AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Sermon Prospect

I know I’m in good shape for the sermon, ’cause last night at Halley’s house party for Howard Dean I asked Halley — or Betsy, it was hard to tell who was using Halley nick at the time — to ask the candidate for some homiletical advice.

Betsy — or so she called herself — answered, and I quote (as best I can), “emphasize moral leadership.”

Now, as it turns out, I hadn’t been planning so to do. I put together the reater part of the sermon today, fleshing out the elements I had composed specifically for this weekend with some pieces from the 2 Christmas sermon from last year about which I’d already blogged (I don’t think that anyone who was in Evanston last year will be in New Haven this year, except Margaret and me). Tomorrow, I work through the whole thing, move bits around, smooth out the seams, and try it out on Margaret (something I don’t ordinarily do, but it seems imperative for this case).

I experienced a wave of panic this afternoon as I realized that I didn’t know where the e-ticket plane reservation was, and it wasn’t helped by the recollection that Margaret might have made the reservation on her computer, which has had its hard drive replaced between the reservation and now. But the macho husband who backed up Margaret’s drive before repairs had replaced the mail file when the computer came back, and eventually I found the message she forwarded to me with the reservations in it in my own archives, so everything’s cool.

For the Historical Record

I can’t figure out how to navigate Steve Himmer’s beautiful new page design for OnePotMeal, but I fear that this important advice from Steve will get lost without a visible permalink (I found it on yesterday’s post, but it’s marked “In Passing” and doesn’t appear on the daily post’s individual page):

Serious novelists know that it’s essential to look at a chapter in every available font and format before making any revisions to it, and certainly before writing a new one.

Breadless Sandwich

The sermon is going well, in a sense; I have much to say, a clear sense of how I hope to develop the body of the sermon. The difficulty lies in beginning and ending the thing; so far, no beginning has impressed itself on me, and (as I’ve said before) that’s really quite an essential element in my preaching (especially on a special occasion; the congregation will no doubt indulge me for a sentence or two, but that makes me all the more determined to meet them with a strong starting premise). I know, I could just go ahead and start writing out the middle of the sermon before the beginning — but for some reason, I’m balking at that very sensible step.

The material with which I’m working revolves around the phrase I mentioned earlier, in conjunction with the allusions to God’s glory in the psalm (“For the LORD God is both sun and shield;/he will give grace and glory”) and the epistle (“to the praise of his glorious grace,” “the Father of glory,” “the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints”), mashed up with a couple of other Pauline passages (perhaps particularly 2 Corinthians 3:18, “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another”) — all wound around the gospel passage’s evocation of a crew of Gentiles trying to make their way to the incarnation of the God of Israel, not just approving and stating solidarity, but embarking on an arduous journey, offering precious gifts, and humbly acknowledging the belatedness of their affiliation to God.

All that’ll cook, once I get the beginning right.

Done, and Done

This afternoon, Margaret finished her grad school applications (in essence — there’s a tiny mop-up to be done, but she sent the packages and the ransom checks, so she’s through with the hard part). Much rejoicing and relief! We were amused that a couple of institutions asked for Margaret’s “electronic signature,” by which they meant “type your name here.” — an ultra-sophisticated digital identity authentication system, eh? Eric Norlin, do we have some potential clients for you!

Now, all we have to do is wait to hear back, and figure out what we’ll do if the best match involves a location further away than Hyde Park. In the meantime, though, if you have clout with the theology admissions committees at any of Margaret’s programs, now is the time to mention what a great catch she’d be.

Sermon Progress

At our last service at St. Luke’s for the time being, I jotted down a phrase for my sermon Sunday. Since we’ll be celebrating the sesquicentennial anniversary with readings for the Second Sunday of Christmas (including the Epiphany gospel), I inclined toward picking up the “Gentiles following a star” motif with our participation in the divine light. In a moment, I scribbled down the phrase, “reflecting the radiance of a star that leads on beyond us.” I don’t know that that will make it into the final version of the sermon, but it’s a start. Add in some of the elements of a sermon that I preached on 2 Easter here in Evanston last year, and I’ve got some good material toward the sermon for Christ Church.

I’m working on my article on postmodern biblical interpretation, too, but that’s coming more slowly even though it has to be longer and is due sooner.

Prosperity and Lack

Kevin “Top-Ten Blogspot Blogger” Marks, who keeps me alerted to developments involving my taste in British musicians of a certain generation, yesterday pointed me to a pleasant sketch of Jools Holland’s career and current activities. I’m glad he (Jools) is doing so well; I still wish for MP3's of his early solo work, though.

I’m Just Noticing

In the Sunday Styles section of today’s New York Times, Margaret noticed the announcement that this year’s 68th Debutante Cotillion in Manhattan had included the first African-American debutante in its history, Ms. Lauren Ashley Grayson. (This story seems to appear in the only column from the Sunday styles section that’s not online.) Your print edition should have a photo in section 9, page 5.

One could take this unheralded development in a number of ways; putting the best possible light on all of them, I suppose we should congratulate the Debutante Cotillion for noticing that not all the upper-class families in Manhattan are white.

A Week Hence

Not tomorrow, but the Sunday after, I’ll preach at Christ Church, New Haven. I already feel slightly anxious since (a) I have an article due to be written between now and then, (b) I served Christ Church as the Utility Infielder Priest about fifteen years ago and some people may remember me from then, (c) that particular Sunday begins Christ Church’s year of Sesquicentennial celebrations.

The readings offer many fitting points of departure: Jeremiah 31:7-14, Psalm 84, Ephesians 1:3-6 and 15-19a, and Matthew 2:1-12. With such an embarrassment of riches, I’ll surely squander several hours just fishing for a particular text to adopt as the reference point for the whole sermon.

At Enoch’s instigation, I try to blog my sermon ideas as I prepare for sermons; if that doesn’t begin to amount to doubling the time I spend on the sermon, I’ll keep blog readers in touch with my deliberations. That’s more than I can promise relative to the article (on postmodernism and biblical interpretation, of course — a topic about which I’ve written enough now that I’ve passed the point at which my exposition came fluently, and now am in a freshly aridified desolation of finding something to say that I haven’t already written elsewhere (I have a horror of repeating myself).

My Lurid Past

Mark D (in yesterday’s comments) and Micah (in chat) expressed surprise that I ever designed a typeface. Strange, improbable perhaps, but true.

I first worked on type in 1980, when I was working at a computer-graphics start-up in Pittsburgh; that’s where I first heard words like “kerning” and “anti-aliasing.” One of my jobs involved editing the bitmapped type that our software used. I still have nightmares about Cheltenham Bold 24, adding a row of pixels to a curve, taking the pixels out, adding pixels, deleting pixels (without a mouse, naturally, but with a flaky bit-tablet that had to be degaussed every couple of hours). Frustrating as the tools were, I fell in love with type there.

When I retreated from business and took up academic life, our first computer was a Kaypro II with daisy-wheel printer; I promptly bought another daisy-wheel with a more attractive typeface than the one that came with the printer. When I discovered type-editing tools on our Mac (our second computer, a Mac Plus), I began editing bitmaps again — first for Greek character sets, then for more satisfactory display typefaces.

