AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Doctor’s Report

My surgeon today removed the adhesive tape that had been covering the incisions, poked and prodded me and made me cough, and congratulated himself on his handiwork. The ridges at the incisions will take several weeks to ease down; discomfort associated with the mesh that he inserted into my abdomen should abate over months; and the slight numbness to the front plane of my abdomen may or may not go away. Although he points out that I should ease back into full-time work, that recovery from a bilateral hernia takes longer than from a single hernia, still I’m free to do whatever comfort permits me.

Can’t tell you how many stitches; they’re on the inside somehow. The incision lines look appropriately dramatic, though.

Stealth Disco Self-Protection

Tell you what, I’m not turning my back on Joi this weekend. . . .

The Da Vinci Code

I’ve been invited to take part in a panel discussion of The Da Vinci Code. It’s supposed to be an exciting story, though I must admit to having little patience for stories about hypothetical conspiracies involving the Templars, the supposed bloodline of Jesus, and other esoterica, especially after Foucault’s Pendulum. Why would I spend 450 pages of time reading a portentous potboiler whose author claims to base it on facts, after having been enchanted several times over by a comparable narrative compiled by a master story-teller who actually has a grip on the history involved, the theological nuances at stake, and the complex, tenuous, but vital relation between stories and facts? I confess: I start out knowing that Eco is a brilliant philosopher, critic, and literary composer, whereas I suspect that Brown is. . . a poser.

It would be fun to discover I’m wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.

A Point About Links and Subscriptions

Frank has a good point about the ways that different sorts of links effect different modes of social connection online. There’s the inline link, where I observe (for instance) that Frank said something interesting tonight about links. There’s the blogroll link, where one can tell that I keep Frank on my list of people-to-visit, with the snazzy recently-updated feature from Jason at Blogrolling. But lots of people (I included) rely to a great extent on news aggregators that scoop up the RSS or RDF files from target sites without actually making a detectable link on their blogs.

For instance, I subscribe to Phil Wolff’s RSS feed, but he’s not on my blogroll (not deliberately, I think; as I recall, A Klog Apart seemed to be on hiatus when I moved over from my Seabury address to Cornerhost). But no-one would know that I read Phil unless I made it explicit here. The link is there in my aggregator behavior, but not in my textual presence. I wouldn’t want to overdramatize that difference, but it does disrupt the generosity of the Web that David describes. Frank says he’ll want to talk about that in the BloggerCon session with Jon Udell (I read his RSS feed, too, and sometimes I pretend I understand it) — someone take notes, because I’ll be talking about Spirituality in that time slot. . . .

It’s Been One Week

A week ago I came home from the hospital. At the time I imagined I was pretty clear-headed, but in retrospect I have to admit that the general anesthetic was still befogging my thoughts with some lingering curls of confusion. My abdomen hurt a fair amount.

Today I’m still easily tired (the discharge instructions said that I could begin work part-time this week, and that’s about right, though I’m impatient to do more than I ought to). My incisions hurt some, and the formerly-herniated parts also hurt some; I assume that’s from the stitching that put mesh over the ruptures in the muscle wall.

I still haven’t passed the point where I feel more comfortable after surgery than I did before, but everyone tells me I will. That would be good. I see the surgeon tomorrow, and he may have more specific words about what-all is up.

I Wish

It’s a little frustrating — I’d certainly like to eat dinner with some of those other folks, too. I was anxious when Wendy called to ask if I’d be one of the dinner host; how embarrassed could I be, if no one wanted to eat with me? Well, at least one friendly blogger has signed up. And maybe he’s taking requests!

Well, More Links

I meant to throw together several links in last night’s post, but I got too sleepy. Among the links I left out was Jim McGee’s musings about institutional cluelessness:

Hypothesis one is that modern training in marketing succeeds in conditioning marketing types that markets consist of statistical abstractions that have no connection to the living, breathing human beings they interact with on a daily basis.

Hypothesis two is that training in strategy ignores any notion of dynamic change or any notion that people outside the organization might behave in ways inconsistent with the assumptions in the strategic plan.

So far as I can tell, these hypotheses apply not only to marketing, but to other social scientific studies as well; the interests of aggregation trump the interests of particularity or adaptation. As a result, serious and intelligent people develop scientific generalizations about human behavior that human behavior itself tends to falsify when people behave in ways that reveal their difference from the aggregate, their responsiveness to contextual signals too fine to incorporate into a data set. One reason I appreciate blogs derives from their marked proclivity to favor the particular over the aggregate, their tendency to open onto adaptive behavior rather than to enforce expected conformity.

This is not to say that no bloggers are conformists or stick-in-the-muds; far from it! But although bloggers reflect the aggregate, homeostatic behavior that justifies quantitative research, the practice of blogging provides opportunities for particular differences to get a hearing, to make productive connections, to move in unanticipated directions.

Next link: This sure looks interesting, and seems to address issues close to what I already work on. Now, if I can just get travel funding. . . .

And Dan Gillmor shows why it isn’t just cloudy-eyed day-dreamers who believe that the internet may provide an collective endeavor that rewards cooperation more than exploitation — and that keeps me hopeful.

Links on My Mind

Yahoo News pointed to a column I missed from USA Today (“missed,” that is, in the sense that I hardly ever look at all). The author seems to lobby against home schooling, across the board, advancing some awfully tired and fallacious arguments. “ Not all parents are good teachers” — but neither are all professional teachers. I’ve taught at the elementary level, and schoolteachers have my highest respect, but Dr. Evans will surely allow the possibility that some home-schooling parents are better teachers than some institutional-school teachers. “The isolation implicit in home teaching is anathema to socialization and citizenship.” Excuse me, but does anyone who knows our kids — espcially Josiah — think he’s inappropriately isolated? If you see him before I do, tell him so. “It is a rejection of community and makes the home-schooler the captive of the orthodoxies of the parents” — as opposed to other schools, where students are captive of no ideology?

And at home, we have smaller class sizes, active parental involvement, teachers who love the kids in their classes unreservedly, and attention to the learning style of each individual child. . . .

Law and Order

It’s a good thing we have a fiercely ethical, law-and-order Republican administration these days. After all, they wouldn’t let up on Bill Clinton for his illicit sexual liaison with Monica; how much more determined they must be to plumb the current cases to their very depths!

There’s the question of which White House official betrayed the national security by fingering Valerie Plame as a CIA agent.

And the question of unethical profiteering on the horizon, as highly-connected firms begin brokering the the billions that the Bush administration has decided to spend on rebuilding Iraq.

Oh, and the Bush-backed buyout of bankrupt Edison Schools, Inc., with money from the state employees’ pension fund.

Luckily, these all involve matters so obviously relevant to the well-being of a constitutional democracy that the hyperactive legal minds of the G.O.P. must be slavering to pick apart the immorality and hypocrisy of such cynically self-serving acts.

Words and Images 3

"It is pictures rather than propositions, metaphors rather than statements, which determine most of our philosophical convictions." Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 1979, p 12

Heres the point of my meanderings and natterings: metaphors such as “the text is a mirror” should help us understand something that would otherwise be obscure, or they risk further obscuring the topic by introducing problems with the metaphorical representation of the topic that aren’t already implied by the topic itself. And that phenomenon matters all the more urgently since “clarity” and “obscurity” are themselves metaphors in this context, deployed to characterize more or less satisfactory appropriations and performances of words and images, texts and pictures (yes, Brad, thanks for the reminder to go back to Mitchell, which I’ll do ASAP!).

So, in the context of biblical hermeneutics, instead of crowding more and more, contradictory and complementary metaphors into an already confused discourse, may we take a moment to check the most obvious and misleading of our metaphors at the door, acknowledge their metaphoricity, and ask what we’re trying to get at when we deploy them?

When we say, “this sort of criticism treats the text as a window on the world of its origin,” don’t we mean something such as, “The appropriate way of reading this text notes what we imagine the author and characters to take for granted, to regard as necessary or given, the circumstances of subsistence and interaction that make the text intelligible to us”? The metaphor, in this case, distracts us from recognizing that we imagine particular features on the basis of our interaction with the text, and that we determine a particular context to which we feel satisfied that the text coheres. The text serves as a window only to the extent that we project a background, and proceed as though that background had a pertinence authenticated by its realness more than by our selection of it and comfort with it. (Here I don’t intend to deny or even depreciate the alleged reality of that background — simply to note that it’s usually, if not always, contested, so that its reality is to some extent constituted by our advocacy of one version of “reality” rather than another.)

