AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Worse Things Happen at Sea

But this is bad enough. In the run-up to the choir tour, the organizing of which has consumed most of Margaret’s estimable energies for weeks, and in the middle of our friendly conviviality, Bea the Bichon has come down with a bacterial enteric infection. That spells “diarrhea” and “blood” and a massive burden of anxiety and guilt about leaving her behind for Jennifer and Pippa and (after them) a house-sitter who does not like cleaning up after dogs.

She’s stabilized now (Bea, that is), and has a prescription, and will in all likelihood be fine. Just one more thing.

Happy Birthday, Doc!

Count me in on the surprise party — It’s Doc Searls’ birthday, and I’m among those who are deeply thankful for his wise presence in this neighborhood of Blogaria.

Cosmic Convergence

We’re keeping busy here with the simultaneous almost-coincidental presence of three important people: Jennifer (whom I’ve introduced before, our semi-kinda-foster daughter), David (my now-former colleague and doctoral-school friend from way back) and Phil (another beloved friend from Duke days). David’s passing through, packing his house as he prepares to move to a new position at Hope College; Phil’s stopping by on a tour that involves working with the Ekklesia Project and leading several retreats before and after; and Jennifer is checking in for the summer visit. With friendships as rich and long-standing as these (which were sometimes mediated by digital media, way back, for instance, when Phil and I would establish peer-to-peer AppleTalk Remote Access connections and send messages by alternately changing the names of shared files), I have less time for blogging. . . .

Evensong for William Wilberforce

I finally finished the sermon for Evensong, with a good fifteen minutes to spare. The occasion for the sermon was the last Evensong of the summer before the choir leaves (with me) on a tour of churches in the U.K. and France (stopping in Rochester, Oxford, London, and the American Cathedral in Paris). The service commemorates William Wilberforce, an English abolitionist and social activist.

The readings were Isaiah 2:2-4 (the nations come to Zion, and wars cease) and Luke 10:1-9 (Jesus sends out the seventy disciples).

The homily goes like this:

If Jesus had given the disciples a choice — if he had laid out the options — which do you suppose that the disciples would have selected?

“Listen Peter, John, James, and you sixty-seven others, you may go out two by two, carrying no purse, no bag, no sandals, greeting no one on the road, remaining in the first house that welcomes you, eating and drinking whatever they provide. Or, you can go in houses of five, flying to England and France on a tour that’s been meticulously planned, with a suitcase full of clothes, and a thrifty but convenient budget of $200 for meals and used books souvenirs.”

Apart from the conceptual difficulties of explaining air travel to St. Peter, who was not known for being quick on the uptake, I expect we’d have a near-unanimous decision in favor of joining the choir tour. Although something might go wrong, some unforeseen fortuity may befall us, still the amount of time that the Tour Coordinator has put into making this a smooth and comfortable voyage just has to outweigh the attraction of wandering around Palestine barefoot, hungry, and broke, in a dirty tunic. Once we clarified for the disciples what a 747 was, I reckon that every single one of them would have chosen the choir tour option.

Which makes me a little edgy, because Jesus didn’t give his disciples the option of comfort and careful planning. That’s probably partly because the disciples must not give the impression of being first-century religious swindlers; if they were obviously not making any money on the deal, people could be confident that they were preaching out of faith, not greed. But it’s also partly because Jesus teaches us over and over and over again, because we can’t ever hear it well enough, that our eagerness for comfort stifles our praise of God. We attach ourselves to our comfort, and that attachment drags us down with chain we have made link by link, and yard by yard; we gird it on of our own free will, and of our own free will we wear it. We have the opportunity to stand with Jacob Marley, clutching onto the chains of our privilege and letting them shackle us in spiritual slavery — or of joining blessed William Wilberforce (before whose memorial in Westminster Abbey some of us will soon be standing), who took up his privileges and turned them round to drive open the doors of freedom for slaves in Britain, to shelter the poor and to make the the sound of the Good News of Freedom and abundant life heard all around the world.

Jesus commands us to travel light, sisters and brothers, lest our own comfort tangle us up with the slavers and usurers of this world, lest we become more concerned to protect our privilege than to proclaim the freedom to which Christ has called all God’s children. Jesus begs us to travel light, because we sing a gospel song so tremendous, so true, that no note, no syllable of our song may be muffled by selfishness. Jesus invites us to walk with the empty-pocketed disciples in order that our voices may carry a clear song of freedom to the ears of our sisters and brothers on the streets, in the alleys, in faraway lands where a slave wages build our sneakers and sew our clothes.