In those days, before actual editors wanted me to write for publication, I put off chores, grading papers, committee work, whatever else I had to do, by designing typefaces. Some of my stuff still lingers in the less selective typeface libraries online. My payment yesterday was for Sinaiticus, a face designed to approximate the Greek uncial letters characteristic of the earliest majuscule manuscripts of the New Testament. I also produced a very crude rendition of Gill Sans, from a period (now unthinkable) when Gill Sans didn’ come licensed with every major software package. Probably the most remunerative typeface I built was more precisely a collection of sorts, a series of crosses and other theological symbols, Little Gidding (since re-worked, though not re-released, to include some glyphs specifically useful for planning worship — newly titled Liturgical Gidding).

I’m not even a good amateur type designer, though when I’m in a whimsical mood I play with others’ designs to add ligatures or other useful alternate glyphs to typefaces that lack characters I need. It’s fun, but I don’t have the hand with beziers that digital design requires. Nor, for that matter, do I have any real type design tools; whereas PC users have (or used to have) at least one highly functional freeware type design application, Mac uses have always had to rely on commercial wares. Fontographer hasn’t been updated in years, doesn’t run under OS X, and still costs more than I could possibly afford — even if I had time to use it. So for the time being, I’ve given up type design. I have way too much to do, to indulge that particular distraction.

It was fun, though. . . .

DRMA: "Dreamer" by Supertramp; "Let Down" by Radiohead; "Reno Dakota" by the Magnetic Fields; "The Beauty Of The Rain" by Dar Williams; "I'm a Soldier in the Army of the Lord" by Lyle Lovett; "Another First Kiss" by They Might Be Giants; "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin; "Doesn't Make It Alright" by the Specials; "32 Flavors" by Ani Difranco.

Well, I’ll Be!

I received a shareware payment in the mail today for a typeface I designed, oh, about twelve years ago. The internet: where the past sends you small checks at mysterious intervals.

Nothing So Strange

I have a hard time getting around to all the websites I enjoy, admire, or appreciate. It had been a while, for instance, since I had dropped by Aaron’s page; he doesn’t update that often, so I don’t visit that often. I do keep him in my aggregator of choice, NetNewsWire, so when he updated yesterday I was interested to read about a project he commended to our attention: the film Nothing So Strange, about which I’d heard nothing before.

OK, the project grabs my attention by depicting the assassination of Bill Gates in December, 1999.

More than that, though, the producer (a blogger!) released digital versions of the film online in two versions, a smaller (shorter download, less expensive) and a larger (longer download, more expensive) digital version, covered by Creative Commons license declared the footage itself Open Source (encouraging anyone else to remix their footage!), and available via BitPass (best known as a micropayments broker — at 3 and 5 dollars, this is more of a macropayment, but the principle is the same).

So: fact/fiction/narrative/visual hermeneutics problems, independent production, aware of the possibilities of online distribution, Creative Commons/Open Source principles, micropayments: what’s not to fascinate?

The producers might easily have elicited all my political sympathies while still making a superficial, amateurish, disappointing movie — but Nothing So Strange succeeds across the board. The digital version I bought (the larger version) had some digital artifacts or pixellation problems with rapid action onscreen, but that’s the closest I come to a complaint about the whole endeavor (well, that and I don’t like Lydian Roman, the typeface they use for the whole production). The filmmakers produced a tightly-plotted “documentary” with recognizable, multi-dimensional characters; they achieved a convincing imitation of journalistic style; and both the filmed narrative and the gesture of producing such a film raise terrific questions about truth-telling and representation.

The filmmakers earn our support just by attempting such a project. Their accomplishment practically demands attention from people who like movies, who think about online media, who wonder about truth and narrative, who believe in micropayments, who advocate fundamental changes in the ways creators interact with their audiences, who question archaic copyright restrictions. Thank you, Aaron, for noticing and flagging this; Bravo, Nothing So Strange! Buy it, watch it, remix it!

Happy Christmas

Tonight, dream of peace. Remember your dream. Live it — for your sake, for the sakes of all the people whom you love, all whom you encounter day by day, even for the sake of people whom you think don’t deserve it. Peace isn’t about deserts, it’s about grace, and the only way we can participate in a grace that amounts to more than “my side wins, neener neener” comes when we allow grace to define us. Receive grace; share grace.

That’s my Christmas wish for you.

Panic and Help

Well I blogged about “replacement panic” at just the same time Halley wrote up a wonderful related post over at misbehaving.net. Time to join the conversation over there, I suppose. In answer to Dave (I’m not sure whether it was Dave ”C & E,” “I used to be a blogger” Rogers, or Dave “Times Shadow” Rogers, who has hung up his blog-pen for now) Rogers: by “tenor” of our interactions, I mean the felt character of those interactions, the texture of them. By the possessive pronoun “our,” I meant “we, the people who talk about things like online interactions, their perils and benefits” (thanks for calling me on that!). The universe of interactions my “all” encompassed included at least “all the interactions among us, and probably all our other interactions as well.” The “shift”to which I advert involves an alteration in interactions that accompanies the addition of a quality of relatedness (the online aspect) that is always in play, whether actively or not. It’s already affecting our interactions, and will continue to affect them to an increasing extent, whether obviously or subtly. Same shift, but with different textures of apparent-ness, and probably with changing characteristics (then in what sense is it “the same”? Good question. It’s “the same” insofar as it was precipitated by the amplification of the extent to which we interact digitally, I think). Yes indeed, I would always expect people to have mixed degrees of exhilaration and apprehension about modulating into a more-comprehensively digital mode of interaction. Whew!

And Dorothea, I’m no one to comment on Martin Buber either.

And Peter, you’e quite right — and children today (in my experience) do tend to know less about calculating, most people telephone more often than visit (except at my office), watch TV more than read or play outside. None of these activities has ceased, though; we’ve adjusted to a different balance, and part of that adjustment may involve resistance to the change (our family doesn’t watch TV, for instance, and reads more, although the younger generation isn’t much on calculating). That’s why I use both words in “replacement panic”: “eplacement,“ because of the misplaced fear that physical interaction will disappear, and “panic” because it involves a loss of the historical perspective you so helpfully provide.

With regard to my cry for help, I haven’t followed up the second round of J.P. and Wes’s advice, since Margaret’s iBook came back yesterday. I do want to get that Lombard wireless-ed, though, since (a) I bought the card, and (b) it would be a lot more useful if it were functional as a wireless outpost than it is as a decorative motif sitting on the cassette player.

O, Canada!?

Jordon Cooper calls our attention to the follies of humor-impaired, tone-deaf to the melodies of civil liberties, cowardly leadership of Canada’s Liberal Party — a partial disincentive for those of us whose internal compass points northward when we read the headlines from Washington D.C.

O, Washington

Let’s just note for the record that although we have a security spectrum that ranges from blue through green, yellow, orange, to red, the Department of Homeland Security has actually used only yellow and orange through the twenty-one months since the Bush administration implemented the system. Moreover, although the security wonks evidently have reason to suspect that al-Qaeda operatives may be planning once to use airplanes to attack targets in urban and rural locations (Margaret and I imagined the “attack a tiny, unguarded site to terrorize the whole nation” plan ages ago), Tom Ridge urges travelers not to change their holiday plans (except, presumably, to allow for longer lines at airports).