Similarly, when we say that another sort of criticism treats the text as a mirror, we suggest that the appropriate way to read the text involves reflection (!) on how we understand ourselves in relation to the text, how we imagine that the author and characters would affirm or disparage our assumptions and values. Here the metaphor occludes the extent to which our self-critical interaction with the text depends on (and is limited by) what we can begin to imagine in ourselves as possibly open to criticism. (The overused example here would be the way that antebellum white slaveholders in the U.S. could perceive a biblical justification for slaves’ submission, but not a critique of chattel slavery in general; more controversial examples might explore the ways that some readers resist “biblical” critiques of patriarchy, heterosexual normativity, and capitalism.) The metaphorical mirror’s capacity to reflect depends entirely on the reader’s willingness (no, that’s too voluntarist) capacity to imagine the “reflected image” that supposedly issues from the text.

(Time for a break.)

Brief Addendum

Branding provides another sign of the way that word and image suffuse one another (wish the Tutor weren’t taking a break so he could chime in). The principles of vexillology and heraldry provide, as it were, the grammar of their images’ signification.

“A picture held us captive.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations § 115

Now, grant (if you will) that pictures and words are not as diametrically opposite as they are sometimes supposed to be. Isn’t it odd that schools of hermeneutical reflection so often begin with apposite, vivid metaphors, which critics then deploy as terms of art within the hermeneutical discourse, and which at the end function as though they were simply descriptions of what actually takes place?

I refer here to such hermeneutical staples as “the world behind the text,” “the world in front of the text,” and “the world of the text” or “text as window” versus “text as mirror.” Am I being perversely literalistic if I ask, “If the world is behind the text, why can’t I reach around and touch it?” I’d like to think that I’m not, that instead I’m (in effect) asking how to recognize the metaphor’s fit to the situation it presumably describes, and how to discern when the metaphor has so captivated its user that the user now takes the metaphorical description as an account of what is.

Confession

I am a bad convalescent: indeed, a terrible, wayward, foolish convalescent. Yesterday, oblivious to the fact that I was insulated by a three-day cushion of pain killers, I supposed that I felt good enough to get up and do some odds and ends around the house. I was very wrong. First, I allowed my obliviousness to the benefit of pain relievers to induce me to neglect to take last night’s prescribed dose till well after its appointed hour; second, and more important, I discovered (well after the appointed hour for taking my evening pain killer) that my very recent surgery did cause inflammation and tenderness, and that overexerting did have painful consequences (albeit on an unfortunately delayed feedback loop).

So I acknowledged my folly to Margaret, who did not say “I told you so,” but did agree that I’d been bad, terrible, wayward, and foolish. We talked over the reasons I might have been such a ninny, and we hope I’ve learned from my mistakes. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just have a couple of small errands to run, really nothing too demanding, just three or four that I’ve been meaning to take care of. . . .

Working On It

I owe the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media a presentation in November, and it’s time that I get to working it out. Here’s the abstract I submitted:

Certain problems have become embedded in discussions of hermeneutics -- topoi such as "text as window/mirror," "world behind the text," "letting the text speak for itself," and so on. The advent of digital media has not dislocated these set-pieces of interpretive discourse, but often treats them as given, as assumed in the nature of hermeneutical reasoning. This essay takes its cue from a short semiotic rumination by Rene Magritte, from the paintings of Mark Tansey, and from the disembodied arguments typical of biblical hermeneutics, to use digital media (in the form of a series of images and, perhaps, other stimuli) to illustrate and thereby to recontextualize the vocabulary of biblical hermeneutics. By observing the repertoire of metaphors prevalent in biblical hermeneutics, the essay aims to suggest some of their limitations, to elicit and perhaps to suggest a different repertoire of metaphors.

which appears under the caption, “In a picture, the words are of the same substance as the images.”

Magritte’s essay demands that we recognize the extent to which interpretation mediates the functions of both looking at a picture and reading a word. This conceit makes possible both “found alphabets” (also the recent online flurry about “recognizing words as shapes.”) and rebuses function.

But if words and pictures are neither unsubstitutable nor identical, certain of our premises in hermeneutical discourse take on a different cast, especially when we cast our premises themselves as metaphors. (And here I'll pick up tomorrow.)

Hat Tip

I’m pleased to see Dave Winer advocating more online publishing of audio communication. This is part of what we’ve envisioned at the Disseminary (although we haven’t made any of the recordings yet; we’re waiting, for now, to hear from our first choice of a reader). Chris Lydon’s interviews are a good thing, but they’re only the beginning, and we’re hoping to extend the premise into further areas of theological writing.

Let Us Not Forget

This summer’s brutal heat wave in France killed almost 15,000 people, according to the recent calculations. That’s 15,000 graves, in a country with the population a few million more than California and Texas combined. That’s as though the entire enrollment of James Madison University or the University of Arkansas or University College, London, died. If the canicule had hit the U.S. with the same mortality rate as in France, 200,000 people would have died.

Now, the U.S. uses a lot more air conditioning than Europe, and doesn’t observe the same unanimity regarding vacation schedules (sometimes it seems as though absolutely everyone in Europe takes the whole month of August off, which must not be possible since somebody has to insult the American tourists). But if you simply respond, “It can’t happen here,” you’re not dealing with the magnitude of the catastrophe, or the reality that Bad Things Do and Will Happen to the United States.

What would George W. Bush do, whom would he blame if 200,000 inhabitants of the U.S. died in a heat wave? If just as few as 15,000?

Listen to What the Man Says

Dave “Connect & Empower” Rogers is his own guy (come to think of it, Dave “Time’s Shadow” Rogers is, too; maybe it’s something to do with the name). He doesn’t follow the herd — no, sirree. He marches to a different drummer, he calls the tune, and when a bunch of other people were getting excited last year about my book on postmodernism, he kept his own counsel. He would read it when he felt like it, if at all, and he wasn’t about to be buffaloed into liking it just because David Weinberger and Tom Matrullo and Joseph Duemer said kind things about it.

But the time came, and he read it, and it turns out that he likes it after all. I’m feeling like Shelley, after those good reviews of Practical RDF: “I can feel satisfaction that it's helping folks and the writing is respected and seen as a quality effort. That's pretty damn important for a writer — worth more than bucks. . . . Well, bucks are nice, too.” Thanks, Dave, for a welcome lift!

Rolling the Ball

I just finished my first post to the Disseminary seminar on “The Ethics of Interpreting the Bible.” It’s just a potted history of several developments that set up the readings and topics we’ve selected, but I’m hoping it’ll serve adequately as a jumping-off point for discussion.

The Man

Elliot Noss is a hero of mine; last year, when the Disseminary was still just a weary twinkle in my eye (it had been twinkling there for seven years or so, and was nigh on to burning out), he saw what I was ranting about and saved "disseminary.org" for us (we’ll re-up very soon, Elliot, I just have to get back to work). When everything else seemed near hopeless, Elliot offered something to hang onto, and that means a ton.

So when my man gets mad at Verisign — and heaven knows there’s reason enough even before the latest fiasco — I say, “Amen,” and emphasize that this is just exactly the kind of action that undermines the possibility of top-down DigID measures, especially if Verisign is involved. Let’s be candid and say, “Verisign is not acting as a respnsible, trustworthy agent in its dealings with users and competitors. Why on earth would we trust them with our digital ID?” (I see David is there, too. You tell ’em!)

Class Warfare

And if Halley thinks W. is prosecuting a war against the middle class, just imagine how his policies look to the unemployed, the impoverished, the non-connected, the people who would be wildly enthusiastic at the prospect of an inheritance worth taxing in the first place.

Kids’ Software

Liz and Kevin (permalinks blogspotted, scroll to Sept. 22), pointing to Tim Burke, hit the nail on the head (and Kevin confesses his complicity) when they indict the deplorable condition of software for kids. All three of our children have taken to computers as ducks to water, but have been almost entirely uninterested by games. Nate was scared silly by Reader Rabbit; Si played some, but not persistently; Pippa went through a phase of spending lots of time (and printer ink) on KidPix, and played a couple of educational games. The boys liked Carmen Sandiego for a little while, but the options are so limited that the game becomes a highly predictable exercise in repetition.