That song of freedom must be heard, and nothing may mute our voices: not the hesitancy of privilege, nor the pain of servitude. If we once have caught a glimpse of the day when swords are beaten into plowshares, when nations no longer lift up sword against nation, then for the love of God we will follow blessed William to the mountaintop, to sing out the truth by which many peoples can hear God’s word of instruction, that they may know and remember the notes of the song that rings out the great good news that right here, right now, in our very midst, the Kingdom of God has indeed drawn near.

Innovation Alert

Margaret got a version of the infamous Nigerian 419 spam-fraud the other night, but get this: it was from Sierra Leone! Almost got past us — what’ll they think of next?

Gearing Up

(a) for a homily tomorrow evening (Choral Evensong commemorating William Wilberforce);

(b) for an insightful, moving, mind-altering blog about identity, FOAF, privacy, integrity, theology, and James Bond movies (saw From Russia With Love, Thunderball, and You Only Live Twice this week);

(c) for a trip to the UK and to Paris, France, as chaplain of the St. Luke’s Choir of Men and Boys (41 men and boys, two women — one of whom is the tour director and one is the tour nurse) (download from the site at least their version of the Biebl “Ave Maria”);

(d) to compose an appreciative response to Jordon Cooper’s powerful plea for churches to engage with online technology (say Amen, somebody!);

(e) but I did remember to change Liz Lawley’s address in my blogroll and to link to her denunciation of the fraudulent management of “Grace Publications” and “Asian Journal of Information Technology.”

The Habitat EP

Margaret and I had dinner with Susan and Trevor last night at Alice and Friends, where we had a vegetarian dinner that couldn’t be beat. After dinner, over ice cream, Susan gave Margaret some chocolate-for-drinking from Mexico, and Trevor gave us a copy of The Habitat EP by several. It’s a great disk, and knowing Trevor and Jim makes it an extra treat; lots of people should flood the several site with offers to buy it, right away.

Snapster, Now!

Robert Cringely has an idea that may or may not ultimately be legal, but that would instantly change the complexion of the debates over copyright in music recording.

The beauty of Cringely’s proposal is that he’s writing on behalf of reality, the reality of a change in the structures that make necessary (or unnecessary) an industry for compiling and distributing recorded music. No doubt he looks forward to getting inexpensive, legal copies of his favorite performances — but the driving force for his argument comes from his frustration at the way that the music oligopolies are posturing and threatening to hold back technological change, in order to perpetuate a defunct business model.

I know nothing about investments, and I know nothing about the legalities of corporate “beneficial ownership.” But if Cringely has his way, I will take up every cent at my disposal to buy some of the shares he describes — not just for the music, not just for the investment value, but because he ought to be supported in his effort to force the so-called free market actually to make sense.

I came to Cringely via boingboing, where Xeni notes that Roxio Corp. owns the Snapster trademark. One may take that as a positive sign, since Roxio markets the Toast CD-burning software that would be especially useful under a Snapster regime, or one may take it as a negative sign that Roxio’s already in place to impede implementing such an idea. I don’care. Call it “Enrique,” or whatever — just get it started, and let the industries that hold music hostage get out of the way.

FOAFriend is Better

I don’t want to breach propriety by inappropriately assigning responsibility, or claiming more wit for myself than I actually exercised — but yesterday an IRC conversation proposed several refinements of FOAF categories beyond simply “friend,” “acquaintance,” and the various categories of relatives. (Because I communicate with a varied readership, I have excised some of the more — errrr — vivid suggestions.)

For instance, what about “enemy of my enemy” (as in “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”)? Or, “Friends, but we're not talking right now”? Or “Ummm — ‘friends’ ”?
What about “In Your Dreams”?
“Friends who don't realize it yet, but they'll be pals soon because this is a ‘buddy’ film”?
“Don’t really care one way or the other”?
“I know I’ve met her but I don’t remember her name”
“Friends at the moment, until you steal my girlfriend”?
“She thinks we're friends but I’m just using her”?
“Not a friend, but useful connection”?
“We just say we’re friends with AccordionGuy until he finally gets a decent date”?