Question: What is the actual function of raising the Terror Threat Alert color under these circumstances, with these instructions to the public?

I resist cynicism, but the whole deal smells to me a great deal as though the Terror Threat Alert serves mostly to cover the posteriors of administrators in case a terrorist succeeds. That’s why the Alert color can’t go below yellow, and is unlikely to go above orange: letting the color slip below yellow constitutes too great a risk if a terrorist were to pull off an attack; letting the color rise above orange risks raising expectations that the administration disclose or foil an actual plot.

In the meantime, the U.S. government’s foreign policies have done nothing to quell terrorist activity, but have aggravated the grievances that embolden sane men and women to take suicidally extreme actions. How many billions have been spent, how many lives lost, in responding to an initial act of violence by raising the stakes of violence? Had those resources been devoted to the well-being of the world’s needy and disease-haunted billions, it would be a great deal harder to conjure a picture of the U.S. as a greedy, murderous international predator. That wouldn’t eliminate the threat of terrorism — nothing will, including a color-coded security system — but it would diminish the evidence in favor of terrorists’ hostile portrayals of the U.S. Instead, the Halliburton administration has in almost every way possible fulfilled the grimmest allegations made by desperate adversaries, waging two wars whose civilian casualties far outnumber deaths caused by terrorists, botching the conclusions of both wars (letting Osama escape in Afghanistan, and grossly miscalculating the way the Iraq conquest would play out), lying to the U.S. public about the basis for one of these wars, and directing the spoils of war to highly-connected corporate interests.

But at least we have color codes.

Another Cry for Help

I’m trying to fix up Margaret with my old Lombard while her iBook rests in Apple’s recovery room. It works OK so long as it’s plugged in — dead battery, sigh — but I can’t get it online with the Lucent WaveLan Silver card I have. I tried the AirPort software that comes with System 9 (which the Lombard is still using); I’ve tried IOXperts’ 802.11b driver, which recognizes the base station but won't connect through the base station to the internet. I’ve sent them a note asking for help, but would also welcome geeky feedback from anyone else who has a guess at what might be going on.

Replacement Panic

I’ve run into replacement panic on a couple of occasions recently, and since I have grading to finish, a major article and a major sermon to prepare in the next two weeks, I figured I’d open up a major blog topic.

“Replacement panic” is the expression I started using back at the Digital Genres conference that Alex Golub arranged (by the way, Alex, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette thinks that PNG is a near-perfect place for a vacation). I use “replacement panic” to refer to the fear — frequently a spontaneous reaction to positive assessments of online technology — that digital media will supplant physical interactions.

I should agree at the outset that replacement panic doesn’t arise out of nowhere. some of the techno-romantics have heralded the advent of a dsay when our memories will be downloadable to hard drives, our thoughts presumably assisted by sophisticated applications, our sensations provided by elaborate simulation algorithms. David Weinberger has made a small campaign against such illusions, but they nonetheless play loud in mass media and (hence) the popular imagination.

At the same time, physical interaction won’t just go away. The people I know who seem to spend the most time online (starting with Josiah, but think of David Weinberger, Meg Hourihan, Doc, Chris Pirillo, Denise Howell) also spend lots of time in physical interaction with people. If anything, the way that online interaction permits a vehicle for modulated, careful interaction permits increased sociality for introverted people who might otherwise not venture out at all.

Before we succumb to replacement panic, we ought to look closely at the characteristics of our physical interactions, and how they’ve changed over time. Would we suggest that the class-determined interactions of Upstairs, Downstairs-era Britain, the physical-world interactions of slave-owners and their chattel, were fully authentic, present, relationships? Of course not; but one problem with replacement panic lies in its appeal to an unarticulated, illusory ideal speech situation in which everyone is present, everyone is candid, everyone is unclothed with mediating signifiers or modifiers that might distort speech. That speech situation has never existed, can never exist, and rests on pernicious assumptions about truth and the authenticity of communication. Nonetheless, the sponsors of replacement panic argue as though we all know of a situation for communication that’s uncontaminated by mediations (such as digital media), social determination (nobody say “power laws”), or class-, race-, or gender-based privilege. We don’t know of any such place — but if we did, my guess is that it would look a lot like the internet.

The point of online interaction is not that it will replace physical interaction, but that the tenor of all our interactions will shift, has already shifted, and that unnerves some people as it exhilarates others. We’re all dealing with the change, though, in our physical presence as in our online [self]-representations, and neither online interaction nor physical interaction will go away.

Hello, Necessity?

Margaret says, “They ought to invent a way of doing the [New York Times Magazine Sunday] crossword puzzle while under the blankets. That would be a big life improvement.”

Home Again

Safely, again. We drove from Pittsburgh to Columbus, where we picked up our eldest child (back from Rochester for Christmas vacation), then rolled north enjoying three-part conversational harmony (with Nate’s choice of music) all the way to Chicago. He’s great, and we’re very proud of him.

My dad got up early to see us off. We had some coffee and orange juice, toast and eggs; he gave me some sage advice about starting a stretching regimen to improve my muscle tone; we took some pictures and hugged him and Susan goodbye. I hope he gets some rest between now and Wednesday, when my sister Holly arrives. Urge him as we might to take it easy, he was determined to spend a fair amount of time with us, and I’m sure it must be exhausting. Heavens, I was tired, and I hadn’t just had an abdominal aortic aneurysm (or three) repaired. We’ll keep Don and Susan in our prayers, and we thank you-all (I should say “youns,” since they’re in Pittsburgh) for your concern.

He’s Getting Better

We spent the day with Dad (mostly); he walked downstairs on his own power three times, and ate a hearty dinner with us. We exchanged presents, talked a lot, and gave him a little space. The interval that he set aside for his nap coincided perfectly with Duke’s rout of Texas, which was an added treat for me (I haven’t seena Duke game in couple of years). He’s over-exerting, but on the whole he seems to be pretty hardy.

Rites of Transition

Congratulations today to Nathan Weinberger, to takes on the yoke of the Torah; to Heather, who was ordained to the diaconate on Thursday; to Mark, Fran, Lisa, Carolyn, George, Kara — anyone else? I don’t remember — who are being ordained to the priesthood today.

Long Day to Pittsburgh

We drove through two or three snowstorms, picked up some Chinese food in Squirrel Hill, and stopped by my Dad’s house. He’s looking very well — I wouldn’t have guessed anyone would look that good a week after major surgery.

Now Margaret and I have returned downtown to the Hilton, which has free wireless in the room, which I hope balances out the nuisance of a decrepit parking garage a block away. I’ve never been up in the Hilton before; I have vivid memories of looking up at the Hilton from Point State Park, from civil rights and peace rallies, from concerts in the park, fireworks displays, and so on. Now I’m on the twenty-first floor looking down at the Point, in a New-York-size hotel room. With Margaret, of course.

And Another Thing

While I was basking in sunny Pasadena, Mark called this development to my attention. . . .

