November 30, 2004
Too Kind
David Weinberger is a sweetheart, and he couldn’t have offered a more generous compliment.
This does not, however, mean that I’m married to Halley. Not that there would be anything wrong with that, if I weren’t already married to someone with whom I’m rapturously happy, and about whom I’m busting to brag, but I won’t, lest I mortify her unendurably.
Posted by AKMA at 11:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
DRM, Again
Here’s a short thought, provoked by this post at Jenny’s blog.
When the publication/distribution profiteers paint themselves as the defenders of artists’ rights, they always frame the issue on the royalties of the individual artist, which that artist presumably loses when audiences share books, recordings, and so on. As Doc always reminds us (based on his appreciation of George Lakoff), the framing makes the big difference here.
That frame excludes from our field of deliberation a number of ways that restrictive copyright mechanisms harm not only the interests of acquisitive audiences, but also those of all artists. Most obviously, it’s a good thing for people to be able freely to enjoy the work of artists; though almost all artists, authors, et al., relish income and would like more of it, virtually all whom I know yearn for attention and appreciation also — and we can show that many are willing to trade off potential income for attention.
But that’s only the beginning. Artists (and from now on, I’ll just say “artists” as a shorthand for all who have a producer’s interest in reproducible works) have an interest in the freedom to compose works without anxiety over whether they’ll be inhibited or even prosecuted for transgressing on another’s alleged copyright. Artists have an interest in audiences having the freedom casually to become interested in their work — a freedom that DRM restrictions stifle. Artists have an interest in public goodwill, the sort of positive feelings that highly-restrictive copyright regimens erode (how interested will I be in paintings if I have to pay fifty cents for a two-minute glimpse of “Nude Descending a Staircase”?
Especially since the circumstances of production and reproduction have changed in fundamental ways, we need to reconfigure the ways that the public rewards artists — and the ways that the public experiences and shares artists’ works. That’s not only for the sake of audiences, but even and especially for artists, too.
Posted by AKMA at 10:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 29, 2004
Practical Consideration
We’re thinking about a redesign of Seabury’s website based on Moveable Type, and the question arises of whether to allow our design to encompass any pages not generated through the MT engine. The rationale for static pages (in the sense of “designed to be static,” not just “generated once at a rebuild rather than constructed on demand”) would be a greater degree of flexibility with regard to layout and content, and perhaps an easier transition from pages built under our present design schema; the downside would be that the MT search function would not be able to search the “static” pages, and that we’d have two modes of preparing data, one of which constitutes a near-total wild card for the page writer.
The more I think about it, the righter Micah’s advice on the topic sounds: All MT, every page. But I still want to think it over, to make sure I’m not missing some important angle.
By the way, I was this close to changing my Disseminary blog over to WordPress, of which I’ve gotten a generally favorable impression from an experimental site — but at the last minute we got MT 3 working over the smoking rubble of the old installation, and I have to say that the new version provides a very helpful approach to handling unwelcome commercial comments. I haven’t settled all the way in yet, but I like the transition so far.
Posted by AKMA at 10:27 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
November 28, 2004
For The Record
I don’t begrudge anyone whom Marqui is sponsoring the opportunity to get paid a few pence. If Mitch or the Lemur or someone started rhapsodizing about the virtues of the new sponsor, I’d size up the tenor of their comments in the contest of what I’ve known about them over the long haul, and decide whether in this case my long-term online friends were shooting straight or shilling — but it’s their prerogative to decide whether to take the money, and theirs to decide what (if anything) they want to say about Marqui (about whose services, as of this writing, I know absolutely nothing except that Marc is consulting with them).
Nothing’s intrinsically sullied by bloggers getting paid. None of us is simon-pure to start with, and good-hearted bloggers with integrity don’t turn into soulless flacks just by receiving a check. Some bloggers sold out ages ago for the price of popularity; some A-listers can’t be spun no matter how much money they’re offered. Some Omega-listers couldn’t be corrupted for any price, and some have no integrity to sell in the first place. Those of us who never act on mixed motives can throw the first stones.