Contributors to this collection (apart from me) include AccordionGuy and rojisan — and if I left out some contributors, please let me know (and stand up and take credit!).

FOAF Day Two

There’ an explosion of energy on the FOAF front, due no doubt to the interventions of such power hitters as Joi, Marc, and Shelley. Joi may be the one who started the present rush; as the surge of friends-of-friends rushes past and we begin settling to figuring out what it all means, Marc and Shelley have begun probing some follow-up questions.

Marc is asking about nuanced expressions for friendship, acquaintance, relation, and so on. This seems an appropriate way of handling some delicate distinctions among human relationships, but almost ends up obliging users to say too much. I listed Marc as a “friend” when I was assembling my FOAF profile because, well, we’ve exchanged polite words several times online, and I was desperate for names I might include. Marc seems a cheery and relaxed guy, so I hoped he wouldn’t mind (and it seems he doesn’t —whew!); but he’d be reasonable to object that “friend” overstates our connection. If I thought we were best buddies, though, and he thought I was some guy, the RDF syntax of our relationship might be confusing, and sorting it out might entail some tensions and (perhaps unnecessary) hurt feelings.

Shelley points out that there may be something uncomfortable about specifying the precise texture of our relationships in an open online source. That, too. Although I’m content to support a loose, heuristic web of public relationships, a more fine-grained network could easily amplify the very tech-savvy Homeland Security Department (hey, they adopted Windows as their high-security OS) to find out more about us than we wish.

Meanwhile, Liz said something very provocative on the topic, but it slipped my mind and and I can’t find it on her blog. I may edit this part later to include Liz in the discussion.

Much as I appreciate the nuance that Marc’s entry seems to promise, I suspect that we might gain more meaningful, more fine-tuned information by looking at links: are they all one-way? do they seem to be mutual — that is, nearly-simultaneous — or do they alternate by direction at sporadic intervals? how do complementary links relate the two (do third-party linkers tend to emphasize her rather than me, or me rather than her)? Throw in even a crude whuffie system, and we learn a great deal from public information, learning that doesn’t depend on how each party inflects the word “friend.”

Margaret Reads the News

“Librarian Says He’ll Leave in Ten Days; Fighting Eases”

How cool is that? People are taking this estimable vocation seriously.

No, Margaret, that’s Liberian Says He’ll Leave in Ten Days. . . . .

Sociality

I don’t mean to be stand-offish. I like being social and connecting with friends, really I do. But I’m suspicious of Friendster; even though the kind friends who’ve invited me to drink the Kool-aid aren’t, I believe, trying to pick me up for a date, I’ve felt as though the enterprise tilted in that direction. And I honestly don’t need dating to think about right now.

But to show that I don’t think that I’m an island entire unto myself, I gave in to Marc’s bloggical suasion, and decided finally to follow up on the directions Dorothea gave me back in April and construct a Friend-of-a-Friend file. I poked around and came up with very few people whom I know who’ve gone FOAF, so I exaggerated a little on who was a friend. If you keep a FOAF file, please make it visible or accessible (I stole the icons from Marc’s page). Somehow I feel a little more comfortable participating in an open social network than in a proprietary net — especially given the personae of FOAF advocates.

Anyway, now I’m accessible via the FOAF explorer, the Add-a-Friend page, and my own little RDF file.

Masters of Our Domain?

No, this isn’t another blurb about fending off prostate cancer, it’s a hearty “Amen” to John Robb’s and Shelley’s admonition to all but the most casual web-publishers to obtain and maintain your own domain name, and to back-up your site regularly to media you control. This is a large part of why theDisseminary isn’ located on Seabury’s webspace; we couldn’t afford the chance that a Pharaoh would arise who knew not Joseph (as it were) who might summarily obliterate our work from the seminary servers. John’s experience of having been disappeared from his former address is a vividly illustrative case in point (his new address is at Mindplex, and I hope he has a secure future for that URL).

Blogspot is great, and TypePad looks to me as though it’ll turn out to be even greater, but if there’s even the faint prospect that you’ll ever be serious about web publishing, register a domain name and start from there.

Searching Adventures

Referrer logs show that I’m getting a moderate amount of attention from searchers who look for the name of a basketball player for the Lakers and other topics such as “identity” and, sadly, “rape.” Of course, the link that Goggle directs them to comes from a conversation last year between Margaret and me — nothing to do with the present struggle over consent or violence. Which will not satisfy their curiosity, but may alleviate some of the tension associated with these dreadful topics.