Two Points

Point One: A former student of mine, David Reed, now studying for his doctorate in Toronto, emailed me the following story: “Yesterday I went to order one of your books from Amazon.com.  I believe it was Making Sense of New Testament Theology.  As you probably know, Amazon tells you other books people have purchased along with the book you are about to buy.  Did you know that one of the books most often associated with your Making Sense of New Testament Theology is Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life? ”

Now, it is indeed hard for me to account for that confluence of interests, but I say, “If they’re buying my book, then there must be something to that Rick Warren guy.” But I add the link to this site (hat tip to Jordon Cooper).

Point Two: Trevor said I had to blog this picture, so I will.

Home

Safely. I’ll write tomorrow.

On My Way Home

All finished up today, and packing, and trying to decide what reading (and grading) material should accompany me homeward in my carry-on, and what should be checked. This has led me several times to imagine the consequences of a catastrophic plane crash involving a professor who’s carrying final exams: does everyone pass? Are there students somewhere offering ambivalent prayers about my safety?

My dad is in a regular hospital room. It’s not clear whether he’ll be home by the time we visit next weekend, but my sister says his voice is getting stronger (I’ll call him in a little while). Margaret’s iBook is still hosed; time for me to come home and find out whether my techno-macho enables me to retrieve her personal files from the hard drive before we send it off for a new motherboard.

Life goes on.

Long Day

The longest part of the day came for the two on-camera hours. Having lived through the two-hour taping, I admit only a faint interest in seeing the twenty-minute edited product; any important words I might have said stand little chance of correlating with the production crew’s sense of what they want to display to viewers. This, of course, is the way of the media world; I knew that going in. I participated without a vivid expectation that the producers would ultimately sustain the focus of a message that diverges from the messages they quite reasonably anticipated. And one-fifth of a twenty-minute panel doesn’t constitute much time to get across a nuanced version of an unfamiliar possible way to think about the Bible.

I should emphasize that the production crew has been tremendously cordial, friendly, attentive, accommodating. It almost makes one believe that they really think you are what they call you: “talent.” I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with them, every minute, from Sonya who applied my make-up (“so you’ll look more Californian, not so pale”) to Sean and Austin and Tom and Susan and Elaine and Rosa Lee and of course Jonathan. They’re terrific, and bless them for the effort they’re putting into this project.

It would be a lovely surprise if I sound, on the video tape, like the kind of theologian I try to make myself when somebody else isn’t producing me; and creation is full of surprises. If, however, I sound like someone else — someone more predictable, with an off-the-shelf story of how we might interpret the Bible, I sensed it coming, I cooperated (knowing full well that these circumstances wouldn’t bend to accommodate the terms of my preference for self-presentation).

Three New Cards

I added three Early Church History Cards this morning: Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Athanasius.

Three Pancakes, Two Eggs, and One Terrific Conversation

As I was sleeping late in my idiosyncratic way (turn on a news station, NPR or CNN, and drift in and out of sleep as droning voices waft over and around you), the phone rang and Michael, suggested that we have breakfast together. I had talked with him last night on Joi Ito’s IRC channel, and thought we probably wouldn’t have a chance to connect — but Michael picked me up and we had a long, rambling breakfast conversation at IHOP.

He, working at Disney, and I, working for the church, had a lot to exchange about tradition, continuity, and change. I’ll be thinking along with him, enriched and provoked by his ideas, for a long time — and we demonstrated yet again that online acquaintance and friendship are no less “real” than their physical-world counterparts.

Hooray for Hollywood

Or Pasadena, at least.

My plane travel went very well, Chicago to Denver, Denver to Burbank, connections on time and no lost bags. A friendly volunteer picked me up at the airport and whisked me to the hotel right away, with instructions to change and walk around the corner to the church right away for my taped interview.

Being an obedient soul, I followed instructions and showed up at the church after only the briefest delay to check in, wash up, and change out of travel clothes — then I waited for two hours for my interview. As a side benefit, though, I had two hours to get acquainted with some of the people working on the video project, and to eat the snack mix and drink Coke. When the interview room was finally ready for me, they ushered me in and asked me to sit there for a while as a stand-in for myself, while they moved around the decor to fit my interview. This involved changing the drape behind me (“I know we wanted it to look ‘Charlie Rose,’ but that’s just too dark.” “What about purple?” “Let’s just use the wood panelling behind him. . . .” and so on, indefinitely), the lighting (several times), the furnishings on the table that would be visible behind me (candles, cross, stoles, chalice and paten vested, chalice and paten side by side, chalice alone, (“It looks too lonely”), chalice and paten side by side again, only with a purificator draped over the chalice), the lighting again now that we knew what would be on the table behind me, and the position of the interviewer.

We did finally get to the interview part. During one of the delays, I asked the interviewer if she knew what she would be asking me, and she showed me her list of questions. I was glad to have asked, since they were’t questions I’d have done well at answering without some advance time for thinking (“What affect has being a Christian had on your life?” “What does it feel like when you celebrate the Eucharist?” “What would you say to people who might be Episcopalians out of habit, but who really don’t know why they come to church?”). Then — in an inspired moment of double-quality foresight — I asked what length answer she wanted, whether a story, a reflection, a ramble. . . and she said, “Thirty seconds. Maybe a minute.” This saved us a lot of frustration, as I was preparing my customary long wind-up for all the questions.

We talked through the interview, and although I disobeyed her expllicit instruction not to move (if you’ve seen me preach or teach, you can imagine how likely “not moving”was), everyone said it was fantastic, it was perfect, it was great, a perfect start for the taping. That would have made me feel better if I hadn’t heard that The Hulk was fantastic, great, perfect, before it was released. I think it was Hollywood-ese for “If we’re lucky, we can use a few seconds of it.”

Then we went to the rehearsal room to go over the spontaneous, lively, after-dinner discussion we’re supposed to simulate tomorrow at about 1:00. The production staff sat around us, stage-whispering helpful advice, and at one point even holding up a cue card for me. Our discussion group involves some pretty pronounced differences over theory-of-interpretation issues, and I’m not allowed to get all down-and-dirty Derridean on anyone because that might scare people away from the church (even more than seeing me in an outreach video would in the first place). We’ll see how gracefully I negotiate the complications of the discussion tomorrow.

Now, I’ll just collapse in the fluffy bed and watch mindless television. I woke up at 5:00 AM Central, it’s now 7:30 Pacific, and I’ve been going-going-going all day. It’s definitely time for me to collapse in a heap.

Oh, and Margaret’s iBook died (so that David Weinberger could leave a comment suggesting that she get a nice reliable Dell). Or, to be more precise (as Billy Crystal wouild say), it’s mostly dead. Si miracled it into yielding a few essential files, so Margaret’s intellectual history and grad-school application process aren’t totally nuked, but she’s feeling edgy about letting her computer go before her applications are finished.

No news about Dad today, so we figure he’ doing well, and church did not get any worse. Now, I really am stopping.

Haunted

In my travels today, I have so far seen two three copies of The da Vinci Code — and I certainly wasn’t looking out for it. I have the grim feeling that I may rack up an depressingly high total before I get back to Evanston.

Before I Fly

Late word from Pittsburgh is that my Dad is out of ICU/Recovery, in a regular ICU room. He’s doing well — off breathing tube — but still on a feeding tube, and still with an epidural. He’ll be getting home about the time we roll in to visit next weekend. Everyone else seems to be bearing up fine, too.

Take care, and I’ll try to look in from Pasadena.