Mostly, they wanted to play the games for ordinary people — games that were not designed to be condescending. All three love Ambrosia Software and Freeverse games; the boys still play NetHack (Nate prefers playing in the ASCII mode to the newer, gussied-up-with-graphics mode). There’s no reason those games can’t be educational. Sim City certainly has been. But as Greg Costikyan observed earlier this year, the blockbuster mentality rules computer gaming as it does the film and music industries — with the concomitant constriction of their commercial imaginations.

Part of the reason our kids didn’t relish the games that were ostensibly designed for them involves the fact that we homeschool the kids — but it would be too easy to write them off as exceptions on that count, especially when Liz and Timothy and Kevin and especially Greg see the problem, too. Maybe part of the answer to the game design industry’s constipation, a part that reflects our experience as homeschool parents, involves treating children and grown-ups as people with the capacity to think and act and choose as adults.

New Warning

According to the labels on my little orange cylinder, when I take Darvocet, I shouldn’t drink, or operate a car or heavy machinery, because the drug may cause dizziness (among other side effects, including dulling the pain of two openings cut into my flesh and sewed together).

What it ought to say is, “Do not blog while under the influence of this drug, and do not leave comments on other people’s blogs. May induce feelings of grandiosity and of immunity to future consequences. Lock down keyboard until the stitches are out.” Not that I’d pay attention if it did say that. . . .

Status Report

As the dust settles, I find that I’m able to simulate full capacity for short periods, and that getting up and walking around for a while actually feels better than sitting or lying. (That may just be my character as a terrible convalescent, though.) My abdomen does hurt, especially when I flex in any way, or when I make the kind of quick adjustment in posture that’s a significant component of everyday balance.

The pain killer helps.

That, and Margaret’s knocking herself out taking care of me, while Pippa feels extra needy herself. Margaret’s keeping a watchful eye on me, feeding me, and making sure I get my pills on schedule.

The main problem is that life goes on apace, and I see myself falling behind in a dozen areas, when I only have about a half day’s worth of energy. Still, I promise to keep my eyes open for something worth commenting about, instead of just jabbering about myself again and again.

And listen, y’all are sweethearts; thanks so much for all your kind wishes and prayers.

I’m Ba-a-a-ack

Okay — while I’m still more-or-less coherent, here goes the story. Warning: medical narrative follows — if you’re like me, consider skipping this entry. Certainly don’t read this post while driving.

Margaret and Terry drove me to the hospital (as I was saying). At the Ambulatory Surgery (a word-picture that will stick with me a long time) reception desk, they signed me in and send me to a room of my own. By 11:15, Terry and Margaret and I were safely ensconced in a cozy little room, I in my formal hospital best. Hospital staff kept wishing me luck, which made me wonder if they knew something I ought to find out before surgery.

We then waited till 1:00; Terry and Margaret had a good long talk, the nurse made sure I hadn’t altered my pulse and blood pressure since last week, and I napped on and off.

All was pretty straightforward, apart from — well, the medical term I was taught for me is, “vasovagal on venipuncture.” By that, my doctors mean, “I’m inclined to faint when they draw blood.” The first blood doc tried to find a vein on the inside of my left arm. Whoops! Missed. Then he tried again, on the outside. Ouch! Missed again.

By this time I was sweating profusely and if my eyes hadn’t been closed, they’d have been bugging out. Blood Doc Number One recognized that he needed help, and summoned Blood Doc Two. Blood Doc Two began probing my right arm while my surgeon (who was shaving the regions he would soon be cutting through) sternly barked, “He’s going vagal!” (If I hadn’t known what that meant, I’d probably have fainted on the spot just from the dangerous sound of the expression.) Luckily, Blood Doc Number Two had found his vein (my vein), and soon they were pumping a comforting cocktail of saline and sedative into me.

I don’t even remember them gassing me for the general anesthetic. That’s how vagal I had gone.

I woke up gradually in post-op, helpless without my glasses. I waited rather impatiently for a half hour or forty-five minutes, and they wheeled me back to Margaret and Terry.

My review of the experience: right now, I'm not quite convinced that it beats having the hernia itself, but everyone tells me I’ll be glad I had it in a few weeks. In the meantime, I’d say that if you don’t already have a hernia, you should probably skip the surgery — there are better things to do with your entertainment dollar.

On My Way

Well, I'm wearing comfortable clothing, I haven’t eaten in, let’s see, twelve hours or more (I snacked after dinner), I’m basking in the radiance of many kind people’s well-wishes, and in a half hour or so, Terry will come join Margaret and me, and we’ll head off to Evanston Northwestern Hospital. I’ll let you know when I get back.

Memo

Before surgery, Shallow Grave is not the movie to watch as a distraction, even if it does feature Ewan MacGregor.

Three Mysteries

Number One: Why have left-side curly-quotation-marks started going wonky, not only here but on at least one other site I’ve visited?

Number Two: Why do I feel so anxious about surgery that’s really no big deal (by the way, in recognition of all that he’s done for me, I bequeath my blog and Joi Ito’s to David Weinberger, in case I predecease him)?

Number Three: Why have at least two people come to this site recently searching for the string, “self flagellation”? Isn’t there at least one site they ought to have visited first?

Something to Look Forward To

Dave Sifry was showing off an idea toward a distributed DigID network (involving Technorati, of course). It was only a tiny first step, but as I looked at it, I think I saw a glimpse of the future. DigID as rhizome, not tree. . . .

A Day of Affirmation

It looks as though Dorothea and Rabbi Lewis aren’t the only people who are making congenial points online these days. I’m overblogged nowadays — there are more interesting people online than I can possibly keep up with — so I’m late to the party on some of these — but I want also to applaud

• Aaron’s quoting mjd to the effect that Wired represents tech-talk apart from real information: “That’s what Wired is about: The illusion of knowledge without any of the difficult bits.” Sometimes I worry that that’s a direction toward which seminary education tends.
• Clancy Ratliff hearts Gayle Rubin: well, I suppose that I’d quail before using that locution, but I too remember reading “The Traffic in Women” and feeling my neurons tingle. An awful lot of queer theory engages issues at such fascinating angles, with such provocative insights, that I still get irked when people trivialize it.
• Clancy also posted an entry entitled “Blogging as Privileged Speech,” in which she discusses a presentation she gave last year. Lots to chew on there, but the point that particularly stuck in my mind as a teacher who uses blogs, and as a blogger who’s a theologian and teacher, was her connecting the dots of “blogging as genre” and &ldqu;;genre as social action” (observations on Carolyn Miller’s article here, partway down the page). Now, many of us would like to think we were changing the world by blogging; some of us even make so bold as to stake that claim outright. But Clancy, I think, is onto something when she associates bloggers’ participation in the social practice of online writing (of a particular sort) with the social conditions that produce blogging, and that blogging itself contributes to producing. It’s a notion I’ll be mulling over for a while.
• Other things I’ll probably add throughout the day

Again, I say, “Amen”

Dorothea has repeated her opinion that the natural starting-point for ebooks is academia. I second the motion — which is part of what Trevor and I are up to at the Disseminary (and it may be part of why Dorothea’s so agreeable about working with us on it).

Amen

Richard at Looking Backward reproduces a letter from Rabbi Justin Jaron Lewis, the Director of Jewish Studies at Queen’s Theological College, on Christian use of the divine Name. Knowing that one or two Jewish readers sometimes stray in this direction, I wanted to call attention to this letter.

The heart of the letter — carefully worded with respect for Christian neighbors’ good intentions — gently asks that Christian stop the practice of uttering the Name, even on the basis of indicating their kinship with Judaism:

In this context, to any Jew with even a moderately traditional or religious sensibility, hearing the name spoken aloud (or even seeing it written with vowels as I have had to do here) is shocking, even blasphemous. Its use in Christian circles, therefore, does not build a connection with Judaism, but introduces discord.

My reasons fall largely into the zone Rabbi Lewis suggests — but I await correction and instruction from others on how best to show humble respect for my neighbors.

O Tempora, O Mores!

There’s a lot of hand-wringing these days in the Anglican Communion, as many church leaders outside the U.S. decry the doctrinal disarray of a province that would allow the consecration of an openly gay man as bishop. More than forty years ago, Eric Mascall (himself a resolutely conservative theologian) wrote a poem entitled, “The Ultra-Catholic” with such verses as,

The Bishop’s put me under his ‘profoundest disapproval’
And, though he cannot bring about my actual removal,
He will not come and visit me or take my confirmations.
Colonial prelates I employ from far-off mission-stations.

