climb up into his big leather recliner while he was gone- but that does not mean there isn't something more going on. Poetry, or some other type of creative writing, allows the author to show this- it invites the reader to share in the story and see how these connections exist. So, as I'm sure the suspense is killing you, here it is:
Father's Chair
I climb up, a child or old man, into Father's chair
It's soft- plush, full-grain leather- a contrast
to rough, scraggled hair, the birth or remnants of a beard
that scratched me as we wrestled,
Father is gone now, off to work perhaps,
or in simple absence for my benefit; the manliness
I feel approaching his chair, covertly or by institutionalized means
and sitting and smelling, familiar, masculine Father-smell;
remembering strong hands; gruff sports that drew me
close up; occasional victories, my own doing or not,
that made me like him. And these
soft, still moments,
intimacy in absence
that perhaps no father and son can speak of,
eternal memory
that I am his, in my Father's chair.
-10/12/08
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