Hi, Neighbor!

I stopped in at the Blogging Ecosystem a few minutes ago, to discover that I’ve attained the status of a “Marauding Marsupial” — an altogether rapid evolution from my long-term residency as something more on the order of a paramecium or hydra. this lends credence either to punctuated equilibrium, or to divine intervention, and I won’t lobby for which of the two.

But the point of mentioning all this is that this, the number 612 weblog (our motto: “We tried harder for a while, but nobody noticed, so we’re just slacking off like everyone else south of Instapundit, Josh Marshall, boing boing, and Volokh”), landed right next door to number 611, Jeneane Sessum. So I’m thinking maybe we should form a partnership, buy out 610 and 613, put up a nice garden, a hedge (I’m a sucker for juniper), and start a hangout for like-minded bloggers. What do you say?

Nicene Creed Request

A former student of mine (Hi, Tim!), now a pastor (in Florida, Tim?), sent me an email message this afternoon asking if I had access to the ttext of the Nicene Creed in Greek. Well, duh! Of course I did; but it was in one of the proprietary typeface layouts that were foisted on us in the pre-Unicode era. So — having nothing to do other than grade exams, evaluate papers, pack for California, attend to my family, and eat dinner politely — I went through and re-entered the text as Unicode. Use at your own peril; I haven’t had enough time to give it a good proofreading.

I used Gentium, a Unicode typeface developed by Victor Gaultney (I could have sworn I had a Greek student named “Victor Gaultney,” too, but if so it evidently wasn’t this Victor) of the Summer Institute of Linguistics; I think many modern default browser typefaces recognize Unicode these days, but go get Gentium (roman and italic) anyway. It’s free and it’s handsome. I’ll paste in the Creed below.

??? ??? ?? ?????? ?? ?????, ?? ??????, ?? ????????,
?? ?? ??? ?????? ?????????????
?? ??? ????? ??? ??? ????????????????? ??? ??????????????,
?? ??????? ??? ??? ????????.
??? ????, ?????, ????????? ??? ??????????? ?????????.
??????? ?? ???????? ??? ?????? ????????.
???????? ????????? ??????, ??? ???? ??? ????????? ??????.

[Later] Well, that’s a sad failure. Here’s an RTF file, with the Unicode version of the text. It comes up nicely in Safari — I don’t know about other browsers.

Remote Intelligence

I’ll be operating out of downtown Pasadena for the next three days, and my advance scout indicates that there’s no broadband at the hotel, nor (apparently) at All Saints church where they’ll be shooting the video. Question: Is there a good [free] internet café within a short walk of the hotel and church? Also, the production company that’ll be shooting the video decided not to cover my dinner costs, so I’ll be looking for really cheap vegetarian food (or fasting in the evenings). Any Pasadenian suggestions?

Last Day of Term Sermon

I had planned to finish up the sermon this morning, looking forward to a relatively wide span of time between my first cup of coffee (time before coffee is not calculated as “awake”) and morning mass. True, I had a conference call scheduled for mid-morning, but it was a committee meeting that’s always pretty perfunctory. No problem.

No problem, except that this morning’s call was not perfunctory, that some misguided people actually thought that the purpose of the meeting was to deliberate (can you imagine?), and I watched with something like panic as the minutes ticked down to 11:00. I tried writing a couple of sentences while I said inarticulate “Uh-huh”s into the phone, but that was useless. The call finally ended at about five of eleven, with me needing a closing paragraph. I ran a little late (I was supposed to be in the sacristy at eleven, mass starting at quarter after), made it on time, and preached the sermon, pretty much as follows.

It’s a Seabury sermon, so I’m supposed to stay within five minutesw (and I’m a slow speaker); if I’d had more time I would have tried to develop the concomitant point that God’s love does not abandon discernment or truth even as it embraces instantiations of the truth that look unlikely, even impossible, to us. Before a God who is both Love and Truth, we must continue to seek the Truth and commend it to our companions — but in our reverence for the God for whom “mercy triumphs over judgment,” we should practice always a patience and humility grounded not in “niceness” or “reticence about the truth,” but in honest caution about venturing to speak words bigger than we are.

Anderson Chapel of St. John the Divine, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary

Isaiah 48:17-19/Ps 1/Matthew 11:16-19 December 12, 2003

+

Four days ago, I stood at the front of the refectory and reminded my colleagues in Early Church History class that Benedict of Nursia regarded the ultimate discipline in monastic life to derive from living in community, with the obligations and frustrations that pertain to it. Oh, sure, God calls some Benedictines to anchoritic life, but they should wait until after they’ve learned to get along in a common religious life. Shared lodgings, shared chores, shared labor, shared worship challenge us to subordinate our sense of the way things should be done, to the interests of our (ahem) less-insightful sisters and brothers. When we understand the right ways so well, few things will frustrate us so much as those other people who don’t. One of the most severe temptations in church leaders’ lives comes from the propensity to blame other people when they don’t do things our way, when they fail to live up to our expectations, often our unspoken expectations. “I piped, but you didn’t dance; I wailed, and you didn’t mourn.” Don’t you people know how to live in religious community?
Sometimes we ask with Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along?” Maybe we can, maybe we get to that step one day – but ain’t no just about it. Getting along, even bare-minimum getting along, poses a deep spiritual challenge to disciples who’ve spent their lives absorbing some confusing, con?icting signals about self-assertion and self-denial.
In the midst of hesitations about whether on one hand we should make our voice heard, our will felt, or on the other hand should keep quiet and not make a fuss, Jesus comes and compares us to sulky children. Where we’re tempted to judge the world by our standards, Jesus reminds us that it’s the Lord our God who leads us in the way we should go. And our God is a God of grace, a God whose loving mercy so exceeds our faintest echo of that prodigious abundance that we only catch momentary glimpses of that love. We sometimes can’t help but laugh along with our sisters and brothers, in joy that bursts out, overpowers our self-control (although Benedict wasn’t so keen on that). Sometimes love touches us at a physical or a spiritual depth that resonates with the notes of a divine love that reaches beyond mortality. And such hints as these bespeak the magnitude of God’s joy at inviting a variegated, dissonant throng of souls into a communion whose harmony God alone could arrange.
Faced with God’s grandeur, we do well to hesitate before we dictate the terms of who dances when, or who mourns how – not because God doesn’t care nor because we shouldn’t care, but because we have a demonstrably miserable track record of ascertaining other people’s motives and how God is working in their lives. Where our urge to scold arises, the God of grace loves what we offer, loves different ways of worship, loves different patterns of living, loves Quincy and Newark. With a breadth of blessing unknown to us, God draws us all toward the truth – and loves us as we struggle to figure out among ourselves what that amounts to.
As this generation, we caterwaul and cavil over how best to embody the truth that attracts and escapes us all; but we come together as a community, a communion, in the inextinguishable hope for the day on which we see as God sees, when at last we understand one another, when we truly recognize our own sin, when we are drawn out of our selves perfectly to love our sisters and brothers . We await that day in hope, but we begin to participate in God’s vision today: sharing our lives, sharing God’s wisdom, sharing the dancing and mourning of the Body of Christ.