His Ultra-Catholic clergyman refuses to pay his diocesan assessment, and concludes that “The C. of E. [Church of England]’s in heresy and schism.” This, before the U.S. and U.K. approved the ordination of women, and before one would even have considered institutional approval for ordaining lesbian or gay candidates.

That doesn’t mean that today’s traditionalists are necessarily wrong (if anything, they may point to these verses as indications that they have been suffering ecclesiastical discrimination for decades, made unbearable by recent developments). One might also look on this poem (second on a page from Project Canterbury), though, as a sign that one portion of the church will always perceive itself to be beset by error and folly. Perhaps the persistence of such lamentations demonstrates, contra appearances, that there has been and will be room for dissent within the boundaries of the Anglican Communion. . . .

Would You Believe. . . ?

Would you believe the tale of an Oulippian god of narration, a limber-lipped limner of laudable lore, or some windy, ancient professor saying, “It was probably just old age and toting leaden baggage all over England”?

Belay that, Ye Froward Wenches!

Arrrrrr!

A little parrot, a burning parrot told me that three piratical maids have claimed pre-eminence on the pseven pseudo-seas of pcyber-[not really]-space! Aye, and the Flaming Bird has upped the ante by several doubloons, or doublets or something, by adding a graphical buccaneer’s banner!

Well, that slimy scupper the Pomo Prince (David??) can do what he wants, but as for me and my crew, we can design better than the hardest sea dogs they can pressgang out of the shanties of St. Louis, or the ateliers of Atlanta, or wherever in New York Elaine lives. Captain Trevor, be quick with that Photoshop! Seabury scurvy, swab down those links! Arrrr!

Where’s Cabin Boy Si? I hope he hasn’t deserted to sail with the vixens!

Gnash, Gnash

Well, OK, I was going to try to just not mention this online — each of us adopts certain modes of self-disclosure and eschews others — but I feel all cranky and weary, and it’s because I have a double hernia that they’re going to operate on Monday, and now it hurts more and differently than it had so far, and it makes me grouchy to feel vulnerable. And it makes me feel ashamed of my vanity when I realize that I’m concealing and resisting my own feelings of vulnerability. Which, of course, doesn’t improve my mood.

You can tell how out of sorts I am by the fact that I’m just leaving that big ugly split infinitive in the first line.

Part of this has been catalyzed by the two-day faculty conference Seabury holds several times a year, which I found very stressful, for several reasons that I will resist detailing. Suffice it to say that I think I held up my end pretty well for two days, but now I’m exhausted.

What Will the Revolution Be?

I’m not a Professional Matrix Speculator, so what I’m about to say has probably already been suggested elsewhere. Indeed, given the expansiveness of the field of Professional Matrix Speculation, it almost certainly has been suggested elsewhere, as the number of Matrix hypotheses approaches infinity. Probably on Kottke’s Matrix blog entry.

So my (surely belated and unoriginal) question is, “If in the first movie, we learned that Neo can see through the Matrix to the code that constitutes the apparent world, and in Reloaded we learn that he can not only hack the Matrix-reality, but can control elements of physical-world reality too (the mechnical jellyfish thingies), why ought we not learn in Matrix: Revolutions that he sees through reality itself?” Now that I write it out, it seems banal; but it’s the logical culmination of the gnostic theme of the series, which the Wachowskis could take in any number of theologico-philosophical directions.

Plus, it would make for some jim-dandy special effects.

Or They’ll Keelhaul Ye!

Arrr, mateys, link ye up to David Weinberger and Dan Gillmor’s new site, Word Pirates. They’re fighting to liberate words from their captivity to stuffed-shirt spinmeisters, to mealy-mouthed managers, to yahoo euphemizers, and restore to these words their appropriate significance. (Boy, do I have philosophical problems with this, even as I whole-heartedly share the sentiment.)

And don’t forget, there are fewer than forty-eight hours till International Talk Like a Pirate Day, by which they don’t mean “saying things from the Word Pirates site.”

So True

A tremendous proportion of what I do as a teacher derives from my conviction that I’m not such a very important part of the process. I don’t mean to suggest that I don’t lecture, or give assignments, or those other teacherly things; but I do them tactically, on the premise that the real learning takes place around the edges of what the magister does in the center of the classroom.

Some wise teachers advise me to abandon the center stage, to put everyone in the center and stand to the side. With all due respect, and fully acknowledging that (as the Apostle saith) “not that I have attained, or have already been made perfect,” but working out my pedagogy with fear and trembling, I try to constitute the center as a masque of instruction, while cultivating the kind of atmosphere in which motivation flourishes and instigates (on the student’s own time, on the margins of the classroom) the learning that really sticks.

This is how and why we home-school; this is why I’m pouring energy into the Disseminary; and it sounds to me as though it’s at least close to what George Siemens is getting at (via Stephen Downes). &ldqu;;Year One of a new program should somewhat resemble courses (i.e. provide structured exposure to content)...but subsequent years should resemble the way in which knowledge will be acquired once in the workplace. As I've stated before: ‘Small communities of practice, loosely joined, are the future of effective, lifelong learning...’ ” That’s a vision of seminary instruction I can get very enthusiastic about.

Already, Pippa’s standard response to any unknown situation is, “Google it!”

Whoosh!

Well, that day went by quickly. Fewer than thirty-six hours ago, I was vested with the authority and responsibility to oversee educational technology here at Seabury. Peachy gig, right? Well, not exactly. There’s practically no tech budget, and what budget there might be is swallowed up almost retroactively with maintenance on machines we already own. The tri-annual two-day Seabury faculty connference begins tomorrow morning, and between my being advised of my new administrative responsibilities and tomorrow morning’s meeting, I’ve already had two distinct tech crises dumped in my lap, and one additional set of complications.

So I’m not exactly stepping up to the prow, taking the helm, and setting sail for the unexplored horizon. It’s more as though I’m grabbing a bucket and hollering to see if there’s anyone else even on the ship.

Disseminary Progress

Word went tried to get out to the Ethics seminar participants last night, as I said; this morning I made sure the message really did get out to the whole list (I can tell it did, because some people responded). This evening Margaret posted the first of her notes from the Radical Orthodoxy Conference at the Radical Orthodoxy Round Table site.

Title Waiting for a Work

This afternoon I decided that someone ought to have written a book, or recorded an album, with the title, “The Tune at the End of the Lintel.” It’s not just right; a perfect spoonerism would be “the ton at the end of the light-le,” but I can’t make a more precise version of the reversal sound as convincing to myself. Maybe this is a job for Gary Turner. . . .

Thank You, Brent

I’ve sought counsel in chats and IRC channels about what could be giving my copy of Safari headaches. It has gotten hung, crashed, and generally misbehaved for a couple of weeks, but nothing I could think of had changed in the Safari configuration.

Today Brent Simmons released a new beta of NetNewsWire (a/k/a “gift from God to OS X aggregators and bloggers”), which addresses a bug in the OS X Web Kit — which, evidently, had been activated when NNW shared cookies with Safari (now each application uses its own cookies; perhaps they can learn to share their milk, at least). And now Safari seems to be feeling better. That’s nice.

No, the Chairs Go Over There

I sent out a reading list for the first Disseminary seminar tonight. We’ll be beginning very soon, and I’m all fidgety with excitement. Once things get rolling, feel free to drop by and listen in on the seminar.

Over at the Radical Orthodoxy Round Table, Margaret has indicated her inclination to begin putting up her prodigious notes on a session-by-session basis, for comments from Joel (who was also there) and other interested parties. We’re still taking names for the RadOx Round Table, so if Margaret’s notes seem enticing, contact us about joining the discussion.

Mark, His Words

My friend and colleague Mark Goodacre has long maintained the astonishingly-thorough champion source of web links for New Testament studies; now the inevitable has happened, and one of the brightest, most imaginative scholars working in the field of the New Testament has fallen into blogging. Lasciate ogni speranza, Mark! In a discipline that characteristically leaches most of the inventiveness and creativity out of a young scholar, Mark has preserved his capacity to see stagnant problems in helpfully fresh ways.

He observes that I don’t blog much about my field: “From what I've read through so far there's not a lot of NT related stuff given that he's an NT prof., but there are bits and bobs. . . .” That’s true, but here I’m in conversations mostly with other people who aren’t biblical scholars. Start some lively arguments, Mark, and see if I can resist. . . .