In the meantime, let’s stand down for a moment to see what happens when the cash starts flowing.
Posted by AKMA at 08:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Church, Academy, Emergent
I’ve been invited to help out at the opening service of Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler; it’s an honor to share the ministry of those three wonderful colleagues. The thought of their project reminded me that an age or two ago — back before the weblog meltdown — someone called my attention to the discussion of [emergent] church and academy on Jonny Baker’s site. It’s a terrific thread, poking at the sore issue of how we might better prepare people to lead congregations in the contemporary world (of which a subsidiary issue involves the merits of academic training for clergy).
We’ve been through this before, here and here. The issue, however, merits our revisiting at intervals. Before I go on, though, I should admit that I’m both ordained and a card-carrying academic. Anything I say that inclines toward supporting the institutions of church or academy may be overdetermined by my financial vocational interest in the survival of those establishments. Further, I don’t construe most of what follows as a rebuttal of jonnybaker or any of the participants in the discussion there; I’ve been impressed by their generosity and patience in dealing with the topic.
Bearing that in mind, then, I agree with jonnybaker’s commenters that there’s a deep problem besetting theological education and church leadership. Critics typically characterize the problem as an academically-isolated theological magisterium trying to indoctrinate would-be leaders with a practically-useless corpus of ecclesiastical trivia — as opposed to an ideal world in which students learn about how things actually happen, how people come to love Jesus, what kind of spiritual guidance one should offer postmodern might-believers, and so on. There’s enough truth to that characterization to make it durable, but it conceals several pertinent aspects of the problem.
First, I know relatively few theology professors who aren’t at least trying to inculcate their subject areas in ways that would inform pastoral practice. Contrariwise, almost everyone I know in the field struggles yearly to devise better ways to aid students in recognizing the applicability of theology (history, biblical studies, ethics) to the work of mission and ministry. That doesn’t mean any of us succeeds, but at least we’re trying.
Second, the familiar criticism tends to reinforce stereotyped caricatures of theological education more than to resolve the persistent problems that we encounter. Anyone can pick on underfunded, overworked academics for concentrating on the dimension of their work that brings them joy and satisfaction; everyone will benefit more if we eschew demagoguery in favor of imagining possible solutions to the present unsatisfactory state of affairs.
Third, some of the critique depends on the premise that we have a decent idea of how to teach the desired pastoral skills during a period of academic training — a premise whose soundness seems to be worth examining. I learned almost all my “practical” craft on the job, and I like it that way, so I’m probably not well-situated to judge various approaches to learning for ministry. Still, I have seen relatively few academically-based courses for the practice of ministry that can demonstrate consistent effectiveness (I say this from the secure vantage point of Seabury, which makes its successful practical ministry program one of its distinctive benefits).
Fourth, and I will probably repeat this till I reach my deathbed, far too many people preparing for ministry know far too little about the church they’re preparing to lead. The church does not, on the whole, demand very much preparation at all compared to the responsibilities its leaders bear and the wisdom and understanding that congregations expect. This isn’t a matter of intellectual elitism; electricians and steel workers undergo extensive training before they reach the most fully-credentialled level of their line of work. If church leaders presume to take on involvement with the souls of trusting congregants, they can jolly well learn a thing or two of what the church has ascertained beneficial for souls (and baneful).
I doubt that formal academic training on the model of the secular academy provides the most propitious venue for theological education. Margaret and I home-school our children, and I’d just as soon home-school seminarians. Reluctant as I am to treat maladaptive cultural formations as simply given, I don’t see a way for churches to back away from institutionalized clergy training. (If someone wants to support an effective alternative, they should by all means let me know.) The urgent issue, then, concerns how academic institutions best instruct and prepare students for ministry in non-academic settings.