Amen

Weinberger’s Anglican Postism

David Weinberger yesterday posted an appreciative review of Anthony Trollope’s The Warden over at Blogcritics. I’d say it reflects on the complexity (rather than inadequacy”) of principle as a guide for moral action, but it’s a tremendous treat to see David commending one of the charter novels of Anglican identity. Will he go on to Barchester Towers next?

Sometimes students who are just coming over to the Anglican communion ask me if there are some books they should read to imbue them a duly Anglican sensibility. They were expecting me to say something such as Moorman’s History of the Church in England, or Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, or an anthology of theological gobbets. Instead, I urge them to read Trollope and Sterne, Donne, Swift, Herbert, and Newman. The instruction in doctrine that the doctors inculcate may convey some cognitive apprehension of “things Anglicans have done, said and believed,” but the truer sense of an Anglican way will derive from these fictive, poetic, autobiographical reflections on the vita anglicana.

Sermon Update

I’ve been a wee bit distracted, distractable, this evening, and I’ve received some church-related phone calls and email. But I am in fact working on the sermon. It’s for Seabury, so it’s short, thank heaven.

The readings are Isaiah 48:19-19, Psalm 1, and Matthew 11:16-19. I’ll concentrate on the evocative phrase from Matthew: this generation is “like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, ‘We playued the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’” I’ll try to get at the ways in whcih we replicate the children’s propensity to define our terms for God’s dealing with us, and then to project those onto people around us: “Hey, what are you doing not dancing?”

The God who summons us out of passing judgment doesn’t tell us, “anything whatsoever is OK.” There’s no need to dwell on news headlines about cannibalism to register that some acts don’t accord with the ways of a God of grace and peace. But God has been promising all along that God will sort those things out, God will make clear who’s been on base and whose been off. Not me. Not you. And the itchy problem with leaving the judging to God is that God will, assuredly, welcome and forgive a whole lot more than we expect or would like. Mercy surpasses judgment.

At least, that’s what I think it’ll be like when I preach it tomorrow.

Hospital Update

Dad got through surgery fine. He's in ICU for the first part of his recovery. Thanks for your prayers — feel free to keep them coming. . . .

Hot Off the . . . Whatever

In response to the overwhelming demand — well, you can read the comments and judge for yourself — I went ahead and posted a beta version of our first Theology Card at the Disseminary: St. Anthony of the Desert. For the time being, I’ll post separate 1-up and 6-up PDFs. If we get better advice, we’ll change the set-up, but that’ll be it for now.

It’s 4:00 Central, 5:00 Eastern, no word from my dad’s hospital, which is good, I guess.

Online Candle

My Dad undergoes thoracic surgery today to repair an aortal aneurysm. It’s not a distinctively perilous operation — they do a lot of these, I gather — but on a scale of surgeries, it’s closer to the “risky” than my hernia was. He’s scheduled for the afternoon, from about 1:00 to 5:00 or 6:00, I guess; if you have a spare prayer lying around, he’s worth it.

Formats, Advice, Etc.

In a short while, I’ll upload a number of Early Church History Trading Cards to the Disseminary web site. The question is, how ought I format them? The simplest easy (non-archival, irritate-Dorothea) answer would be just to upload PDFs — but even that entails complications, since the cards don’t fit precisely into any “normal” format. I could upload the PDF of a single card-and-back unit, and let downloaders — the millions* who’ve been waiting with bated breath for their chance to have Church History trading cards — work out the printing problems. Would they be able to print multiple copies on a single sheet of 8.5 × 11 Bristol board? Or should I make the PDF itself an 8.5 × 11 size, requiring an interested downloader to print or look at multiple copies of the same card?

And what about an XML framework? I’m sure there must be such a thing available or imaginable. Should the Disseminary commission Dorothea to generate a schema and DTD for online trading cards?

And why am I worrying about this, when I should be recording my evaluations of the most recent set of student papers?

*Actually, I do get regular requests for these from alums who got them in one of my classes, or from people who’ve heard about them from alums. So there!

Missing Family Jools

Bad news on the music front:

Dear Dr. Adam, Thanks you for your email.

Neither of these recordings are available on digital media and I cannot
see it happening in the near (or for that matter distant) future.

We're still searching for the original tapes.

Sorry not to be more helpful.

Regards
PL

Possibilities

I was idly exploring the Oxford University website when I came across an opportunity too good for Chris Locke to ignore. Who, after all, could rival Chris as a candidate for the L’Oréal Professorship of Marketing at the Saïd Business School of Oxford? The prospect makes my nose bleed.

Memo to Self

I’m preaching at Seabury’s 11:15 service Friday. I’ll try to work on the sermon online, but mostly I’ll try to remember that I actually will be preaching — this is so tightly-stuffed a week that I’m liable to forget altogether.

How Many Degrees?

“Isn’t it great how the internet works?” asked Margaret as she read an email message from Kevin Marks over my shoulder (don’t email me about what you’re giving her for Christmas, or at least put a warning in the subject line). Kevin seems to know someone who knows someone who may be able to alleviate my vintage-Jools-Holland withdrawal pangs. Tell Jools I saw him with Squeeze in Portland, Maine in 1979? touring behind Cool for Cats (when much of the set still relied on material from their first album).

[Later]: By the way, if you haven’t visited Shannon Campbell’s site and downloaded freely from her generous supply of music, you’re seriously missing out. “Dreaming of Violets” (the Scott Andrew LePera collaboration version, near the bottom of the page as it’s presently configured) is part of my life’s aural background, now, and her recent tribute to Ben and Mena, “Your Own Dot Org,” is terrific too. But especially “Dreaming of Violets.”

I’ve missed some recent additions, so I have to download them now. Then go to Mass.

Thanks For the Memories

While I’m talking about David Weinberger behind his back, I owe him a thank-you for the wonderful photos of the aftereffects of the New England blizzard. Despite Chicago’s reputation for cold and snow — and despite the historic December a few years back, in which we had sub-freezing temperatures almost every hour of the month, and copious snow on the ground — we’re having a fairly mild December, and Pippa (and Margaret too, I expect) miss the snow. Pip especially loved the picture of where David’s car would have been visible.

Two-Horse Race

Since everyone comes here to find out the latest on politics. . . no, but seriously, David Weinberger and our numerous other friends in the Dean campaign (Betsy, Britt, Halley, whom am I leaving out?) must be pretty elated right about now.

I remember being politically engaged in third-party politics a few aeons ago, and any little good news would thrill us. We never got close to winning a primary, much less a nomination or the Presidency; if we could be excited that Our Hero was mentioned in a single news story, how much bigger the rush that David et al. are riding now that the Big Media have assigned the Democratic nomination to Howard Dean? Even Molly Ivins has moved into DeanSpace. (How does DeanSpace have a sweet little favicon, but BlogForAmerica doesn’t? And isn’t it convenient that “Dean” only has four letters, so you can fit it onto a favicon? “Lieberman” would be in trouble, even if you spelled it without vowels. And how did it happen that in the twenty-first century, only guys with four-letter names can be major-party nominees? If I were Carol Moseley Braun, I might look into losing a letter to gain a nomination.)