Brief, But Intense, Rant

I serve on a couple of editorial boards, and I just feel the burning need to say that the number of teachers who evidently tell their “A” students that “this essay is publishable, you should send it to XYZ Journal” exceeds my comprehension. Someone should arrest such misleading mentors for fraud, or theft (of hope) by deception, or just plain incompetence, subjecting them to criminal penalties for polluting the intellectual atmosphere and providing too many disappointed students with the opportunity to say, “Well, Prof. Smith said my essay on John the Baptist was publishable. . . .” If I have to read many more “good term papers” that remain light years from being adequate academic articles (and supply the editorial comments that the professor ought to have offered before even uttering the word “publishable”), I shall scream.

Thanks for your patience. Back to refereeing a really good term paper on John the Baptist (no, not really, the topic of this paper has been changed to protect the innocent victim of a guilty perpetrator).

Attention to Detail

Margaret just got back from the conference on Radical Orthodoxy, buoyed by spending two and a half days thinking hard among like-minded theologians, but exhausted by the conference routine and by her note-taking. A few minutes ago she showed me her file of jottings, which comes to fifty-six single-spaced pages.

I wouldn’t have been quite that thorough.

Willing Dupe

Good news! Based on a quick read, it seems that David Weinberger has written a step by step outline of how to con him out of vital DigID information, such that you could then impersonate him and use his vast line of eBay credit and good will to round out your collection of “Theologians of History” figurines. It's such a bargain!

Everyone’s a Critic

“Religion! You'd weep if you saw how true religion is now a thing of the past.” — Calvera, the bandit leader (Eli Wallach), The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Wayfaring Stranger

There’s no sickness, no toil or danger
In that bright land to which I go
I’m going there to see my mother
She said she’d meet me when I come;
I’m just going over Jordan — I’m just going over home.

Convergence

Okay, so now I’m the eXecutor of Trevor’s online assets, too. Pretty soon, I’ll be stuck with the decaying remains of my entire circle of friends (it sounds as though Gary’s thinking that way). But Trevor — playing off the “crypt” riff from Joi and David — also has a brilliant idea about converging my newfound status as protector of the digital identities of the departed with our work on the Disseminary: memorial entities for departed bloggers. So this is the deal, David, Joi, Trevor: you make a donation to the Disseminary to fund a project of some sort — a lecture series, a seminar subdomain, a major reference work, a picnic table in the employee’s lunch area, and we’ll name the memorial after you, with links to your blog archives. Plus, I’ll say a mass in your honor.

I can see it now: the Weinberger Lectures in philosophy, technology, and humor, online rival to the Gifford Lectures or the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures — with a link to JOHO ad secula seculorum; The Ito Seminars, led by internationally-mobile and technologically-sophisticated global scholars, with links to Joi Ito Web, the perpetual edition (though presumably the birthday greeter will continually shout-out congratulations for deceased bloggers’ births); and the Bechtel Recycled-Paper Disposable Coffee-Cup Dispenser, with a link to limature (which no one will notice is moribund, since Trevor updates it so rarely).

Act now! Think big! Posterity will honor you forever for your generosity now!

Stiff Competition

Now I stand to administer not only David Weinberger’s immortal bytes, but now also Joi Ito’s. Now, I’m honored and all, and I promise to do my best by both these distinguished citizens of Blogaria and by the interests of posterity.

But just who decided that $30 a year would be the going rate for hosting large, high-volume sites like theirs? Not to mention “pruning the hedges and scrubbing the grafitti off”? Guys, I have to talk with your estates about changing the terms of these arrangements. I mean, I’m busy now; if this idea starts catching on, I won’t have time to do anything but tend memorial websites — which outdoes even theological teaching for low labor-to-remuneration ratios.

A Cry for Help

Concession at the start: This is probably something that somebody who knows even a little about OS X networking will solve in a flash, but I’m tired to trying to find out where that flash is.

For some reason, I can’t accept files through iChat or RendezVous when I’m working from my home wireless network. I can send them, but not accept them. I’ve tried with the Firewall up (and port opened); I’ve tried with the Firewall down. I’ve looked for preferences. I’ve searched the Apple KnowledgeBase. I’ve wept, I’ve cursed, I’ve laid hands on, but nothing makes it work.

Configuration: I’m running my G4 TiBook to an AirPort base station, which is connected directly to our cable modem. Si, working from an iMac wired to the AirPort base station, can’t send me files. Trevor, working from the Seabury LAN, can’ send me files. Sometimes I worry that I won’t be able to save my own files, that some malign EtherGenii will interpose itself between my pixels and my hard drive, with a message box that says, “Could not be received.”

There. Now I feel better. Even better, if one of you can help me accomplish this simple task.

W.? Post-Modern?

I have gotten into enough tangles about postmodern thought and its public image that I just winced and passed along when I read Joshua Micah Marshall’s comments from Washington Monthly about George W. Bush as a “post-modern president.” When even smart people like JMM, whom I much admire and read regularly, start bandying around shopworn anti-intellectual caricatures about “French” ideas and “relativism,” well, maybe it’s time to close up shop and go home.

But David Weinberger, no homme postmderne he, didn’t let that pass, so I’ll crawl out of my exile on Elba to back him up on this. Joshua, if you understand postmodern thought and disagree with it, or if you don’t understand it, at least don’t play into the hands of anti-thinkers who prefer to dismiss discomfiting theories with the facile rhetoric of nativist, “facts-is-facts,” nonchalance. It sounds like something I’d expect to hear from. . . well, someone I don’t typically associate Joshua Micah Marshall with.

On Albums and Art Deco

A long time ago, son Nate and I were iChatting about the future of music (a topic that bears a somewhat greater pertinence to him than to many of the rest of us, as he expects to make a living at it when he graduates). We were talking about great albums we have known, about file-sharing and the iTunes music store, and especially about those musicians who refused to permit their recordings to be sold online except as complete albums. Nate observed that this was absurd, since all the bands concerned had been happy enough to allow their music to be played on the radio in less-than-album segments, and to be sold as singles and EPs; what artistic principle militates against selling music by selection online, but endorses broadcasting the same selections individually (and in contexts about which the performer has no say) over radio and selling singles on physical media?

I pointed out that the whole notion of “an album” only becomes relevant with the development of the long-playing records through the forties and fifties. So long as recordings were limited to ten or twelve-minute sides, “an album” was always going to differ markedly from the possibly-integrated whole that the music industry cultivated once LPs were the flourishing norm of music reproduction. Imagine what a record company executive would have said to Beethoven about the variations in duration of his symphonies.

So the “loss” of the album (a loss which could always be addressed by selling online recordings that interwove their constituent selections, or that simply comprised a long suite (as it were) of selections as a single large MP3/MPEG-4 file) represent no new crisis in the organization of music, but just another transition, and a transition that determined musicians could easily resist.

I was pretty satisfied with my learned refutation of the importance of the album, but this morning I was listening to Elvis Costello’s Get Happy!! — a terrific recording, but very far from my favorite Costello — and the satisfaction of anticipating the sequence of tracks deeply enhanced my pleasure at listening to the album. So the smarty-pants deconstructor of musical genres nostalgically rethinks his casual dismissal of a gradually-vanishing medium.

But, on the extended-version CD of Get Happy!! (yes, it was a CD, not a pure vinyl version, so sue me) includes “Hoover Factory,” a lovely, ephemeral song about the remarkable Art Deco factory built just west of London in Perivale, which factory our coach drove past this summer on our choir tour’s way from Rochester to Oxford: “Nine miles out of London on the Western Avenue, Must have been a wonder when it was brand new; Talking ’bout the splendor of the Hoover Factory, Know that you’d agree if you had seen it, too.” I did; I do.

Disorienting Day

Yesterday afternoon was flat-out weird.

In rapid succession, four or five interventions in my day boggled me. First, I received a note asking me to join the Day One panel on education at BloggerCon. I was glad to accept, not just to bring to the table my work with blogs at Seabury, but also my experience as a home-schooling dad whose middle kid, Josiah, himself blogs. That’s not just a coincidence; my approach to teaching seminarians owes a lot to my sense of how Nate, Si, and Pippa have learned at home.

Then a surprising Happy Birthday email arrived from Joi Ito, whose blog is on JST even when he is flying from Menorca to Boston — surprising because, on Central Daylight Time, my birthday wouldn’t start for another eleven hours or so.