A number of suggestions present themselves, but let me just throw out some starters in an unordered list:
- More thorough pre-seminary catechesis for aspiring church leaders
- Unashamed academic grounding in elementary levels of church teaching on theology, Scripture, ethics, history, and so on
- Professors who know and sympathize with the daily work of ministry
- Professors who know and enjoy the cultural world in which their students move
- Students who are willing to learn more about the topics of theological education
- Churches that actually want excellent leaders, and are willing to demonstrate their respect
The thread at jonnybaker’s shows people who care deeply about theology and its implications, though, as they wrestle with imagining how people who share their love for truth and for God’s people can grow in faith and understanding as they also prepare themselves for the peculiar work of helping congregations draw nearer to God. Perhaps we need to imagine and support “emergence” in our theological education along with our congregations.
Whatever that looks like, I can’t bring myself to expect that it involves deliberately forgoing a rich acquaintance with the wisdom of millennia of theological reflection. We are not better servants of God and neighbor for pretending that the Word of God began with us. We can absolutely do better by way of readying ourselves for ministry, and extant institutions tend to mask the shortcomings they impose on us. How do we, then, recuperate from modern dysfunctional models of education for ministry, without trying to erect a complex strcture beginning at the fifth floor, without strong foundations or support members?
I’m sure as can be that I’ve allowed my preservationist impulse to draw me away from a better response — but this is a start anyway.
Posted by AKMA at 03:29 PM | Comments (6)
November 27, 2004
Top Ten Neighborhoods I Haven’t Been
A flurry of sites have pointed to the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) - 20 Best Neighborhoods in North America, to which I looked hopefully, only to discover that my life has been characterized by a pretty consistent absence from “best neighborhoods” (I’m hoping there isn’t a cause-and-effect relationship at work here). I’ve been to the East Village (#2) in passing, and I think I’ve seen Camden (#4), but I’m mostly a stranger to PPS’s most admirable spots in North America. I can still get acquainted with Oak Park, though, and Josiah aspires to relocate to Northfield. And let’s not even talk about the best neighborhoods in the world.
Posted by AKMA at 10:21 PM | Comments (2)
Channelling Nietzsche
I’ve looked a number of time for versions of Nietzsche online; the other day I stumbled onto The Nietzsche Channel, which even included a translation of my long-time favorite On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense. Now I’ll know where to look.
Posted by AKMA at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)
Testing. . . One, Two, Three
With generous help from Chris Whipple, I managed to get this blog back online, permalinked and commentable. I uploaded the posts from the last few weeks late last night — I’d only intended to upload one or two, but once I got started it was hard to stop — and now I’m trying MarsEdit’s remote posting feature. A certain amount of hand-coding is fun and refreshing; it reminds me of how completely I’d come to rely on MarsEdit for entering material in my blog. Now I just have to resuscitate my CSS chops (meager as they ever were) to spruce up the templates to a more Disseminary-looking format again, and we’re off to the races.
Posted by AKMA at 11:39 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Matthean Response
As I warned readers, my response to Stan Hauerwas’s prospective commentary on Matthew addresses not a full-fledged Matthew commantary, but on a passage from his forthcoming books of reflections on the Seven Last Words of Christ, to be entitled The Christ-Shattered Cross. It was a weird exercise, but I gather that it turned out well. Here’s what I said:
My response this afternoon is not directed to The Christ-Shattered Cross, Stanley Hauerwas’s meditations on the Seven Last Words; rather, I’m responding to these mediations specifically as they foreshadow the characteristics of a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew still a-borning, not yet available for our consideration. As such, I expect of bring to bear criticisms that would be impertinent if applied to The Christ-Shattered Cross itself, but which pertain vitally to the different, more expansive work.
I am this afternoon, as I have long been, enchanted with Hauerwas’s way with a biblical text, indeed, with his long-standing commitment to articulate his theological claims in a recognizably biblical frame. In his meditation on the fourth Word from the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, Hauerwas links the shout reported in Matthew 27:46 to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, to Paul’s Letter to Philippi, to Cyril of Jerusalem and to the Second Council of Constantinople — all without breaking an expository sweat. Such interpretive tours de grace make a generous contribution to discourse of theological interpretation, funding the interpretive imagination of readers who might otherwise rely on conventional assumptions about disciplinary boundaries, the morality of knowledge, and so on, and thus may may have been starved of plausible models for winsome theological interpretation of Scripture.