Congratulations, friends, and I hope that all your action plans pan out; the world will be a better place for your work and your ideals (either way). I don’t have that civic spirit any more, but I love to see it radiate from people who really care about the Dean campaign. I’d rather vote for David for president — but then, his last name has too many letters. If it has to be one of the four-letter guys, I hope it’s Dean, and I hope that he doesn’t let you down.

Say, does Howard have theme music yet? ’Cause the other day I was listening to “Let It Be Me,” from the Indigo Girls’ Rites of Passage album, and it sounds like a promising possibility. It’s positive, it’s anti-war and anti-domination, it’s harmonious (no embarrassing scenes of Howard playing air guitar along with Rage Against the Machine), it’s by a talented, politically-progressive, gay, articulate, spiritually-attuned team. “Turning off a light switch is their only power/when we stand like spotlights in a mighty tower. . . .”

Thanks and Regrets

I had hoped someone would tell me where to find digital versions of recordings by Jools Holland, but for some reason everyone wanted to talk church today.

I don’t have much to add after a day’s reflection, emails, and conversations. For now, St. Luke’s isn’t a place where I can make a difference for the good, as far as I can tell. Were I to say much more — and I’m sorry to be reticent, Timothy, but the riptide of conflicting obligations leaves me little room for expatiating on the situation — I’d surely transgress against one or another friend to whom I owe patience and respect.

I hope and pray for all the best for St. Luke’s. I just don’t think there’s a way forward in which I can contribute to that recovery under present circumstances.

More Missing

Last week, I noted that I wished I could hear Tom Robinson singing “1967 (So Long Ago)”; this week I’ve particularly missed our Jools Holland recordings, records he made before his rise to prominence as a TV presenter in Britain. Jools Holland and the Millionaires was a family favorite (though the critics received it with diffidence), and Jools Holland Meets Rock’A’Boogie Billy likewise.

So far as I can tell, they’ve never even been released on digital media.

Sandals and Dust

I had a really bad day at church today. In fact, the precipitating events all took place this morning, but they made the whole day bad.

Over the past years (including some time I was serving as the priest overseeing the parish, but mostly observing on the sidelines and lending a hand when asked), I’ve worked hard top show respect for the consciences of people who advocated various courses of action. Some of those courses seem misguided to me, but I committed myself to assuming people were acting in good faith with good intentions, so that we could cooperate. I tried to temper my candor about what seemed wise and fair, with respect for those whose perspectives diverged from mine. And in church, as sometimes online, I’ve gotten heat for compromising — for declining to buy into the premise that I had to fall in with a side, a party. I’ve defended people I disagreed with, in the name of trying to sustain progress toward a harmonious outcome of acrimonious strife.

This morning, I felt that somebody else’s obviously partisan stance put me in the position of saying nothing (thus tacitly allowing myself to be identified with their partisanship), or repudiating that stance — in the middle of the liturgy. Sorry; putting people in impossible situations such as that just is not on.

Whatever the specific outcome of today’s debacle, it’s pretty clear that I don’t belong anywhere near the middle of decision-making or public leadership at St. Luke’s. Those who have a heart for manipulation and blind factionalism will have to sort things out for themselves.

By Title

Part of going back through my email inbox involves finding things about which I said to myself, “I’ve got to blog that. Someday.” Plus, things I just noticed today.

• A month ago, Jospeh Zitt emailed David Weinberger and me to tip us off to the new online edition of the Zohar, the genre-defying medieval mystical Judaic tract. It's a scholarly effort from Stanford University Press, it’s online in the Aramaic critical edition — though the press is withholding the English translation, and the pages are set up in frames. Still, a wonderful resource and many thanks to Joseph for pointing it out (here he thought I would never pick up the link!).
• Doc was right, and is right, about Napster and radio, and about blogs and print media. Something fundamental has changed, and aggrieved execs can moan all day about preserving the law as it emerged under radically different social, industrial, and economic conditions — but those conditions don’t obtain, those laws will work only at the cost of hog-tying emergent technologies (at a time when the U.S. economy is already faltering and hesitant), and the way forward will ultimately be shown by people with the foresight and willingness to implement a system that derives its architecture and rationale from the circumstances of digital production.
• Bob Carlton pointed me to a site of parodies of Anglican hymnody. . . .
• A while back I pointed away to The Right Christians; now I need to remind anyone interested that a while back, Chris Tessone shifted gears from linguablogging to theologoblogging.
• We’re making plane reservations for our trip to New Haven for the 4th, and Margaret asked me, “What does it say about us that we’re joyously arranging a January plane trip away, not to Aruba, not to Florida, not to Disney World, but to New Haven, where it’ll be cold and gray and slushy?” It says that (a) we’ in love and will happily go almost anywhere together, (b) we’ll have a chance to visit with my cousin Daniel, and (c) New Haven was a very very important part of our lives getting to today
• St. Luke’s has me sympathizing with what Harrison Ford said: “I’m getting a very bad feeling about this. . . .”
• Not only did the elusive Tom Matrullo blog today, he wrote a very lovely piece about my busy Thursday. I bloghop not so much by way of my blogroll as by way of my bookmarks, of which I keep three folders dedicated to the weblogs I visit. Tom still holds a place of honor near the top of the “every day” folder, as I always look forward to more of his wisdom. He was right about Napster too, after all.
• I got as far back into my email box as October. We will choose to look upon that as success.

Weekend Fun

Let’s see if I can clear out my email in-box today. That would be fun!

Cold News?

Euan sent me to it; I sent Margaret and Pippa and Si to it; and Pippa and Margaret have been wreaking snow-globe havoc ever since.

No News

So, various audiences around the world have seen The Return of the King — but where are the reviews? I don’t expect them to alter my plan to see the movie, but it seems odd that no one has written out their response to the concluding segment of the trilogy.

[Later] Well, there weren’t any last time I checked. Some now.

The Good News

Tonight Margaret and Pippa and I ventured forth into the realm of live theater, and had a great time. The troupe performed You Can’t Take It With You, and we laughed and laughed. The whole experience was enhanced by the fact that our man Si was playing the Edward Arnold role as Anthony Kirby. (The whole production was young people of various ages from an acting class.)

Margaret and I were in various school and youth group plays, and none of them was a patch on this. The cast worked well together as a group (their on-stage role as a “family” reflected a genuine capacity for the people involved to work together effectively); they held out promise for at least certain circles of the coming generation in U.S. culture; and most delightful, all the kids in the casta and crew are home-schooled.

If you’re around Chicagoland, and you have tomorrow night free, and you can get to the Edge of the Woods Theater School at Edgebrook Community Church (N Loleta), it really is worth the visit. It’s free, it’s amusing, and that thin guy in the pinstripe suit is not only good-looking and articulate — he’s our boy!

The Bad News

It hasn’t gone away yet.

Actually, the article itself isn’t that bad, apart from lending even the faintest credence to Brown’s groundless fantasies; it’s the occasion of the article that sets my teeth on edge. Still, I got a request yesterday to speak at another public forum on that book, so (as Richard Kieckhefer observed this morning over coffee) after years of study and scholarly writing, my fifteen minutes of fame may come down to being a regional antagonist to a mediocre novelist.

— Thanks, if such be appropriate, to Ryan for calling this to my attention.