Another Noteworthy Argument

When I went to the review of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in Newsweek, to which Larry Lessig’s blog pointed, I anticipated some illuminating remarks about what made the film so weak (I haven’t seen it; I’m just reflecting the preponderance of critical response that I’ve heard). I didn’t expect to see so simple and compelling a case for the importance of the public domain.

But Brad Stone lays it out: with a rich public domain, our cultural imagination expands and nourishes itself (and us); with a constricted public domain (in the name of, but almost never to the benefit of, creators), we all suffer from the artificial poverty of limited imaginative resources.

Stress

Does anyone else feel as though financial statements that don’t say exactly what they mean should be annihilated? I include, for instance, those medical insurance reports that say, in big letters, “This is not a bill,” but stipulate how much money they think you’re going to owe somebody, and tuition bills that list exorbitant sums that will eventually be eroded by government loans, accounting wizardry, and financial-aid-office legerdemain. I get panic-stricken when I receive a bill that’s greater than the sum of my checking account and savings, whether or not someone later comes along to say, “Oh, you don’t owe us all of that,” or “you don’t owe it all at once.”

Send me a note that says, “We need to generate a paper trail that accounts for expenses and income, so we’re sending you this note — but really, you’ll just owe us about half this amount, spread out over several months.” Please.

A Depressing Story Not Enough People Noticed

One of the members of the smart, committed, articulate team, Dan Gillmor, wrote a frightening column about the possibility that recent developments in the U.S. actually threaten an increased opportunity for vote-rigging. It’s very much read-it-yourself material; they won’t take away the right to a fair election if people can make the consequences of such decisions clear.

An Idea Margaret Doesn’t Need

I read the story about John Gilmore (from boingboing) being kept off his flight home from the UK because he was wearing a “Terrorist Suspect” button, and my eyes glinted. “Hey, I’m about to go on an international flight! Maybe I could get one of those buttons. . . .”

Margaret furrowed her brow and glared at me.

“Or maybe not.”

[Later: the site to which John Gilmore links has removed the offending button from its catalogue; evidently the publicity hosed their bandwidth. Anyone have it cached somewhere?]

An Idea I Need

Séb Paquet links to Norm Walsh’s note that he uses RSS as a calendaring device to maintain his to-do list. Mercy sakes, that’s just what I need; having a whole separate app for personal information (much of which I remember automatically — unfortunately, only much of which I remember automatically) seems a waste of CPU cycles.

If my to-do list and calendar were to appear in my news aggregator, though — Brent, this couldn’t be hard at all — that would change my life for the better.

Lost Chops

Back in high school, I bought a ten-speed bicycle. This was a big deal back then — it was the first wave of “racing” bikes infiltrating the US market, at least in Pittsburgh. I saved up the money I earned at the supermarket and bought a bicycle, a bottom-of-the-line Bottechia. As I picked up further jobs, I upgraded all the parts, so that after a year or two I had a significantly snazzier bicycle and had a pretty good touch for bike maintenance.

This afternoon Pippa and I spent a couple of hours adjusting the brakes, the seats, and various other characteristics of the bikes we picked up yesterday morning. Both bikes need new brake pads and tires, but on the whole, Margaret’s is in pretty good shape. Mine is entirely adequate, but the frame is smaller than would be ideal, and it pulls to the left noticeably. My own body, however, is way out of shape, and the effort of recovering my sense for bike repair, then bicycling around to test-drive the new acquisitions has left me feeling achy and old, dealing with new versions of technologies that should be well familiar.

Dean Allen Owns Me

In what can only be construed as the gravest of lapses in judgment, Dean Allen seems to have bought Blogshares in my humble publication. Compounding the folly of that investment, though, he has bought into the blog at my former address, which I expect will not appreciate in value (although what I know about anything even vaguely resembling financial markets is easily surpassed by what Margaret knows about cricket).

In the course of exploring this otherwise inexplicable phenomenon, I discovered that this very blog has a separate Blogshares ownership and valuation. Moreover, whereas the past blog had a middlin’ kind of value, it looks as though the Disseminary blog is rather expensive. So I reckon that Dean ought to get out of the dead-end Seabury shares and invest in Disseminary shares, if he can. Heck, I’d give him some if I had any myself, which I don’t think I do.