Still, I’m uneasy, for what may be an unfair reason, because the essay Hauerwas provided is both quite short and quite occasional, not at all in the same genre as a commentary. Hauerwas’s admirably fluid transitions from the scriptural words of Matthew’s Gospel to ancient and contemporary interlocutors risks muting the particular emphases of one important participant in this theological conversation, namely, Matthew the Evangelist.
Now, please attend to what I am not saying. I am not saying that in order to legitimate his interpretation, Hauerwas must maintain an intellectual ascesis that purifies his theological thinking from any influence other than that of the late-first-century Antiochene encomiast, in order to satisfy superannuated biblicist Puritans. Such an artificial constraint on the theological imagination misconstrues almost everything important about the convergence of Scripture and theological reflection, and Hauerwas rightly defies the distinctively modern piety that offers incense at the altar of historicism.
Nonetheless, I hope it not inappropriate to submit that when we discuss this meditation as a promissory note toward the future commentary, one may plausibly wish to have heard more about what Matthew’s Jesus tells us from the cross than about what Paul’s Christ effected by the incarnation or what the Constantinopolitan Second Person of the Trinity endured. For all the wisdom that Hauerwas brings to bear on his meditation, the Matthean-ness of these words remains subdued.
I miss a particularly Matthean Jesus in this meditation not so much because Matthew constitutes a textual fetish for me, as because I know how richly Hauerwas’s theology reflects Matthean themes, and how highly Hauerwas values the particularity of specific narratives and the character they constitute and shape.
I wish for Hauerwas a richer engagement with specifically Matthean theology precisely because such an engagement stands to strengthen both the best elements of Hauerwas’s own theology and the example of theological interpretation that he offers.
So, for instance, when Hauerwas says that “Jesus’ cry of abandonment makes no sense if this is not the outworking of the mystery called Trinity,” that sounds bizarre to me; the Matthew I’ve studied and come to love shows at most an inchoate sense of the Trinity — but he shows a profound, pervasive sensitivity to the sacrificial execution of the Son of David at the behest of the very people whom he — by dying — saves. Matthew conveys no concern about the metaphysical character of Jesus, but he cares desperately about Jesus’ Jewishness — and again, the Jesus whom Hauerwas describes here (not, perhaps, in the planned commentary) loses his Jewish particularity in the beatific glow of his Trinitarian divinity.
What (else) could a more specifically Matthean (and hence, as far as I’m concerned, a more specifically Judaic) Jesus offer Stanley Hauerwas, from the cross, and before, and beyond it?
With respect to the words from the cross, the Matthean Jesus enacts the ethic of non-retaliation so important to Hauerwas, which Jesus announced in the Sermon on the Mount. He invokes Psalm 22, as Hauerwas notes, but a more specifically Matthean reading of Jesus might have connected the narrative more broadly with echoes of this an other psalms and passages from the prophets. Such resonances suffuse Matthew’s Gospel, as the evangelist saturates his account with motifs from the psalms and prophets.
A more Matthean Jesus would give Hauerwas a way of expounding the Sermon on the Mount as the actual lived ethic of the congregation of those who follow Jesus. A Judaic Jesus knows that it’s entirely possible to be perfect in a way congruent with God’s perfection, by obeying the Torah that Jesus came in order to fulfill (and if Matthew’s Jesus can’t convince you, perhaps Paul can in Philippians 3:6: “as to righteousness under the law, [I was] blameless”).
The cry of dereliction underscores the Matthean exhortation to endure to the end, in this case to the end of divine abandonment, so as to be saved.
Matthew’s Jesus, raised from the death of crucifixion, commissions the apostles (some of whom still doubt, even on the mountaintop in the presence of their resurrected Lord) not simply to baptize in the Triune Name — though that tends to claim the attention of very many readers — but first to make them disciples, and subsequently to teach them to obey all that Jesus commanded, which includes obedience to the whole Torah, extending even to Pharisaic ethical instruction. Once again, Matthew highlights the conviction that the congregation can indeed live by the Word.