Pretty Good Blog. . . For a Guy

I forgot to revel in Shelley’s having given me the Bird, the special award for “Best Blog With a Female Spirit.” Since we female-spirited bloggers aren’t competitive, I’m sure Euan and David and Steve and Rev. Matt and Tom and I will end up sharing the award. I’ll send my Keanu Reeves formal “Neo” cassock out to the cleaners in time to be back for the awards ceremony.

Frenzy

Good developments: Trevor and I recruited Micah to help us out with the Disseminary planning and execution. This is a very good step, except that first thing this morning Micah sent me an email reminding me of about eight to-do items. Thanks a lot, fella — there goes your Christmas bonus.

My involvement with the Via Media project and the sermon for Christ Church are developing nicely, and the leadership at St. Luke’s is working up a plan for parish structure. Today’s tutorial on Matthew’s Gospel involved several good discussions; the Early Church History class for today made a congratulations card for me (they are so sweet — really, these folks have only known me a few weeks, and are taking a course outside my area of expertise, and they’ve been warm and appreciative all term).

But meetings and obligations are still flying at me in a way that reminds me of those old hand-drawn Popeye cartoons, where someone digs through a pile of junk, throwing it backward, and Popeye has to dodge the flying debris. Except I have to catch it (all).

Speaking of Preaching

I just received a lovely invitation to preach at the Solemn Mass and Procession at the beginning of Christ Church, New Haven’s Sesquicentennial celebration on January 4th. It’s funny; one’ ;s tempted to say, “I’ll really work hard on this one!” but, of course, I work really hard on all of them. A special occasion doesn’t call forth appreciably more (or less) intense compositional labor.

However long I work on the sermon, it’ll be a tremendous treat to preach again in the parish where I was ordained to the priesthood, where Josiah was baptized, where Margaret worshipped during my long years of seminary field work in midstate Connecticut, where we came to know and love the Rev. Jerry Miner, and where we has a wonderful neighbors my colleague at Christ Church, the Rev. Donnel O’Flynn, and wise Janet and their children Aidan and Kathleen. Margaret and I have vivid memories of Christ Church, now long-ago memories, and what a privilege it’ll be to go back for this special occasion!

Review in Retrospect

Doc points to several situations in which snarky reviews had deeper and more malignant results than the authors anticipated; the Orange County Weekly gave the (recently departed Bobby Hatfield’s) Righteous Brothers a last-place rating among all Orange County musicians on a top-bands list, and the author of the column sniped at Steve Goodman just before Goodman himself died.

It’s very, very easy to write something clever and harsh and hurtful about a book or a record or performance; it’s a lot harder to resist the temptation to use a snappy line just because it might hurt the performer or author. I write a lot of book reviews — a lot a lot — and I’m somewhat cranky (or “I have high standards,” the more self-congratulatory way of saying it) and not that many of the books I review excite me. Still, I try to indicate the sort of reader who would enjoy the book, or the purpose for which it would be useful (no, I’ve nver suggested “keeping a loose window open”). I’ve probably snarked inappropriately sometime; I know for certain that I’ve written a few very harsh reviews, in which may well have wounded the authors. I’d like to think that I played it square — that I gave a review that honestly assessed the weaknesses of the book and measured my negative criticism in proportion to the ambition and claims of the book itself (if you say you’ve written the definitive work on a topic and it’s flat-out dunderheaded, better not complain if somebody calls you on it) — but I wouldn’t be the one to judge that.

I did once cite a senior scholar’s book on postmodernism and biblical interpretation, a book that I thought construed postmodernism as a relatively tame version of good ol’ fashion literary criticism; I concluded that adventuresome readers might find McKnight’s postmodernism to be a “sheep in wolves’ clothing.” A year or two later, the book’s author presented a scholarly paper in a session that I was chairing, and he began his presentation by quoting back to me those very words. He was amiable about it, and wasn’t at all sure I wasn’t right — but it was an awkward few minutes.

I’ve tried to remember that situation, and not to write anything in a review that I wouldn’t say to the author’s face, nor that I wouldn’t mind having someone look up years from now. (I myself have gotten a lot of mileage from a furious review written by one of the most respected scholars in my field, thirty or so years ago, where his anger impelled him to some pretty weak arguments against the book.) But heavens, it’s unbearably hard to write responsibly in this complicated world.

Kind of like preaching in that respect.

DRMA: "Funkentelechy" by Parliament (“How do you spell relief?”); "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" by the Propellerheads; "The Scientist" by Coldplay; "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

I Wouldn’t Have Believed It

Margaret read this story aloud to me. I may be naive, but I just wouldn’t have thought that the folly (as distinct from what some might identify as bigotry) of handling a situation this way, not only by the teacher but with support from the school administration, would have been ruled out by simple pragmatic legal concerns. What more obvious, open-and-shut case could the ACLU ask for?

Let’s stipulate that all the teachers and administrators regarded gay sexuality as illegal and immoral. Let’s stipulate that they had reason to assume that almost everyone else in Lafayette, Louisiana, sympathized with their views. Even so, didn’t it once occur to these (presumably college-educated) civil servants that they should handle the situation of the kid with gay moms with at least a modicum of delicacy relative to the child and women involved? Did they really suppose that these responses would effect any positive change in the boy’s and women’s lives? And if they weren’t absolutely sure that everyone in school and town deplored homosexuality, how much more ludicrous the blinkered insensitivity....

Now they stand to have the ACLU sue the living daylights out of them — when if they had said, “Listen, sonny, we don’t permit kids to talk about ‘alternative lifestyles’ in school,” and sent him home with a note, they could have avoided the whole [un-]civil mess.

Things We Did Today

Margaret chided me gently. “You haven’t blogged at all today,” quoth she; “you’re getting lazy.” Well, perhaps. Perhaps I don’t have that far to go. In time that I might have spent blogging, I evaluated the three participating teams of a classroom disputatio, marked a paper, helped Pippa through the morning, did laundry, washed dishes, attended mass, read over Bob Carlton’s term paper on Emergent Post-Evangelicalism (note to Bob: good paper, but you left out at least one essential source on postmodernism and theology. . .) (note to self: Bob and Jordon have been pointing to so much intriguing stuff on issues such as this; I positively ache to have more time to follow up all that’s going on around me. Is there room for emergent post-evangelical Anglo-catholicism?), instant-messaged with Margaret and Trevor about various thrilling issues, tried unsuccessfully to fax something to the EveryVoice folks, gave the “Tome of Leo” lecture to early church history class and tried to explain to them the communicatio idiomatum, handcrafted a couple of frozen pizzas, and worked on the list of essential terms for the history course’s final exam. Then I gave some pastoral care to Margaret who spent the evening at a meeting at church. But she was not quite right; I may be lazy, but I have blogged something.

World AIDS Day

AIDS hasn’t gone away; it only gets worse, and that fact that some of us aren’t looking squarely at it doesn’t minimize the horror. Remember.

[Later]: “Where is the outrage?” from Bob Carlton.

Reserve Your Video Now

I’ve spent considerable time over the last couple of days talking with people about the upcoming video series, which will surely bid fair to knock The Return of the King off its Hollywood throne. My experiences with mass media have led me to expect frustrations, but I’m hopeful enough — and impressed enough with Jonathan’s plans — that I’m willing to give it a go. Watch out for the glare from my bald spot, though.