Of course, one result of all this is that — Allen being a moralist of the strictest sort — now he would never ever mention me in his blog, since that would affect the price of shares he owns. There’s no particular reason for him to refer to goings-on here in the first instance (I’m at something of a loss to figure why he bought in; maybe the shares were a joke birthday present, the online equivalent of a Talking Bass); theology, metablogging, and my family aren’t topics that typically engage his interest. (If he wanted to donate some design services to the Disseminary, though, we’d ecstatically accept the offer.) But the SEC of Blogshares would probably extradite him from Pompignac straight back to Toronto if he added to the value of his investment by using his influential site to leverage my status upward. So, one more prominent blogger guaranteed not to link here.

They Hunt in Packs

Today, at the St. Nicholas’ Church Rummage Sale, we bought a couple of bicycles for the older generation, to go with the bikes that Josiah and Pippa already have. (Ours are matching yellow, although Margaret’s is in nicer condition. We’ll have to spruce them both up eventually; the brakes pads are pretty hard and dry, and my front wheel pulls a little to the left.)

So now, for the first time in family history, we can all go for a bike ride. As Si would say, “Beware!”

Disseminary Prospects and Blogroll Maintenance

Trevor and I divvied up a bunch of responsibilities the other day, and we’re sending out invitations to a bunch of scholars who may be able and interested in joiing forces with the Disseminary. Now we just have to wait out the return messages. . . .

And for the first time in months, I’ve begun adding to my blogroll a number of sites I visit (or aggregate) regularly, but hadn’t bothered to enumerate. I doubt I reached all of them, but it’s a start.

Killer Analogy

Mitch Ratcliffe has summed up in a resonant analogy an op-ed piece by Paul Krugman (NYT, registration required, sorry), and in so doing has handed presidential candidates an analogy that ought to fly, that should make sense to people who aren’t ready to spend a lot of time analyzing the details of Bush’s economic policies:

“President Bush is running the country like Enron.”

Put that in a few mass-market media spots, and see how the voters respond.

Top Five

Last night, one of the main topics of dinner conversation (we ate out at Las Palmas to celebrate the committee decision) involved the relative merits of the theme songs to James Bond movies.

Now this is a matter of great moment if you, as most of the members of this family, think that James Bond movies are among the signal achievements of late twentieth-century Western culture. I am always tempted to play the classicist curmudgeon — “Oh, they don’t record ’em like they used to” — but I had to admit that “Die Another Day” and “The World Is Not Enough” were two of my favorites. Margaret prefers “Nobody Does It Better”; Pippa likes “Goldfinger” (though the overblown trumpet sound bothers Margaret) and “Diamonds Are Forever.” Si mentioned that “Live and Let Die” is good, but especially in the cover version by some irreverent young whippersnapper band. We appreciate Tom Jones’s rendition of the Thunderball theme.

“You Only Live Twice,” sung by Nancy Sinatra, received some positive attention. Though we like Shirley Bassey’s Bond themes, we thought the Moonraker theme was downright lame (but then, Moonraker isn’t that strong a Bond movie).

We couldn’t even recall the theme songs from the Timothy Dalton movies. We were relieved to realize that we hadn’t even thought about Sheena Easton in years. And we all like the Moby remix of the main Bond theme.

(Drums Fingers Patiently)

So, one of my functions in life is to explain and encourage flexible uses of weblog software for a variety of purposes, and as part of that endeavor I would like to demo and describe BloggerPro and TypePad (link corrected —thanks, Liz, for catching m,y copy-and-paste glitch), with some sense of what the services will cost. Unfortunately both services are not accepting new accounts just now, and it’s not clear to an outsider how either one will ultimately turn out for users (especially naive users). I’m not asking that TypePad beta-testers write in to assure me how cool it is, or BloggerPro users to express themselves about the past and present of that service (since it8’s evidently going through an overhaul). It’s just inconvenient timing, and it’s particularly awkward to present this stuff to potential users while saying, “Well, I don’t know how much it’ll cost you or exactly what you’ll be able to do — but someday it probably won’t be too expensive and I think it will be a great service for you to adopt.”

One Step Onward

The faculty committee this afternoon voted to recommend to the full faculty that the faculty recommend to the trustees I be promoted to full professor.