Finally, as a vital balance to Matthew’s ethics of divine command, the Jesus of the First Gospel stands to remind all Hauerwas’s readers that the salvation Jesus wrought on the cross avails to all by grace, not by the deliberate satisfaction of impressive achievements. The Son of David comes to children, to the little ones, to the least of these. Some of the wonder-working followers turn out to be strangers to Christ; the late-coming Vineyard Workers receive the same reward as the overtime laborers. Matthew’s Jesus reminds us over and over again that forgiveness constitutes God’s inexhaustible donation to “a God-possessed people.”
For all these reasons, I come to Hauerwas as an emissary on behalf of a reticent Jewish author, an author profoundly and actively sympathetic with Hauerwas’s vision of death and life before the cross. In the commentary on Matthew for which we eagerly wait, then, I hope that the voices of the blessed saints who have taught us how to read the Gospel, fall quiet now and then so that all may hear in their midst the plain and lovely sound of the remarkable narrative theologian known to us as “Matthew.”
Posted by AKMA at 12:29 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Looking Backward
It’s hard to believe that we could spend a busy theological-conference weekend without wrapping it up with a visit from Jenna, but I guess that’s one way San Antonio differs from Atlanta. This year, of course, Jeneane wouldn’t have needed to step outside for a breath of, ahem, cigarette smoke. We did think of Jenna when we went up and down in the elevator, though.
We also thought of her, and of Jeneane and George, when we heard that Diva had died. Nothing affects us in quite the same way as an animal friend’s death; I remember that one of the first crises my new neighborhood talked through online was the death of Tom Shugart’s cat. We’ll remember Diva here (though we never met her), and we’ll be thinking of the Sessums. Take care, and bless you, and Diva.
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Home At Last
Back safely. The pick-up lanes outside O’Hare were a zoo. More tomorrow.
Posted by AKMA at 12:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
SBL Day Four
I don’t anticipate catching many wifi waves today, so I’ll just say that we’re looking forward to a lovely breakfast with two of our great friends (we’ll send an electronic call-out, Amy), wander around the conference center, perhaps pick up some last-minute books, get together with Jennnifer, and return home to the loving embrace of our wonderful family and friends. And sleep.
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SBL Day Three
Because Margaret and I had both paid our debts to academia, we took today relatively easy. We slept late (for a conference day), ate a leisurely breakfast, spent the morning book-shopping (mostly for Margaret, whose need for print resources is greater than mine), and socializing. I had a lunch meeting with the representatives of Baylor University Press, who have committed themselves to the commentary series of which my James commentary will now form a part. The roster of potential contributors impressed me greatly — some old cronies and some highly-regarded colleagues — and Baylor reports that the commentaries they’ve printed so far have been extremely popular. Moreover, most of the participants caught a glimpse of what a tremendous effect our work can have for a coming generation of Greek students; it occurred to me that one way I could enhance the second edition of my Greek grammar would be to align its use of terminology and examples with the commentary series.
After lunch, I sat in on a small consultation on Ph.D. studies and how programs could and should change. The consultation paid special attention to the problem (at serious risk of growing worse) of the under-representation of scholars from non-dominant cultural groups among tenured faculy and especially on the faculties of advanced-degree-granting institutions. From there, I connected with Margaret again, and we heard some papers on theological interpretations of the Song of Songs. Thence we went to dinner, and from here we’re going to see The Incredibles together. . . .
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On Stilts
Kevin pointed me to a pertinent review of The da Vinci Code in the Telegraph. Great summary: “Brown’s book is not garbage, it is garbage on stilts, hyper-garbage that invokes garbage in self-authentication.”