Then followed a long, provocative, unforeseen phone conversation with a blogger about God, gods, identity, difference, coercion and peace.

Then I got a phone call from my doctor’s office, commanding me to snap into action and make a series of appointments and arrangements relative to some necessary internal maintenance work.

I think I even left something out, it was so sudden and bewildering. But good, each in its way.

Tacky Commercial

A number of guests at the house-blessing last night expressed admiration for my snazzy hoopoe cap and striking Hatch Show Print-style messenger bag. Anyone who wants to adopt this avant la mode style for him- or herself should go directly to the Disseminary Shop at Cafe Press!

(Retro paraphernalia from the University of Blogaria still available for Old School bloggerwear. Someday I want to go back and dress up my Seabury site as a full-scale UBlog campus center, complete with fill-in-the-blank PDF diploma. That’ll have to wait until I have some very important task that requires high-level procrastination.)

Thanks, David

Well, since I started ruminating about what’ll happen to bloggers’ online assets after their physical demise, David has decided to bequeath his webby remains to me. Does that make me his eXecutor?

All can say is, I’m deeply, deeply honored, and where can I get hosting that accommodates your bandwidth (plus landscaping) for only $30 a year? And, may I change that color scheme? (ralph, in a comment on this entry, describes a brilliant business scheme, or scam, to insure websites’ immortality.)

Oh, and in my line of work, I find that the customary “help yourself” items are ties. If you see me wearing a tie, the odds are good that it belonged to a dead man. Then again, I don’t think I’ve ever seen David wearing a tie. And no, I don’t have any dead priests’ white collars — though now that you mention it, there might be an opportunity there. . . .

Grant to This Home the Grace of Your Presence

I’m off to Hoopoe Haven, the home of my friends Barbara Newman and Richard Kieckhefer, formally to bless this, their new home. They’ve got a lot of rooms, so this’ll entail quite the spiritual marathon. Join us in prayer!

Surprises Concerning BloggerCon

First surprise: Dave Winer and Halley emailed me Friday, to ask me to lead a BloggerCon session Sunday on something to do with faith and blogging. Dave had never registered my existence before — I volunteered for the “education” session, for instance, and didn’t hear anything back — so this was totally out of the blue. So I said, “Sure, I’d be happy to.” It’ll be a good chance to talk with people about the Disseminary, about congregational uses for blogs, and about spiritual identity/digital identity (the ways they come together and diverge). So, cool; I was going to be there anyway, so I might as well talk to people. I hope someone in Boston gets in touch with the mountain of theological and ecclesiastical institutions there; it would be a great way for BloggerCon to make a difference in a number of places’ institutional lives.

Second surprise: Dave called me up on Saturday as my conference group was getting hot and heavy. I thought I had asked him to call about an hour later, but I may have confused Indiana’s Eastern Standard Time with Cambridge’s Eastern Daylight Time. Whatever, he enthused to me about the session and asked me to send him some information and description. I slapped some words together and filled in the blanks on the “Add a page”interface.

Third surprise: What I wrote troubled Shelley and some of her readers. Now, in retrospect, I can see how her discomfort coheres with the differences we discovered and explored a week or two ago. Likewise, though, my reasoning reflects my own part in the discussion. I hate to bother Shelley, but I think we’re operating with fundamentally divergent outlooks at this point.

Here’s what I wrote:

Not only do bloggers have souls, about which some of them talk more or less often, but religious organizations have — or might be well-served to start — blogs. This session will involve reflections on the ways that blogs share features of the spiritual autobiography, and ways that blogs bespeak spiritual dimensions of our personae; ways that blogs can clarify congregational identity, both for curious observers and for reflective members; and ways that deliberate weblogging can enrich the spiritual lives of both individuals and congregations.

Plato and Aristotle referred comfortably to people’s souls; at least some, if not many, flavors of Judaism accept the premise that people have souls. The concept is common in Islam. The “soul” appears in the Upanishads, on at least a tentatively plausible reading — and I think I recall that even Buddhism preserves something akin to the notion of a “soul,” even if it ultimately dispenses with that idea. Apart from atheists — about whom more in half a sec — I can’t bring to mind a tradition adherents of which would be likely to take offense at the axiom that “people have souls,” especially if one allows for terminological refinement: “You say ‘soul,’ but we call it ‘spirit’ (or ‘mind’ or some other tradition-specific term).”

Atheists, or “brights,” might well be nettled by my starting-point (although it would take a pretty thorough-going atheist to bridle at all the various ways the term “soul” gets deployed, even in secular culture). But it’s going to be hard for me to say anything in public, especially anything pertinent to spirituality, without vexing atheists.

So I’ll stick to the description as I dashed it off, for now. If I think of something better, or (more likely) Margaret suggests an improvement, I’ll certainly go with it.

Pagels Review Online

Last July, I reviewed Elaine Pagels’s Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas for the Trenton Times. Today I whipped it into shape for the Disseminary site, where it appears in the Reviews section. . . .

Blogs in Journalism

Grad-school colleague Cary McMullen mentions the Disseminary in his column in the Lakeland Ledger this morning. I suppose I wouldn’t imagine the Disseminary should replace institutional seminaries, the way “an alternative seminary” sounds, but I’ve been misunderstood much more radically in other papers, so I can’t complain.

Blessings, Bill and Susan!

I think today’s the first time two people I know who both have web pages have gotten married (I don’t know any two-blogger weddings, yet). That’s not what’s important about today, though; it’s the hope and the love that brought Susan (my Instructional Assistant for Early Church History in 2001, and now Seabury’s Registrar) and Bill (my wayward advisee) to this day. Best wishes to you both, and to the dogs, and to everyone who recognizes in you the grace of two hearts brought together into a love greater than the sum of its parts. . . .

What is Technological Competence (for Theological Educators)?

I’m in a subgroup of the conference that’s dealing with the definition and implications of “technological competence” as it intersects with theological education.

First, we’re worrying about sustaining technological practice: the cost of equipment, maintaining websites, sustaining pedagogical energy, and so on. Trevor suggests that we typically operate with an AV model; we treat our investment with technology as though it were a matter of buying an overhead projector — once you’ve bought it, the main added expense is paying the senior student to roll the projector around.

Jean-Pierre resists defining this as “sustainability.” We’re now examining ways in which our interests encompass access to disabled participants, low-bandwidth participants, and offline participants.

Jean-Pierre asks, “Whose priorities are driving the project forward?” Development (so that you can get good PR)? That tends to occlude appropriate investment for good pedagogy.

George asks, Competence, sustainability, accessibility for whom and to what end? There’s an outcomes question, and it involves informed decision-making — and that depends on experimentation and assessment. Mary talks about stewardship of resources and capacities; we need another word. We’re casting about now, resisting “competency,” “literacy,” “acumen,” “discernment,” “sustainability,” and “appropriateness.”

Now we’re developing an “issue” and a “rationale.” Educational Literacy and Defining Competence?

We believe that issues of technological procurement, training, and implementation, and continually integrated with conversations regarding cultural and regional, accessibility. Once they’re normalized, we can make freer decisions about their use.

One of the things that digital technologies teach us is the importance of attending to other technologies we engage, that shape our teaching and learning.

Technologies (especially digital, electronic technologies) will always teach us two things: One, they show us about our teaching that we have not been attentive to, because of their novelty; Two, their novelty blinds us to how they can best be used. One of the skills of using new technologies comes in using them in appropriate and sustainable ways. The eruption of digital information technology in higher education has precipitated our attending to issues of teaching and learning that we had not fully attended to earlier. That calls us to a next step that is not critical distance from, but critical engagement with the tools of teaching and learning. We believe that technological education competence in current climate necessarily includes that critical engagement. To help our faculty become competent, we must teach them not just how to use, but how to understand strengths and weaknesses, intended and unintended effects.

Situates digital information technology among the repertoire of tools for teaching and learning.