That tortured sentence gives a sense of the number of processes yet to unfold, but this one was necessary, and it went smoothly. The committee explicitly signaled approval for my scholarship and my technology work, and indicated that they hoped Seabury could arrange my responsibilities so as to take full advantage of my strengths. That’s a very positive sign, and I’m very honored by it — even more so if they actually implement that aspiration. But they were open and trying to connect with me, and that felt very encouraging.

Planning Ahead

We’ll be spending three weeks in the UK at the beginning of August, and (as you may imagine) I’m interested in locating ahead of time as many wireless hotspots as possible. So if you have any recommendations of wifi access points in Rochester, Oxford, and London (Barbican or near St. Paul’s), please let me know.

Or you may just want to not tell me, so you can enjoy a few weeks’ silence from this quarter. . . .

Next Step

My review committee meets this afternoon. Details later.

Orpington Report

Both my wonderful sister-in-law Jeanne (and her partner Gail) and my beloved friends Hilary and John keep chickens. In fact, Chicory — one of Jeanne and Gail’s chickens — just had four wee chicks, we hear (congratulations to all concerned). This doesn’t sound like a distinctive cause for thanksgiving, especially since we’re too far away to hit them up for fresh eggs, but I truly appreciate what they’ve done for us. If not for Jeanne and Hilary, I’d never have experienced the delight of reading through the names of different varieties of chickens.

Under what other circumstances, for instance, would one have the opportunity to refer to a “Silver Dorking”? How do shaggy residents of Gdansk feel about chickens being called “Bearded Polish”? Is there some connection between Transylvanian Naked Necks and the abusive epithet “redneck” (some naked necks are, after all, red naked necks)?

One could go on indefinitely, but my favorite — the kind John and Hilary were thinking of buying — sounds like the name of a sportswriter from the golden age of reporting: “And now, baseball headlines from our man at the All-Star Game, Buff Orpington. . . .” Someday I’m going to write a novel or a screenplay, and Buff Orpington will be a character in it.

Evening Mass

Some of the resident students are arranging weekly mass for the community this summer, and tonight was my turn to preach and celebrate. We prayed for Ann and for my cousin Daniel, for Jim and for many other of our friends who are un- and underemployed, who are injured or troubled or burdened.

I had a hard time clearing my head to focus on preparation, and it was only for a tiny congregation, so I’m not sure how this turns out — but if I show you only the sermons that seem just-right, you get an incomplete picture of my ministry. So I’ll append tonight’s sermon anyway.

Some days you roll out of bed, knowing that you’re all about feeding the lambs and tending the sheep. And other mornings, nobody better look at you funny, lest you decide to destroy and overthrow.

And neither of those moods comes with a gilt-edged, red-letter certificate proving that the Holy Spirit endorses your attitude.

According to John Dreibelbis, we clergy tend to be conflict avoiders; many would prefer just to leave fissures alone, and hope that they spontaneously heal themselves. That squares with my experience; and I imagine John has some material on blame-shifting and self-justifying behavior, too. “I’m beginning to look bad, so it’s time for me to pull you down. You believe I was called as a prophet from the womb, so I’ll build you up and plant you.”

I don’t know anyone whom God has called to be a conflict-avoider, though, nor a full-time destroyer nor a full-time planter. In a mixed world, we, most of us, bear a mixed vocation, and our vexation comes from figuring out when we should tear down and when we build up, especially, especially when that which needs building is something we really dislike, or that which needs tearing down is something we cherish. We need wheat over here, but the tares are actually pretty appropriate in meadows; we need flowers in the West Garth, but not on the athletic field over yonder to the north.

When God forms us in the womb, God forms each of us differently, consecrating us differently, to serve different nations and to feed different flocks. God even forms us, sometimes, to wrangle against one another in order that our struggles may bring God’s truth more clearly to the light. Here is grace, hard grace though it be: we receive the strength to persist in a truth of which we are as sure as life itself is sure, yet without the guarantee that would ratify our conviction as the one, official, exclusive, transcendent Way.