Posted by AKMA at 12:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
SBL Day Two
When I arried at the book display, yesterday, Margaret tipped me off that one of my articles has been published in a collection of essays on theological education and rhetoric. My original title was, “What Has Vincennes To Do With Jerusalem?” but the editor required me to demote that to a subtitle, in favor of the more explicit “Rhetoric, Postmodernism and Theological Education.” No mind; I still like the article, and it’s satisfying that it’s out and circulating now.
Later on, I ran into Mark Goodacre, and we conversed about life, work, and the world online. Then, before my response to Stanley Hauerwas, I saw one of my academic exemplars, Robert Morgan (now retired from Oxford). He has generously encouraged me when we’ve met in the past, and today again he offered some very kind positive words about my work and his regard for it.
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Response Post Mortem
My response was well received. I’ll type it up and post it before long.
Posted by AKMA at 12:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
SBL Day One
The annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (and the American Association of Religion) has gotten off without a hitch, at least for Margaret and me. I got to the 7:30 breakfast meeting on time, but only by the sheerest chance did I arrive at the correct hotel (there are two Marriotts side by side, and the one to which I thought I was going, was not in fact the one toward which I should have been headed. Providentially, I went unawares to the hotel I did not intend to go to — thereby ending up at the hotel to which I should have been headed.
Now Margaret is giving her paper, the lead-off paper in the Bible and Christian Theology group, and she is cooking. Go, Margaret! She makes a case that Hans Frei’s “plain-sense” legacy to the theological interpretation of Scripture tends to occlude both human accountability for interpretations and the Holy Spirit’s role of guiding and extending the interpretive imagination — an eclipse that Henri de Lubac’s sympathetic account of medieval “spiritual” exegesis can remedy. Lewis Ayres follows Margaret’s paper with a lively argument that de Lubac’s assessment of spiritual exegesis depends on his account of the soul and its purification. Ann Astell is third, discussing de Lubac’s affinity for the work of Teilhard de Chardin. Steve Chapman of Duke gave the final presentation of the panel, observing de Lubac’s opprobrious remarks on Judaism and the theological status of the New Testament. Trent Poplun gave a response to all the papers; I thought he rather missed the point of Margaret’s paper, but he recouped some favor by quoting her appreciatively in his wrap-up remarks.
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Friday Landing
Arrived safely, registered, online, napping. Dinner later, then resting up for a big day tomorrow.
Posted by AKMA at 12:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Friday Take-Off
Waking up early this morning, I finished packing and set out to the airport where I successfully found my beloved Margaret (I thought I knew how much I missed her before I saw her — how foolish of me!), and we made our way to the departure gate. There we re-enacted the annual ritual; of meeting a sizable proportion of the theologians in the area. When we were in Princeton, we’d see all the Greater Philadelphia area; when in Florida, a much smaller gathering of Tampa/St. Pete scholars. Located in Chicago, in one of the highest concetrations of theological academics outside Rome, I’d guess, one sees the familiar faces of faculty colleagues from other institutions, year after year. This time, about a quarter of the Seabury faculty (John Dreibelbis, Paula Barker, and me) is on our flight, along with various other North Side, Hyde Park, and Western Suburbs scholars.
My response is coming along fine; I mostly have to balance the background information that give the response intelligibility with the actual criticism. Margaret’s paper will, of course, rock.
Posted by AKMA at 12:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Manic Thursday
My full day today included working on my response to the Hauerwas paper, various appointments and errands, writing letters of recommendation (about which I try to be scrupulously honest and careful, so they take me ages), and the disputatio between the Augustinians and the Pelagians in my Early Church History course. The judge (in the center) added to the memorable quality of the event by wearing a real judicial wig — a first, in my class.
I’ve been asked to comment on Andrew’s post and Jonnybaker’s reponse about Emergent Church and the Renaissance and Reformation. I owe my emergent friends — or, more precisely, my friends in the emergent movement — careful enough attention that I can’t write that out just now, but I’ll take a look, maybe on the airplane tomorrow, and see what I see. Thanks for asking!