Sustainability:

• Technology not considered exclusively as one-time expense
• Develop a culture of planning
• purchase technologies that remain useful
• Not just hardware but software obsolescence
• Attention to broader social accountability (e.g., Open Source technologies)
• Enhance multiple forms of expression, and not constrict modes of expression (including non-digital technologies)

Accessibility:

• We should prefer technologies that enable the broadest possible spectrum of users
• Geographical accessibility
• Accessible regardless of sightedness, deafness, limitations of movement
• Accessibility across range of bandwidth
• Accessibility across the spectrum of skills and attitudes toward technologies
• Accessibility across social and economic classes

One Premise

By now, “technology and teaching” is not one topic area. Technologies and pedagogies are both sufficiently multiplex and circumstantially diverse that when a bunch of us get together to converse in the language of “technology and teaching,” we’re speaking a dozen different dialects.

It’s somewhat as though the topic were “architecture and habitation,” and our group included engineers, sociologists, designers, interior decorators, urban planners, landscapers, and builders.

Problem

People at the conference are batting around topics that we might explore further, and as we acknowledge issues of culture, technique, “learning,” assumptions, diversity, generations, and so on, I’m struck by the problem that I deal with many students who self-define by consumption at the same time many of us are trying to cultivate a practice of self-motivated learning. The ideal (not “ideal” as best possible, but “ideal” as paradigmatic) educational model for consumers is essentially passive and preferential: “I like to listen to Bob’s lectures.” The ideal educational model for the teachers we’d like to become involves students who launch into a topic energetically because it’s what they want to know more about — and my students themselves have a sense that they ought to be self-teaching (in a way like this, though not exactly).

The cultural predilection for self-definition by consumption (I’m a Nike wearer, I drive an Austin Mini, and so on, and so on) doesn’t conduce to active pursuit of difficult questions. I don’ know what this all means, though, or whether I’m on a productive track.

Wabash Year Two, Day Two

Two more questions this morning:

How can we be good stewards of the reality that invites the use of technology to enrich theological teaching and learning, while at the same time not allowing that reality to camouflage sound pedagogical practices?

How can we be attentive to students’ different preparation specific to technology as we teach religion?

Wabash Conference, Year Two

Trevor and I got here just in time for the sumptuous reception and dinner at Wabash’s spectacular new Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, and at this moment we’re sitting in the get-acquainted introductory session of the Conference on Technology and Teaching. Many of the participants in last year’s conference are here, and another pool of conferees joined us this time around. Right now, each person has to ask a question about which they’re concerned coming into this conference. Among the questions these theological educators have asked:

When should we not use digital technology?

In what ways do our imaginations and expectations prevent us from effective use of digital technologies?

How can we help teachers learn to teach with technology, rather than just “give presentations”?

How do these technologies help expand the communities of inquiry so that they enhance learning in real-world contexts?

Where does the time for making effective use of digital technology come from?

How does engaging digital technology help us help students engage larger issues surrounding them?

How can we foster collaboration as we address the opportunities and challenges of IT?

How do I recover, as a learner and teacher, the solitary aspect of learning?

How can we reduce the anxiety about this new sort of literacy?

Who is doing what in distance education, and why? Where are the lines drawn, if at all?

How do we cope with the proliferation of information?

How do we manage a combination lab-lecture instructional environment? How can we use technologies to integrate intercultural and interdisciplinary studies throughout the curriculum?

How do we use technology in the context of preaching?

What obligation have we to advocate the preservation of cultures of teaching and learning which reject digital technologies, perhaps in other cultural contexts?

Who does one understand as a virtual body? How does a digital environment provide space and time for my virtual body to exist?

How integral is technology in putting together a course today? Where has the investment in technology gone, and what have we gotten for it?

Can digital technology help insure consistency across multiple sections of a single intro course?

How can discussions about technology lead into more important questions about pedagogy, so that what we’re doing isn’t accommodation to students, but an actual pedagogical advance?

*Bonus points if you can match any of these questions to any participants whom you might know.

Fourth Day on the Choir Tour

(Somehow, this post from the choir tour never made my website — so I’m posting it now.)

Today is a choir marathon, with Mattins at 9:45, the Eucharist at 10:30, and Evensong at 3:15. Mattins and Eucharist went swimmingly; the choir sang gloriously, and the preacher at the Eucharist — Dean William McKeevey (sp? subject to later correction) of South Carolina — was refreshingly articulate and theologically-grounded. The cathedral chapter has graciously included me in all the services, which has been a joy and a privilege. Thursday I read the lessons at Evensong; this morning I read the First Lesson at both services, and they’ve asked me to read the Second Lesson this afternoon. Of course, reading is relatively straightforward, excpet on those rare occasions when, for instance, one is assigned to read chapter 5 of the Song of Solomon to an all-male, mostly-adolescent choir. In case Song of Songs 5::2-16 has slipped your mind, it’s the part where the lovesick female explains to the reader that her beloved “slipped his fingers into the gap,” and she “arose to open to my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, upon the handles of the bolt.” Subsequently, she is assaulted by the night watchmen (5:7) and describes in lush metaphorical detail her beloved’s physical characteristics.

Of course, one can read this passage in a typical boring-Bible drone, so as to drain the passage not only of prurient interest, but indeed of all vitality. Since that’s against deeply-held principles, I went ahead and gave a lively-but-restrained reading, and the lads seem not even to have noticed.

The Eucharist was quite wonderful. I had not given Rochester much thought before tour, but it’s a very ancient cathedral (founded by St. Justus in 604) with a design that’s sturdy without being ponderous, handsome without preciosity, historic without overwhelming the imagination. It’s hard to say mass when you’re standing among half-a-dozen monarchs, twenty major literary figures, and countless other luminaries of English cultural history; Rochester, by contrast, has St. Gundulph (who built the cathedral in the eleventh century), St. John Fisher (martyred by Henry VIII in 1535), and Nicholas Ridley (though there are no memorials to Ridley in the cathedral, which seemed odd to me), but otherwise comprises mostly the hard-working, reverent, little-known saints who sustain ninety-nine percent of church history.

A second page of photos will follow soon; I’m trying to add a few images to the present page, with little success (why won't dot-Mac allow one to add images to a page once established?).

Why I’m Going

A couple of sites have raised the question of why anyone would want to go to BloggerCon, given its steep price tag and short duration. Here’s why I’ll be there: it’s small, it fits my schedule, there’ll be people whom I don’t know and want to meet, and people whom I do know and want to see there, Trevor thought I should go, I love New England in general and Boston in particular, and I’m not paying (it’s part of the Disseminary grant). Si will come with me to help with bags and so on, and to tour Emerson College with a native informant.

Makes the Trip

Trevor and I just shared a technological epiphany that had nothing (much) to do with computers. We were driving southbound on the Skyway, crossing the bridge that connects Chicago with Indiana. Our rented Grand Prix launched us skyward, and we approached a huge rolling truck of some kind. But this was not just another construction vehicle; it was actually picking up and shifting the cement lane dividers one lane to the left, all underneath the body of the truck, as though it were just as simple as a little push. It was so cool! We didn’t even realize what was up till we were driving by, gaping at the cool-osity of the monster at our side. If they made a Tonka of one of those, I might have bought one on the spot.

Mortal Musing

What happens if a blogger dies? I mean, apart from the obvious and general developments. Let’s suppose that someone like David were to be caught standing under a falling grand piano (God forbid). How would we have access to “JOHO the Blog” once the domain name lapsed, his ISP wiped the drive? Presumably we’d use the Wayback Machine — but does that spider all our archives? Does every gif and jpeg make it into their capacious reservoir of bytes? (I’d hate posterity to miss the history of David’s face, and the “How to protect yourself from nuclear attack with only a hat” page.)

Would there be an online memorial page of some kind?

We’ve observed the death’s of parents (Doc’s mom, Gary’s dad, Halley’s dad); but what convulsions in the force will ensue when an A-lister, or a later-in-the-alphabet-lister about whom we care particularly, stops blogging permanently? Bloggers, remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return. . . .

Weary Day

An intense meeting with an important administrator; hours of preparation for it; a physical ailment; concomitant exhaustion; and some computer frustration. Well, at least no one need worry that I’m going to write anything too profound about religion tonight!

On the positive side, the Disseminary inquiries are creeping in. We’re at five requests to participate in the Ethics of Interpretation seminar, and another five, I think, for the Radical Orthodoxy round table. Seabury will buy a new server, and Alex will set it up beautifully, I know. And tomorrow Trevor and I head off to the Wabash Center for their second Conference on Teaching and Technology.

Disseminary Update

Trevor and I are swinging open the doors to the Disseminary, but slowly. Rather than try to draw attention to the project on a large scale before there’s much to see, we’re getting some of the constituent projects going. Then we’ll ask for a general PR foofaraw, so that newcomers will see us beginning to fill the larders (rather than looking at where we hope someday to put the produce).