In such a vale of complexities, Jesus calls us not to be always right, always (dare we say) correct. We don’t have that option. I dare say, though, that any breaking that God calls us to do should come without the gratifying sense that we’ve shown those bastards; and any building up we do should come without the unqualified rejoicing that our side has prevailed. Humble alike in firm prophetic critique and patient pastoral consolation, we may hope that our ministry bears a steady witness to a peace that passes human understanding, that escapes human imposition — and in that hope go forward to with the trepidation that befits mortals who speak words God has placed in their mouth, praying that grace will heal those whom we injure, that grace will overturn those wrongs in which we participate, that grace will bring us froward and fearful ministers with all our sisters and brothers, to that new creation in which the abundant of life in God’s presence reveals anew the peace and justice and truth in whose image we were formed, from before all ages. Amen.

several Performance

Trevor’s band “several” will be playing this weekend at Mennofolk 2003, and to cash in on celebrate the occasion, they’re releasing an EP CD (I already gave Trevor a hard time about what makes a CD an EP; it’s just a CD with fewer selections, right?, not different in kind from a CD with many selections).

Go to the several site and download “12 Fires of Harold” for a preview (unless, of course, you work where Gary Turner’s penpal spends company time polling packets to make sure no one enjoys working at his or her business). Spread the word.

Call For Technologians

Well, I forgot to mention Dale Lature yesterday, and Bob “No Web Presence” Carlton volunteered, as did Dave “C & E” Rogers, and at this rate we can requisition a decent-sized Headquarters building — kinda like the old firehouse they rehabbed in Ghostbusters, but with wifi.

Technology for Congregations Part Two

In yesterday’s post and the comments that hang thereon (again in response to interlocutory friend Danya), I ventured toward a description of what congregations ought to be doing online. Before I get to that stage, though, I should add a note or two about the “why” part of the enterprise.

Namely: almost every congregation already has a web presence of some kind or another. The phone number is probably available online. A denominational center lists the address, phone number, and leaders’ names. Congregants may refer to their congregation online. News reports mention congregations. A parish that decides to disregard the Web isn’t therefore absent from the Web — it’s ceding the Web to what others say about the congregation. Moreover, it’s practically putting a “We’re clueless and uninterested” sign out to potential congregants who use the Web to sound out spiritual homes. “Please go away and don’t bother us” doesn’t communicate a congregational ethos I’d commend to anybody.

Although the community’s relation to any given congregation usually begins and ends with the facade and signposts, that same congregation can offer a sense of its identity and ethos that radiates through the walls by constructing a web site that reflects those characteristics. Resist the temptation to devise an illusory ideal identity! That’s not only not conversational, it’s manipulative and self-defeating. Anybody who spends a few days in the bosom of Congregation Simchat Torah or St. Willibrord’s Church will find out, without much effort, what the congregation’s priorities and sentiments are like. It’s the on-way, broadcast model of communication: since no one’s likely to buy air time to run commercials that say, “Don’t believe what Congregation Simchat Torah says about itself!” boradcast advertisements tend toward a sales pitch rather than mutual learning.

The more candor you can turn loose on a congregational web site, the better people will know the congregation, for better or worse; that exercise alone may make it worth building a conversational web site. If it turns out that the conversation turns acrimonious, if it engages nobody’s attention, the congregation benefits from knowing that. I don’ suppose that a congregational web site only serves its function if it’s a dainty, pretty, happy representation of the community. Indeed, (again), I hope that no congregation would devise such a site unless they turn out to be a dainty, pretty, happy community. Starting a congregational conversation online opens up a tremendous means for collective self-discovery.

If the site includes writings from congregational leaders, they’l benefit from feedback from both congregants and community. At the same time, visitors will have the opportunity to learn what the leaders of St. Willibrord’s have to say; maybe it would be worth coming to the synagogue to meet them, or ask them about the spiritual dilemma you’ve been wrestling with.

That all entails standing out in public, with all our charms and deficiencies, and taking the accolades and brickbats that come from letting the world know what we’re really about. That may be risky — and I’ve talked about that already, and will revisit the topic — but this is not a new risk, it’ a risk the roots of which have been hidden by the relative difficulty of finding out in person about our congregations. I think that would make a good Part Three.

Thunder and Truth

It’s too early in the morning for me to be writing about important things, but once the rest of the world wakes up, I’ll probably be overtaken by daily business. Since a thunderstorm woke me (arousing fears of another basement flood), I’ll put my pre-dawn consciousness to work trying to answer the Tutor’s fierce challenge (in the best sense) to my integrity.

The question, if I understand it well, involves how a postmodernist (and I seem to be shackled with that category description, however uninterested I am in it) dares speak of truth and justice, or of truth and lie in a moral sense, to paraphrase the fool-prophet from whose shadowlight philosophy has yet to distinguish itself.

“What is the final cause of postmodern discourse? Moral evasion.” Yes, possibly so; when one can appeal to no Final Absolute to resolve the vexed problems about good and evil, power and weakness, truth and lie, one can readily use a heightened awareness of ambiguity and complexity for the end of distancing oneself from the tenor of one’s words and actions. “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is,” after all; so many microtones of possibility that it’s hard to come to rest on any given assessment. Like Zeno’s arrow, the crass postmodern can never reach the target of moral evaluation.

The final cause of postmodern discourse need not be exhausted by evasion, though. The opposite polarity finds justification in postmodern discourses as well (and the Tutor acknowledges such). While the crass postmodern shrugs and says, “Evasion happens,” the earnest postmodern declines the moral shortcuts of projecting local prejudice onto the transcendent horizon of absolute moral values in order to justify drawing and quartering strange, unwelcome sojourners. This orchestration of postmodern discourse persists not to eradicate responsibility, but to radicalize it (cue the echoes of the ghosts of existentialisms past — phantasms because in their individualism (or nihilism), they sentenced their own projects to death, and cut themselves off from the heritage that could pick up, sustain, and transform their insights). The postmodern flanking maneuver demystifies the supposedly-disinterested appeal to Higher Authority and cuts off the cadences that might prematurely allow a Rove, Rice, or Bush to displace accountability away from their own discernments and judgments.

So, I name Clinton and Bush “liars” not because I have access to some metaphysical authority by which I (and I particularly) can adjudicate truth from lie — but because everyone must stand for something (even if it be no more than a Brand, or self-indulgence, or Folly). If these men publicly claim adherence to a discourse of power made perfect in weakness, of resolute truth making its vulnerable way in a world of lies, of peace that passes human comprehension, then in the name of that discourse I charge them with misrepresenting their actions and their rationales for their actions.

I may be wrong; Clinton may honestly have thought that he and Monica weren’t engaging in sexual relations, and Bush may have thought that Saddam and Osama were conspiring to unleash terroristic mayhem on the civilized world by transporting yellowcake uranium from Africa to Iraq (and that when his State Department and CIA advisors indicated that this wasn’t the case, and then turned out to be right, it was their fault he didn’t believe them in the first place). Maybe — though that concession churns my viscera. If they acted from integrity, from their love of a truth that escapes capture and manipulation, and I’m answerable for my accusation now, to my sisters and brothers, and ultimately, to my Judge, who will discern my failings not by any standard that Bill Bennett can compile into a best-seller or GWB can cite as his favorite philosophy, but by a truth whose transcendence obscures it from mortal audition.

Does that exculpate apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind or academic theologians with postmodern proclivities? No; truth brooks no evasion, whether by cheap qualifying or orotund asseveration of absolute authority. My characterization of truth and lies rests on the consistency of the speakers’ claims day-to-day with their lives, with their professed ideals, with the trust the claim from their loved ones and their constituents. I am unconvinced that either Clinton or Bush can provide convincing rebuttal to the charge that they knowingly misrepresented themselves and their actions.

Does that falsify my postmodern credentials (not that I care for any)? Show me how; but before you devote any energy to the task, decide whether it’s worth stripping me of rags for which I care not, in order to indict me for falling short of a consistency to which neither I nor the God to whom I bow, holds me.

Quatorze Juillet

I almost forgot — Happy Bastille Day, everyone! OK, all together: “Allons, enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé! . . .”

It’s also the feast day of Dominican hero Humbert of Romans, an early Master General of the Order who contributed a vita of St. Dominic, some works on Dominican polity, and a Treatise on Preaching. Luckily, Humbert was French, so one can probably converge the holidays to some extent.

League of Exemplary Technologians

OK, the movie is reputed to be something of a disappointment (though Si liked it) — but I thought this morning about how helpful it would be to form a community of Cluetrainical, technologically-conversant, theologically- and congregationally-aware practitioners who could advise congregations about matters technological. I’m thinking of people like Jordon (of course), Mary Hess, Jim Rafferty, Trevor and me (for starters — not meaning to exclude anyone). If only we could get together, talk through some common interests and convictions, and set some founding premises for advising people about the intersection of congregational life and technology, social software, Web presence, and so on. . . .