Posted by AKMA at 12:20 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Josiah Born Again Here
One of Seabury’s “plunge” teams went to Christ Church, New Haven, where I served in my first parish staff positions. Si was baptized there, and he and his brother Nate have always referred to the the grand font there as “the Baby Crusher.” You can see why, from this photo (courtesy of Corinne).
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Hugh of Lincoln Meets de Doctrina
Well, I was in that frame of mind when I looked at the readings. Here’s this morning’s sermon, not concealed this time in the “extended Entry” field; sorry, I’m not hand-coding that one, at least not till I get the new regular database working.
Anderson Chapel of St. John the Divine, Seabury-Western
Hugh of Lincoln, November 17, 2004
Titus 2:7-8, 11-14/Ps 112:1-9/Matt 24:42-47
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Some of you have heard me warn against making unwarranted homiletical generalizations that might exclude some portion of the congregation. When we say, “Everyone has felt that way,” or “we all know the Seinfeld episode where. . . . ,” we risk writing off listeners who haven’t felt that way, or who don’t watch TV. I try to avoid that kind of homiletical generalizations my own self, so it’s a rare treat that I can stand in this holy place today and say, “Almost everyone here has read de Doctrina Christiana” – but here, I have reason to believe this is true.
You may remember that in de Doctrina, Augustine urges his readers to adopt lives of integrity, seriousness and sound speech, self-controlled, upright, and godly. He entreats us to develop habits of godly living, not because he thinks this will earn us brownie points with God – “stars in your crown,” as our family says about works that have no immediate, obvious reward. We persist in practicing godliness because we can hardly ask our neighbors to accept as true that which our lives proclaim as false. We daily turn again Godward, lest our carelessness suggest to our sisters and brothers that love and charity matter less than convenience and comfort.
Even more horrifying, though, apart from our commitment to orient our lives toward God, who is the only true End for our hopes, our very capacity to understand the truth itself grows numb, clouds over. As we let go the determination incessantly to intertwine our lives with the divine life, we lose our sense of what direction points toward God; we lose the sense of where we might find God, of how we might share in God’s goodness; and we lose interest even in trying. And as fewer and fewer seek the warmth and light of God’s presence, fewer and fewer know what they might be missing.
If we know what we’re missing though – if we haven’t quite lost that recollection of the grace of God that appeared, bringing salvation to all, if we haven’t forgotten that peace that marks the presence of God’s Spirit – then if we see the Body of Christ afflicted and weak, we may remember also that the health of the body depends on more than just good ideas, well-organized meetings, carefully planned worship, but on the tenuous hope that fallible followers will not finally forget their calling, will keep alive the rumor that God abides among us and awaits our return, that God indeed draws us onward if we let go our determination to dictate the goal to the one who is our Goal.
With each moment of graced kindness, each inconvenient gesture of care-taking, each risky venture in discipleship, we renew the unsettling memory of promised love. With each affirmation of our adherence to God’s Way and each promise of our solidarity with sisters and brothers on this path, we amplify the sound of the still small voice that thunders all through the night, the faint glimmer of light that burns at the gloom of midnight. Listen, for love – and teach us the sound of truth; look, for glory – and in the hope that we may always grow in godliness, spot that light that shines in the darkness, a beacon of God’s gift of hope, of mercy, of compassion; of God’s righteousness, manifest in us by grace.
Amen
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Coming Attractions
At this point, it seems as though we’re going to give up on the corrupt MT database — translation: “the database that I garbled irredeemably” — and start the Disseminary websites over again. I’m only slightly miffed that it turns out that Trevor had backed up the Limature database a mere few hours before I munged the file. Please be patient, and we’ll start up a shiny new backend which we hope you won’t be able to detect (except that you may miss the comments that point to opportunties for exotic photos, arcane pharmaceuticals, and Bill Bennet-style resorts).
Heartfelt, intense thanks to Jim, Chris, Boris, and everyone else who wrestled with the results of my technical carelessness.
Posted by AKMA at 12:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Vanitas
David Weinberger has generously pointed to the Real Media version of the CSPAN webcast of the first John Kluge Lecture at the Library of Congress, wherein David alludes to me (the real reason everyone was watching, David) at. . . well, I haven’t come to the part where he mentions me, but Josiah phoned last night to tell me that he was watching David talk about me even as he spoke to me on the phone.