The first two projects we’re setting in motion are group blogs, one a more formal seminar on The Ethics of Interpreting the Bible, which Trevor and I will lead, and one a freer round table on the theological movement called Radical Orthodoxy, which Margaret will facilitate. After these two (perhaps concurrently, depending on the timing), Prof. Wesley Avram of Yale Divinity School will lead a seminar on Spirituality and Technology, and Dr. Tania Oldenhage of the Evangelisches Tagungs- und Studienzentrum (the Protestant Academy of Boldern) will lead a seminar on the parables of Jesus.

Trevor and I are inviting applications for the seminar on ethics, the Bible, and hermeneutics. We anticipate leading a six- or seven-week discussion, drawing on articles that are almost entirely available online. The seminar would then continue for a while, depending on the participants’ interest, reading materials suggested by the course of the conversation up to that point. As with all Disseminary projects, the discussion will be held at a publicly accessible site, and we’ll permit open comments from the peanut gallery. We don’ have a fancy application form just yet — we’ working on one — but if you’d like to participate in our seminar, please drop one of us an email message (I’m at akma {at} disseminary.org, he’s at bechtel {at} disseminary.org).

We already have three participants for the RadOx round table (Margaret, Joel Garver, and Matt Gunter) and we’re looking for another nine or ten participants. Contact Margaret (margaretbadam {at} mac.com) or me (akma {at} disseminary.org) if you’ interested in reading through this bracing theological alternative in postmodern thought!

On [Other People’s] Gods

Jonathon and Shelley are quite right — I’m not offended by their responses.

Shelley’s principal concern involves matters of church and state, if I understand her correctly, and I’m all over that. In the run-up to that point, though, she very generously suggests that “ He respects each of our right to develop our own Truth, even if it doesn't agree with his. My interpretation of his writing is that he doesn't need others to believe as he does to bolster his own sense of what's Truth.” I’m grateful to affirm the second description of me, but ought probably to hedge the first. It’s not that I think people have a “right” to approach the truth in varying ways; I think they will anyway, whether it’s a right or not, and there’s no pragmatic point nor any godliness in going upside their heads about it. I think I’ve quoted Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Dignitatis Humanae before, when it says, “Truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth, as it makes its entrance into the mind at once quietly and with power.” Once we begin coercing people to believe what we determine that they ought to, we forsake the Truth. This, by the way, is part of the reason I’m a pacifist; as John Howard Yoder explains it, “Nonviolence is not only an ethic about power but also an epistemology about how to let the truth speak for itself.”

So it isn’t as though I’m in favor of each person taking her or his own path to God, so much as I recognize that it’s not up to me to decide about it. If what Christians say and do bespeaks the Truth, then people will hear it. My job as a priest and teacher is to encourage Christians so to live, and to help non-Christians understand what Christians are about. This all entails the firm conviction that what I’ve been given to understand is true, and on most days I reflect that conviction. On the cloudier days, I (like James Joyce, on my reading of him) ruminate about a Truth I can’t in the end repudiate.

Jonathon presses the positive case for other gods (fifth comment; I should make permalinks to comment numbers, but I’m brooding on other eggs today). He asks, “If the God of Abraham is God in a unique way, how are we to regard the other Gods that are worshipped by billions of non-Christians? If the Christian God is God in "a thorough, undeniable, absolute way", does it follow that these other Gods are partial, questionable, and relative?”

I can’t give an fully adequate answer to a question about other people’s theology. The blunt, indelicate answer would be, “Yes, I suppose that if I must characterize other peoples beliefs relative to God, that they are partial, questionable, and relative” — but I would say such a thing only under coercion, a coercion which itself falsifies the truth. One problem with simply reversing the terms in which I described God lies in the possibility, indeed the likelihood, that logical axioms such as the law of the excluded middle term (“God is either absolute or relative”) don’t work in relation to notions like “divine uniqueness.” For instance, I can’t by any means rule out the possibility that the God whose grace extends far beyond my capacity to imagine it would work with Shinto believers in a way that draws them to the Truth. I can’t affirm that, though, because first, I have no way of knowing that, and second, that’s unlikely to be the way a Shinto believer thinks about the truth, and I can’t claim to override someone else’s self-understanding. I certainly have put a lot of time and energy into explaining why a Shinto understanding of my theology misses some important points; I fully expect that any account I gave of a Shinto theology would be likewise deficient, so I’d rather not pretend to know something I don’t.

In other words, why is it better to hold to a Shinto theology of “gods on a shelf” than to a Christian theology of one God — if you’re not already a Shinto? Or, in another way of posing the riddle, we could juxtapose the questions, “How can I profess faith in a particular vision of the Truth without deprecating other visions of truth?” and “How can you appreciate mutually contradictory visions of the truth without deprecating particular visions?” Our answer here is not that anyone ought to grab onto one of these over against the other, but that the business of resolving such contradictions gets us onto the dangerous terrain of coercing consciences, which terrain I’ve given tediously longwinded explanations for avoiding.

Side note: one reason hardly anyone would be pleased by the suggestion that “religions share an underlying belief in the same God (or all paths lead to the same destination)” involves the necessity of discerning what counts as an authentic religion or a true path — but I have the strong sense that we’ve been around that Maypole before.

Dave Rogers, in the same comment chain as Jonathon, sensibly asks what I meant by “the ideological Individual.” That was an over-condensed way of suggesting that some ideological ways of thinking begin from the assumption that “individuals” have an ontological priority over social groups, whereas other ways of thinking, other ideologies, relativize the importance of the individual over against other entities (whether that be social groups, or Nature, or God, or I dunno, atoms and the flux). In this context, I don’t use “ideological” as a pejorative term, but as a characterization of ideas so deeply embedded in our lives and thoughts that the rest of what we do and think rests on them. On this usage, there’s no escaping ideology, so I wasn’t saying something dull such as “individualists are ideological, but I’m not.” Quite the opposite — I imagine a tremendous part of the heat in this conversation comes from the friction caused by differing ideologies (and the roles of people and deity in those ideologies).

Oh, No — Me Too

I had a blogger dream the other night, too. I didn’t write about it because I didn’t want to creep anyone out, and now I don’t remember which blogger it was.

Thanks for the reminder, and the kind words, Frank.

Welcome, Fellow Newbies

Wow! We really must exist now. . . .

DRMA: “Unfinished Symphony,” by Massive Attack.

Exploring

Some people think I ought to like Leonard Cohen (I certainly like some musicians who evidently admire him: R.E.M., John Cale, Lou Reed, the Pixies, Peter Gabriel, Suzanne Vega); others think him ̶):uzak for the soy latté set,” Canada’s “most down-tempo geriatric white rapper” the “oft-covered demi-Buddhist” whose fans include “the sort of fuzzy-headed liberal Torontonian (in spirit if not geography) whose affection for rich imagery and hippie intensity leads to strange enthusiasms, like, say, a belief that Michael Ondaatje’s treacly linguistic wanderings constitute ‘beautiful prose,’ or that Joni Mitchell is an accomplished musician and a great poet.” (I like a number of Joni Mitchell albums, though I wouldn’t necessarily apply either characterization to her.)

If I were to find out whether I liked his music or not, where would I start (apart form the inescapable “Suzanne,” “Hallelujah,” “Michael from Mountains” and “Sisters of Mercy”)?

Speaking of Dean Allen, magisterial purveyor of elegant contempt, moments after I blogged my concern that we hadn’t heard from him for more than a month, he surfaced. No cause-and-effect relation there, but a relief.

DRMA: “Elephant Talk,” by King Crimson; “Praise Him,” by the New Jersey Mass Choir; “Something to Say,” by the Connells.

I Miss Him, Too

Speaking of missing people, even Tom Matrullo has updated more recently than Dean Allen. I hope the canicule in France didn’t lay him — or his loved ones — low.

Euan has commented on the relative lack of fuss about the more than ten thousand heat-related deaths in France this summer. My imagination reels at the scale of that calamity, and perhaps even more at the cavalier lack of interest it’s generated in the U.S. Is this petty fallout from France’s unwillingness to entangle itself in the Iraq quagmire, under the false banner of sexed-up allegations? Is it a language gap? Do natural disasters “not count” for grief and sympathy as much as terrorist attacks?