Ooops, there it is! Forty-four minutes in. What kind things David says — he’s right about so many other things, how can he be so wrong about me? Oh, and my forgiveness blog (followed up here, here, here, and here) has fallen out of the top page of Google entries for “forgiveness,” unless a whole flock of people begin linking to it again to support David’s “knowledge” rap.
Posted by AKMA at 12:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Homilo-Rama
Tripp points to recent sermons by Susie and Rev Ref, and I (in turn) have to link to Jane’s sermon from chapel yesterday. It’s a remarkable bunch of sisters and brothers among whom I’m honored to serve.
As for me, I realized that the sermon I have in the can, as it were, is not for Hugh of Lincoln but for Robert Grossteste, so I will in fact have to come up with a sermon de novo. More later; I have course prep for the best day of class all year (in Early Church History, the day we talk about Augustine’s de Doctrina Christiana), write a bunch of letters of recommendation, visit Laura, and work on my Hauerwas response.
The behind-the-scenes repair work is on-going (sigh), and the hand-coding is tiding me over for the time being.
Posted by AKMA at 12:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 26, 2004
Sneaking Up
As it turns out, I’m preaching tomorrow at the feast of Hugh of Lincoln. I’ve drawn Hugh before in the rota, so I have a sermon in a file that only the faculty might remember (and not all of them). But because I have a stubborn streak, and do feel as though I ought not simply recycle all the time, I’ll probably try to work up a new sermon in between course preps and writing up my response to Stanley Hauerwas for the annual Society of Biblical Literature meeting.
Yes, I’m responding to America’s Best Theologian, my former teacher and Margaret’s present teacher; it was supposed to be a response to his commentary on Matthew’s Gospel, but Stanley didn’t get the commentary close enough to readiness, so instead I’m responding to one of his meditations on the Seven Last Words, the only one drawn from Matthew’s Gospel, which draws on wording first reported in Mark. So if you think there’s something a little off-center about a Matthew guy giving a response to a theological ethicist about a reflection on the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” as they appear in Matthew, even though the identical phrase appears in the New Revised Standard Version of Mark, also, then you’re probably on target.
But first things first: a sermon for Wednesday, for which the readings are
Psalm 112:1-9, Titus 2:7-8,11-14, and Matthew 24:42-47; I’ll probably preach on Titus, I think. I’ll post the result here when the dust clears.
Posted by AKMA at 11:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Greetings and Apologies
Welcome to the shambles! Especially, welcome to visitors who may have come here from having listened to David Weinberger talk about this page in his talk at the Library of Congress on CSPAN. It’s not usually hand-coded here; this Saturday, I ill-advisedly decided that I should upgrade my Moveable Type installation on my own, without any counsel — how hard could it be? Micah upgraded Seabury’s installation — so I proceeded to perform the upgrade flawlessly (so far as I could tell) until I went to log in.
It quickly became clear that I had done something very, very bad. “How bad?” Let’s put it this way: if you noticed the Internets running somewhat slower over the weekend, it was because the high-level maintenance talent that should have been speeding packets to their destinations was poring over my database trying to figure out what on earth I had done. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of dollars worth of person-hours are going into repairing the breach in the diigtal space-time continuum that my blunder, whatever it turns out to be, caused. That’s the one consolation, as a matter of fact; at least I didn’t do anything trivially stupid. I mucked it up royally.
So, anyway, I’ll try to get back to you as soon as we figure out what to do with the database. Don’t try permalinking to this, or commenting, or anything (that’s the silver lining — no comment spam for three days! Of course, we had to kill commenting, and updating, to eliminate it, but still. . .).
Oh, I was told to ask around to see if anyone has a handy script for scraping archives to reconstruct an MT database, or some other such panic-level utility. Or oil of healing for a database. Where’s Miracle Max when you need him?
Posted by at 11:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack