I had fun the other day in my survey class on the Pauline Epistles, suggesting that one could best understand Galatians by applying vector analysis. Mark and Jane perked right up and focused sharply on what I was saying, and a whole mob of other seminarians got a glazed, “I thought I was through with that in 11th-grade physics class” expression. I always loved vectors, and taught the boys about vectors very early on (I harbor a probably-unjustifiable gut feeling that vectors and probability theory constitute the Greek and Latin of contemporary cultural literacy) — which reminds me that Pippa and I have to have a heart-to-heart about vectors one of these days.
Anyway, I was intrigued that three vectors connected me with the Christian Science Monitor’s recent pronunicamento that “theory is dead.” I saw the story first from Michael Bérubé’s blog; then Margaret noted that Tripp calls it to my attention; and this afternoon, I noticed it mentioned in Jon Udell’s blog.
Bérubé’s response takes down the condescending tone of the CSM article with his characteristic wit. (How much does the article’s author know about the topics on which he distributes snarky dismissals?) Of course, not all the scholars associated with “theory” have jumped ship, and among those who have, not all have repudiated the interests and commitments that marked them for “theory” in the first place. Stanley Fish has always argued that theory is irrelevant, but since a media source such as the Monitor can neither quote Fish with approval nor understand the subtleties of his position, they present his present [quite consistent] position as a shocking development (implicitly as a reversal). Terry Eagleton has made a vocation out of scolding others not doing their business as well as he does. Someone who reports these positions as “news” has perhaps not done all his homework.
And is there a more poignant sign of ignorance than that the columnist tries to contrast Marx with down-to-earth literary reading? It was Marx who provoked generations of critical readers to bring literary production and criticism down to earth from the mystified empyrean domain to which overblown “appreciation” had inflated it.
Think hard, for a moment: some scholars of theory have been wrong-headed, some have been poor readers, some have been poor readers, some all three. Is this the first critical movement of which this has been true? (If you think so, I can acquaint you with some of the controversies and denunciations that accompanied the ascendancy of the New Criticism.) The follies of some do not invalidate the insights of others, though. The work of theory has provoked a deep critical impulse, one that serves well both “literature” and “theory.” (I know, I just said “both. . . and. . . . So sue me.) And some of the denser jungles of theory should be explored patiently before they’re mocked. Condescension is not the same as rebuttal.
Tripp signals that the article might interest me, presumably because (somewhat to my weariness) I’ve become a house expert on postmodern theory for some constituencies of theological and biblical-critical readers. To them I say, theory matters because it helps explain some of the frustrations and incoherences that have afflicted efforts to associate the Bible with theological reflection under the cultural circumstances of modernity. Moreover, theory helps remind us that we never have and never will escape our entanglement in discourses whose terms conflict with the terms indigenous to theological discourse. That is — lest I be accused of postmodern obfuscation — not all the rules that govern various disciplines, industries, practices, and theories comport well with the rules that govern theological discourse. Once Truth enters human discourses, it’s never simply the truth; and the inflection that those secular endeavors impart to the truth, and the inflection that theological discourses impart to the truth, may simply not line up. They may wind up contradicting one another. Postmodern theory suggests that this shouldn’t surprise us in the least; without justifying theologians’ smug insulation from secular critique nor immunizing secular reason from theological interrogation, postmodern theory acknowledges that discourses interpenetrate, hybridize, conflict, concur, develop and change at different rates, in different ways, and that there’s no earthly basis for supposing that any one of them provides an indisputable key for interpreting or judging every other. We theologians often need a reminder that we don’t need permission to talk about supposedly “secular” topics, nor can we rely on our divine commission to protect us when secular critics excoriate us for insularity, for our incoherence, for our unreality, for our sublime irrelevance.
But Jon sums up the whole article quite simply by assigning it to an XML class he designates “Troll.”
DRMA: "Lost Cause," by Beck; "What Do You Love More Than Love?" by Dar Williams; "Too Close To Heaven," by the Five Blind Boys Of Alabama; "30 Pieces of Silver," by Hank Williams Sr.; "Dish It Out," by James Chance and the Contortions; "Foxy Lady," by Jimi Hendrix; "Love And Affection," by Joan Armatrading; "Guts," by John Cale; "Plastic Man," by the Kinks; "Heroin," by Lou Reed; "I'll Fly Away," by Mavis Staples; "Can't Take My Joy," by Michelle Shocked; "Back It Up," by Nils Lofgren; "Letter From America," by the Proclaimers; "Idioteque," by Radiohead; "Black Coffee in Bed," by Squeeze; "Just Won't Burn," by Susan Tedeschi; "The World is a Ghetto," by War; "Your Phone's Off The Hook, But You're Not," by X; "The Have Nots ," by X.
I’ve never been especially moved by the Great Debate over whether bloggers are journalists (which evidently broke out yet again at Davos, thanks Joi!), but I’m confident in stating this: at the rate at which Andrew Orlowski is dragging journalism downward, it won’t be long before first-graders with crayons could do a more insightful jobthan he.
Even though Liz graciously let us off the hook for dancing the night away in a trendy club (it had been a long day for Pippa, and we discerned that her role as entertainer to the faculty might expire if we neglected her weariness), still I didn’t muster the wherewithal to explain why I like Orkut broken.
I think I’ve been involved in two other formal SNS systems; I know I’m on LinkedIn, and I think I registered with another, but I don’t recall which. Maybe I’m thinking of the Game Neverending as a social network of a peculiar kind. Anyway, my experience with LinkedIn suggests that Orkut really is broken, as danah says, that there are rough edges everywhere, and sawdust and rooms whose walls are drywall or just bare studs showing. That’s the way, uh-huh uh-huh, I like it.
The problem with LinkedIn and that other one I don’t remember is that their systems already knew what I wanted to do with my social network; and they were wrong. The reason I like Orkut so far is that I get the feeling that Google and Orkut are leaving the system unfinished to watch what happens and what people want to do with it. Rather offering us an elaborate, polished network that doesn’t do what we want, they’re offering us a raw beta (it does say “beta” in those white letters on the upper right of the window) so that they can build out what participants demand. That would be Google-like; that would be clued. And although no one inside is talking to me about this, I have a hunch that Orkut has a clue.
Apart from that weird thing where I’m characterized as “hot” whereas (for instance) Mena Trott is “cool.” That’s just surreal; that’s broken.
{Note added: Margaret keeps calling it “Orc Butt,” which adds a piquant spin to the whole experience.)
Well, we’re negotiating intergenerational ready-to-go-ness issues before we acutally leave, so I wanted to point to danah’s contempt for orkut. I second several of her disappointments (actually, since other people have already seconded them, I suppose I can at most speak in the affirmative, or vote “aye”).
I already mentioned the counterintuitive whuffie system (danah’s point number 2) and the usefulness of having non-friend karma/whuffie designations (danah’s number 3). I wasn’t annoyed by the invitation-only membership process (danah’s number 1), but I suppose that’s because I was invited before I knew what was happening; if I’d found myself on the outside wanting to break in, it would have been very frustrating (I don’t know if I’d call it “elitist,” but then I’ve been around that block several times already).
As for the brokenness (danah’s 6), that’s actually one reason I’ve stayed in. If there’s time before we leave for dinner, I’ll say why — and if not, I’ll edit this after dinner.
We’re on our way downtown this evening to friend Liz Lawley over dinner at a Thai restaurant. If she doesn’t drag us to a dance club and keep us out all night, and if the mean cold doesn’t freeze us into displays fit for the Field Museum, I’ll write back when we get home. . . .
Tuesday morning through Thursday afternoon is the brutal stretch of my week, with my classes and independent study meeting and masses and evaluating a stack of papers for each session of one of my classes (whose idea was that? Oh, mine.) When five-c’clock Thursday comes, it’s time for a deep breath and a look-around to see what I missed while I was in the midst of the whirlwind. Maybe I’ll even clear my in-box. No, I’m not that ambitious.
The other morning I was talking to one of our classes about complexity in congregations, in theories, in pretty much everything — and I birthed an idea that had hitherto only been toying with me, awaiting the occasion to pop out of my mouth. “We know that we can’t deal with people on an either/or basis,” I allowed; “there are always shades, nuances, hybrids, unanticipated subtleties. ‘Either/or’ is the mode of modern effectiveness: ‘Don’t bother me with the details, we have to get this thing moving.’ Modernity thrived on compartmentalization, on analysis, on deciding which differences made a differences and which didn’t (from a dominant-culture perspective, which operated as the natural or necessary or obvious way of thinking).
“But after decades of modernity, we see that lumping people together into categories based on dominant-culture thinking doesn’t pan out. The category ‘colored’ worked adequately for White cultures, for a while; but ‘colored’ people aren’t all the same, and — surprise, surprise — white is a color, too. Either/or logic fails us and effaces the differences that make us interesting, indeed that make us who we are.
“But ‘both/and’ doesn’t solve our problems. Although this is the easiest and most prominent alternative to either/or, both/and simply occludes the necessary distinction-making that constitutes real behavior in the real world. When leaders start talking both/and, I keep a close eye on what they’re trying to distract me from noticing: the exclusions and privileges that inevitably permeate jolly, inclusive, both/and thinking. At least when the system’s working on either/or logic, one can point out ways that particular cases disrupt, defeat, the system of categorization; when both/and rules the system, there’s no explicit categorization in place against which one could push.”
So if not either/or (on one hand) or both/and (on the other), what? I proposed an idea that had been flitting through my thoughts intermittently: “both/but.” (That’s “but,” not “butt.”) In other words — and I hope we’re not locked into using “both” and “but” in every example of this sort of thinking — we can operate from a principle of openness, but since we’e always about making distinctions all the time anyway, we’re practically distinction-making creatures, we follow our gesture of inclusion with explicit reservations about the distinctions we’ making. We begin by acknowledging that there’s probably something to be said on both sides of an apparent impasse — but since we can’t have all of both options, we’ going to have to work out some alternative that, ideally, derives strength from the best of both proposals.
It’s not a revolution, but it’s a way of resisting modern binary thinking, allegedly-postmodern indifferentism, in the name of working together toward something else. And if someone like Seth Godin or Rick Warren writes a best-selling self-help, business-guru book out of it, I’m claiming prior art right here.
DRMA: "Burning Down the House" by the Talking Heads; "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" by Bruce Springsteen (Pippa used to think this was "Devil in the Freezer"); "Stop in the Name of Love" by the Supremes; "The Long And Winding Road" by the Beatles; "Penetration" by Tom Verlaine; "Souvenir From A Dream" by Tom Verlaine; "Wichita Sutra Vortex" by Philip Glass; "Plastic Man" by the Kinks; "Everything" by Ben Harper; "Can't Help Falling in Love" by Elvis Presley; "Nothing Is Easy" by Jethro Tull; "Outtasite (Outta Mind)" by Wilco.
Was I hearing things, or in the interview with Liane Hansen last Sunday did David Kay say that everyone expected there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? I may have missed something — I was washing dishes at the time — but it sounded to me as though Kay asserted that no one doubted the existence of WMD in Iraq at the time the Bush Dynasty wanted to justify conquering Iraq. If I heard right, then Kay is either a bare-faced liar or a dangerously self-deceived. With hardly any effort, any of us will be able to find massive skepticism about Saddam Hussein’s weapons program; if Kay honestly thinks that no one doubted their existence, he had no business serving in the position he just resigned from.
(Listening to the streamed audio now; no transcript at this point. OK: beginning at about 8:10 into the interview, the quotation runs “almost everyone” expected to find WMD, so Kay qualifies his claim on the first run; but then “there was no disagreement about the belief that the weapons existed” (Kay’s emphasis). Overall, Kay’s shifting the blame from Bush’s consistent certainty that Iraw had WMDs to the intelligence agencies on which Bush supposedly relied. Still, from what Josh Marshall has consistently been reporting, the intelligence was divided — that’s what the Plame affair indicates, after all — and Bush cherry-picked the most favorable evidence for his case.)
Well, that’s just it. I didn’t get enough sleep last night (woke up in the middle of the night and made myself get up and pay bills for hours), and I’m sure none of the postings or comments I’ve written this evening makes any sense. I’ll put this weary body to sleep, and try again tomorrow.
I’ve spent much of the evening (when I should have been marking papers) drafting a careful response to the latest spasm of political shellfire between warring camps of Episcopalians. I’m not posting it now, because I don’t think it reaches a publishable adequacy in respecting everyone whom I want to address. I can’t say what I need to say within terms predefined by a conflict I didn’t choose. The short answer: maybe Paul was onto something when he said, “to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud — and believers at that.” “If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.” “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.”
Way too much of the most heated rhetoric on this issue simply reproduces mutatis mutandis the least edifying volleys from the other side. So since I can’t convincingly differentiate my message from partisan megaphone monologues, it’s better not to fight the megaphones. It hurts, though, to see people grasping at the power to injure others, not seeing how in so doing they injure themselves. I hope that no one gets what they want out of this fight, lest in winning someone kill that which we all most prize.
Liz pointed out to me that Orkut’s karma metrics should have some more useful designations such as “have/not met in person,” “have/not worked with,” and so on. And according to what messed-up algorithm does it turn out that more people think I’m “hot” than “cool” or “trustworthy”? (Speaking of Liz, her link to Timothy Burke’s post on grading struck a chord with me — thanks, Liz.)
There ought to be a way to indicate, for instance, that I don’t know Ben Hammersley, but I’m a fan of his and would be tickled to get to know him. And a way to indicate that if person X — say, Doc Searls — every showed up, you’d want to friend him, but not to send him an email since you’re sure he’ already gotten a hundred, or you don’t want to pester him for other reasons.
(I’ll add to this post as I think of things. . . .)
Just when my online life was stabilizing at a new point of supersaturation (I began relying again on reading sites via my aggregator of choice), I discovered three new sites that I want to keep alert to: Long Pauses, A Gauche, and Michael Bérubé’s blog. At least Bérubé has an RSS feed (although that’s the least he can do, given that he evidently has his own personal site manager and web administrator — mercy, we don’t even have one of those for all of Seabury).
More to read, more to learn. . . .
Based on Orkut, it looks as though I’m Mr. Weak Ties — so now I’m waiting for the “strength”part. . . .
This morning’s slumbers were interrupted when Margaret received a phone call from Senior Professor at Major University inviting her to campus — at their expense — to see whether she wouldn’t really like MU to be her top choice for next fall. It turns out Prof. Senior is very excited about her work, and would be very pleased if she were to attend there. . . . Did I say I was very, very proud?
One of the participants in the RadOx Round Table, Daniel Stoddart, asked for a recommendation of ten philosophy books for educated non-philosophers to have read. That seemed like an entertaining challenge, and perhaps a real philosopher such as Drs. Weinberger and Garver, will weigh in to give sound advice, but I reckoned I might take a crack at it as an undergrad philosophy major (“it turns out there aren’t many job openings in my major field”).
Of course, a lot depends on how you define “educated,” or more precisely on which books you might already have read on the in the course of prior education (since it’s easy to become quite well-educated without, sigh, having read much philosophy. I’ll also stipulate that I was first captivated by the idea of studying philosophy when I read The Pleasures of Philosophy by Will Durant, a book from whose exposition I would now distance myself parkedly, but which does a spectacular job of communicating what’s so exciting about studying philosophy. (I’d definitely read it before Durant’s Story of Philosophy, although that’s a great introduction too). And those were the day’s before Sophie’s World, which thrilled Nate and Si when they first read it.
Once I sat down to choose ten, though, I ran into big problems. I’d want to save room for some of the pomo stuff that I so love, but that means relying on compendia and summaries with which I’m not really familiar. So obviously one has to have worked with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle — but I tend to think the Sophists are shamefully short-changed by conventional-wisdom survey books. The patristic period mixes theology and philosophy too freely for most “pure” philosophical types, but thinkers such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa shouldn’t just fall by the wayside.
Then there’s Augustine; should one recommend the Confessions or the City of God? Aquinas must be represented by an anthology, but which one hits the right balance?
And if one defines “philosophy” in a post-mediveal, only-enlightened-thinkers-need-apply way, what would you choose? Would reading all the way through Descartes’s Meditations actually be more useful than reading what someone else thought about him? Spinoza. . . Hume. . . Kant. . . Hegel. . . I’ll let Joel and David work on this project, if they will. Then I’ll comment on or add to their suggestions.
One point I haven’t seen anyone recognize in the whole brouhaha over whether the Pope blessed Mel Gibson’s film with the words, “It is as it was,” involves the oddity of Gibson seeking papal approval of anything at all. If I understood correctly, Gibson’s father (with support, if not explicit approval from the movie star) holds the position that John Paul II is not the pope at all, is in fact a heretic. If Gibson sympathizes with his dad’s theology, doesn’t it look more than a little grimly crass to seek an endorsement from a heresiarch, just because that figure would be vastly influential?
Or if Mel isn’t as sedevacantical as his father, does this engender some strain in family relations? Or does show biz trump theology, even for people who take their dogma so seriously that they question the legitimacy of John Paul II?
Today’s my second blogiversary, and all day friends have been virtually wandering through, helping themselves to drinks at one of the bars (there’s an ample supply of juices and sodas in one of the rooms, for friends who don’t drink), making pizzas for themselves and eating other people’s pizzas, gobbling up lots of fruit and vegetables, and especially having lots of chips with one of Margaret’s spectacular dips (she makes superb pesto, luscious hummus, and excellent guacamole). Wireless all over the place. Interested employers in casual, but animated, conversation with opportunity-seeking blog-neighbors. A stealthy philanthropist and an alert VC listen intently to impassioned descriptions of projects, visions, plans, and ventures. Every now and then, raucous laughter erupts. Furious arguments flare with conflicting certainties, then dissipate in respectful acknowledgment of deeply-felt, well-thought-out divergent convictions. Children of all sorts of ages run among our legs,, and I look out for Si to make sure everyone’s having a good time.
The party’s so big that not everyone would get along well if they had to hang out in the same close quarters, but that’s one of the beauties of digital media: no one has to cross anyone’s path if they don’t want to. There’s plenty of invigorating conversation where you want to find it, and you can just not go where you don’t want.
And it all swirls around, not “orbiting around me” — Blogaria can manage quite well without ever noticing I’m here — but surrounding me on all sides, enveloping me with brilliance and difference and heart and voice and authenticity and goodness and humanity with a vividness and ardor that daily knock me for a loop.
Well it was one of those days
Larger than life
When your friends came to dinner
And they stayed the nightAnd then they cleaned out the refrigerator -
They ate everything in sightAnd then they stayed up in the living room
And they cried all nightStrange angels - singing just for me
Old stories - they're haunting me
This is nothing like I thought it would be.
- - “Strange Angels,” Laurie Anderson
Thank you all so very much. Stay as long as you like. It’s a privilege to have a chance to visit with you.
I never really liked my answering machine (this is for my office; I like to know when people call at home, if you’re calling home or Margaret’s cell phone, for instance to congratulate her, don’t by any means stop), but it was useful, and I didn’t get so very many messages, and all I had to do was hit the button to hear the message, and rewind to erase the message.
My ultra-secure, multi-purpose voicemail infuriates me. I don't like its malevolent red eye, glaring at me from the corner of my desk to remind me that I’m ignoring a phone message. I hate having to go through the voice mail press-this-number-now hierarchy just to hear a message that’s usually yet another administrative headache.
Maybe there's some way to just turn off the voice mail features on this phone. If I unplug the phone, it'll just record messages on some central voice mail message repository; Or I could change my message to say, “Please, I beg you, don’t leave a message for me unless you absolutely need to!”
Tonight was Margaret’s night for a final [phone] interview for her fellowship, a rather nice fellowship that would go with her wherever she gets accepted. The phone call for the interview arrived precisely on time, but the follow-up call, to indicate thumbs-up or -down, came a full half hour later than expected. Moreover, while Margaret waited edgily by the telephone, the call came in on the cell phone (which was nestled in the pocket of Margaret’s winter coat). I dug the phone out of the pocket, sprinted up the stairs while talking to the grant officer, and handed the phone to Margaret.
She will receive the grant for next year, renewable for two more. In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m very proud.
Δὸς ποῦ στῶ καὶ τὸν κόσμον κινήσω. Archimedes
[Give me a place where I might stand, and I will move the world.]
We’ve unlocked the doors to the seminar room at the Disseminary, and pulled out chairs for Margaret (whom readers here already know) and for Joel Garver. They’re beginning a conversation on Radical Orthodoxy, concentrating on books and essays associated with that theological movement. Everyone’s invited to join in the comments, and if after a while you’d like to step up as an author of main posts, contact Margaret or Micah or even me.
Our first run at an online seminar, umm, belly-flopped — and not in a good way. We’re trying a different approach this time, without assigned readings and a schedule (which I thought, in retrospect, were intensely anti-webby) — more of a public conversation like the one that Joe Duermer and Christopher Robinson used to maintain on the Philosophical Investigations. The round table will follow its own course, interweaving discussion of RadOx books and theology with reflection on how that theology might come to bear in congregations. Let’s see how this one turns out.
Margaret and I have been wondering about the health of a system that generates presidential nominees based on whether they’re [perceived to be] “electable.” Let’s see — you think Jane Jones would be a better president that Joe Smith, but you cast your primary vote for Smith because you think he’s more electable? Isn’t that the way we get coin flips between telegenic, anodyne lightweights, because everyone decides that other voters are selfish, ignorant, airheads who’ll only vote for a candidate who doesn’t have too much substance or integrity?
As the Fugs song asks, “Was George Washington the lesser of two evils?”
Simon asked this morning how many U.S. bloggers would reflect on Martin Luther King on this national holiday in honor of him. We agreed to ponder the question, and to look around to see what happens.
I don’t remember ever having crossed paths with King — I was getting socially-conscious in the mid-to-late sixties, so we could have marched in the same place at the same time — but what I definitely remember is his authority. Enemies could snipe at him, slander him (and here I8’m not entering arguments about his private life, I’m talking about the sort of character assassination that has since migrated to fair-and-balanced talking heads on television), they could threaten him, his family, and those around him, and he maintained a majesty that quite thrilled me. At the time, the leaders who held my admiration, who seemed so powerfully to speak for necessary, positive, healing changes in our social structures, embodied a states[person]ship (I’m thinking of Shirley Chisholm here) that nobody in public office approaches. Am I just getting old and cranky, or may this have some relation to the stasis into which civil rights has fallen?
Whatever — I will always remember the figures of pride and determination, of non-violence and steadfastness, of grandeur and eloquence who together moved the land in which I live from grim bigotry to the sense that our public behavior ought to be race-blind in just a few years. Without intending a slight to Dr. King, I honor especially the people who marched around the wide-eyed white kid, teaching him about solidarity and testimony (preparing him to understand the communion of saints). A long column of witnesses, with a brilliant, handsome, determined, eloquent King at the head of the line — and now, so much left for us to do.
Jordon writes about his feeling somewhat abashed to be pleased with Walmart’s photo-finishing service; I’d be embarrassed too (so far we’re pretty much Walmart-free), but I’ve discovered a delightful way of taking advantage of Walmart that may help redress the balance.
Y’all have heard how much I like seeing the covers of the albums I listen to online — well, I read (I think in MacAddict) that Walmart’s online music store shows album covers in a larger format than Amazon or the All Music Guide. I now gaze lovingly at 500 x 500 pixel images of the album covers I so love, and it costs Walmart bandwidth every time I look. It’s a small act of commercial parasitism, but it’s something.
Pam Mack is back from the Galapagos Islands, with a few wonderful pictures at her place.
The first week in January, Mary Hess indicated her interest in the presentation I was going to give at the Society for Christian Ethics meeting. Since then I’ve been manically finishing another article, so I am culpably late in getting back to her — but I’d have posted the article itself right away if it weren’t published by Interpretation, probably the best non-technical journal on biblical interpretation that I know about, but the copyright owner of “my” article, I think. (That’s Interpretation 55 (2001): 19-33, since you ask).
It got me thinking, though, and I’ll ask the publishers of my various articles for permission to reprint the articles on my site. Lots of people do that; I’m not sure how many get permission, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens.
Why don’t I hear Eric Norlin cackling at those of us whose comments have lately been colonized by commercial parasites? This seems like the perfect occasion for him to remind us that under his digital ID vision, we wouldn’t have any trouble regulating contributors to our comments.
Mark Moore — a seminarian who does not, so far as I know, blog — asked me for names of people and sites who had useful things to say about congregations and the web. (He was thinking especially of last year, when we had a spectacular (if under-attended) series of presentations by Web luminaries.) I pointed him to Jordon Cooper, whom he would find on my blogroll. Mark then had to tell me that Jordon wasn’t on my blogroll, which was embarrassing (I read his RSS feed, so I hadn't noticed about my blogroll; he’s there now). Jordon doesn’t pontificate about what congregations ought and ought not do on the web, but he brings many voices into the conversation, and his own perspective commands tremendous respect from me. Add in Dean Esmay Peters’s Heal Your Church Web Site, which does tackle web topics head-on, and you’re off to the races.
Whom else? I like reading Andrew Careaga, and of course now my long-time online friend Dave “C & E” Rogers has started blogging again with a real storm of pertinent entries. Whom am I leaving out (cos I know I’m omitting someone)?
OK, regarding Tom Wright on postmodernity — and I hope this doesn’t become a running gig, the way I was the house reviewer for Stephen Moore’s first five or six books — I’m content with his sketch of modernity (individuality, objectivity, progress). Everyone parses these topics differently, and although I’d use different markers for what indicates “modern” culture (in my dissertation I argued for the emphasis on time as a determining constraint on human experience, novelty/progress, differentiation in kinds of knowledge with a concomitant valorization of anything scientific, and the authority of expertise), Wright’s characterization seems plausible to me. So he gets off to a good start.
His account of postmodernity would be stronger if he steered a little further from the popular but misleading tactic of equating postmodern skepticism about universal, indisputable truth-claims with the dismissal of truth simpliciter. But again, he justifiably identifies postmodernity with the demise of metanarratives, the disappearance of truth as an unproblematic point of reference, and the dis-integration of the individual. I’d cavil about the way he casts some of this, but I don’t have a big argument here.
When we get to the “consequences of postmodernism in biblical studies” section of Wright’s article, I begin to part ways with him. He ascribes a series of developments to the malign influence of postmodernism; I see the same developments as much more congruent with modernity in biblical studies, perhaps drawing strength from a rhetoric of postmodernity, but not from any coherent appropriation of postmodern thought. The notion that the Bible didn’t constitute a unified “big story” was well-established before anyone in biblical studies heard the word “postmodern.” Rudolf Bultmann famously argued that the New Testament constituted the fulfillment of the Old Testament only in the sense that the promises of the Old Testament failed, where the New Testament brought a truly authentic understanding of existence. The allegedly-postmodern advocacy of Paul’s adversaries and Deuteronomy’s victims derives much of its material from modern source-critical scholarship; about the only difference between modern and “postmodern” critics in this respect is that the pomos are willing to entertain the possibility that Paul’s and Deuteronomy’s opposite numbers were not cartoon villains with black hats and handlebar moustaches, but diligent, thoughtful interpreters of the tradition they inherited. Again, if the phenomenon Wright describes has to be defined in terms of philosophical presuppositions, it’s at least as much modern-secular as it is postmodern (the secularity of the modern mind obliges its scholars necessarily to speak up for those whom Paul or the Deuteronomist was trying to confute).
From here on, “postmodern” merely stands in for “sloppy thinking” or “ideas I don’t like” in Wright’s lecture. That’s a shame for a number of reasons: partly because Wright is insightful enough to make a real case, not just shadow-box (with a handcuffed shadow at that!); partly because Wright’s positive case would itself be wiser and deeper if he dealt more patiently with his discursive opponents; partly because casual argumentation at this point opens Wright up to a charge of demagoguery; and partly because, darn it, I agree with much of what I take him to aim at — but my position rests on premises that he thinks he as to undermine or at least trash-talk. Wright and I disagree about sexuality, but I bet we can do so politely and respectfully; we disagree on some fine points of exegesis; but we agree about mountains of other doctrinal and dogmatic points. Out of fondness and respect, I find myself again Wrighting off the bishop’s critique of postmodern reason.
It’s hard to get back in blogging form after a few days off distraction, especially when there’s so much to blog about. I’ll start off, though, with a pointer to this article from the NYTimes (registration required) wherein it is written that the old hooey about “twenty-two different words for snow” really is hooey, and that there’s not mystical power inherent in language that unites cultures to their environment blah blah blah. (Note that I’m not saying that all languages are the same, or that languages and cultures don’t affect thought or expression.)
Since that myth has proven to be remarkably resistant to disconfirmation from linguists — especially among the preachers for whom it provides such tasty homiletical empty calories — maybe this note in the Times will at least put a crimp in theological language-mysticism.
So, what’s Robin Lakoff’s relation to George Lakoff?
The article’s coming together; I’ll be through with the editorial (run-it-past-Margaret) draft by the time I post this. And in a DRMAfrom within the body of an entry, I’m listening to Tom Verlaine’s “Without a Word,” from the Dreamtime album; boy, do I love that cut.
Sometimes the general randomness of life produces lovely coincidences. This morning, while I was listening to my iPod at Peet’s, working on my lecture for this afternoon’s class on Romans (“Paul and the Hellenistic Letter-Essay,” a real edge-of-the-seat barn-burner of a topic, eh?), the piano solo at the end of Bruce Springsteen’s “Incident on 57th Street” segued perfectly into the opening chords of “Maybe God Is Tryin’ to Tell You Somethin’” from The Color Purple. Sure, I know, it’s inconceivable that “Incident on 57th Street” segue into anything but “Rosalita” — call me a subversive. It was intensely delightful anyway.
DRMA: "Just (You Do It to Yourself)," by Radiohead.
The postmodernism article is proceeding grimly, Micah and Michal and Shelley (when she isn't posting breath-taking photographs) have been dissecting the Disseminary to see what can be done about the comment spam (so far, to no avail), Mark wants me to respond to another bout of Tom Wright’s observations on postmodernism, I haven’t even thought about the IRC channel in ages, Margaret seems to have gotten a significant fellowship grant, and Si seems to be in a rock band. I'd love to write about all this, but all my energy is directed to classes and this $%^%$ essay.
I’m disheartened by the spate of comment spam, frustrated by a spell of article-writer’s block, and furiously busy with course preps.
Which is a shame, because I have a good story about our home-schooled high school actor and church-music scholar.
Shelley is generously trying to help with the comments problem, but merciful heavens! I had about 1800 comments before yesterday evening, and now it's up to 3400. This is pretty grim (and I have a ton of other things to do today. . . ). And our Cornerhost account doesn't permit the most effective means for dealing with this particularly ingenious variety of comment spam.
A deluge of repulsive comment spam — I’ve spent the last half hour hour and a half just trying to catch up with it by hand — all from different IP addresses, so far as I can tell, coming in wave after wave. As soon as I see Micah online, I’ll insist that he work out with CornerHost the installation of the latest MT spam-blocking filter. Till then, please excuse any horrible comments that I haven’t caught yet.
Later: Sorry, I just don't have time to fight this battle by hand, three spams at a time. So far as I can tell, I'm already three hundred spam comments behind. I’ll see what I can do about purging them en masse when the deluge subsides. In case you’re wondering, this makes me very angry.
Boy, would I love to go to David Isenberg’s WTF conference. Someone go for me, encourage everyone, learn a lot, and help push the world into a friendly, effective, end-user-accountable future.
Earlier this week I described Karen Armstrong’s invitation for all religions to make peace, not conflict, as a piece of Enlightenment exhortation more than “religious” discourse. As if to complement that claim, Jay Rosen (in The Revealer) follows up with an essay on one of the most prominent denominations of theological liberalism (as opposed to “liberal theology”) — “Journalism is Itself a Religion.”
(By the way, mark-up itself is a religion, and since The Revealer has displayed its HTML in the title bar of the article, I venture to suggest that the editors should use <em> tags in that phrase, instead of <i> tags. I’m a poor acolyte in that religion, but I am what the Book of Acts calls a “God-fearer.”)
Rosen makes a case that journalism partakes of the characteristics of religious faith: unquestionable dogmas, shared rituals, spiritual-cum-academic formation at a professional school, conversion experiences, and so on. People who worry about “religion” as a category see this kind of essay with some regularity; I used to begin my “Introduction to Religious Studies” class with Baseball Annie Savoy’s opening monologue from Bull Durham, “I believe in the Church of Baseball. . . ,” as a way of opening up the students’ assumptions about what really counts as “religion.”
At the same time, the essay — insightful and valuable as it definitely is — also illustrates the basis for my regretful sigh of last week. The article might read differently if Rosen had been in conversation with a vocational theologian; and Jeff Sharlet’s throwaway comment at the end of the essay (suggesting that Luther didn’t believe in the church, that Jeremiah didn’t believe in the covenant, which Jeff calls the “compact”) suggests a distance from, an outsider’s-eye view of, Luther and Jeremiah. The notion that disbelief constitutes a precondition for reform reflects a very outsider-y set of presuppositions (at least, to this insider).
I have worlds of respect for Jeff and Jay, but that respect would grow even deeper if their work that addresses my area of specialization showed greater interaction with (though not necessarily “deference to”) articulate spokespeople in the field they’re covering.
I know many of the points I want to make in the postmodernism article, and I know that 5,000 words wont’t be the problem; the problem will be the first paragraph. I just can’t figure out the way I want to address the matter.
I’ll be working with 1 Corinthians 1:14-16, where Paul starts out by claiming that he hadn’t baptized any of the Corinthians, then excepts Crispus and Gaius, then acknowledges that he had forgotten “the household of Stephanas,” and admits that he doesn’t know whether he baptized anyone else. This will give me a specimen of biblical discourse that can illustrate interpretive problems with totalizing discourse, foundationalism. mystification, identity, and probably others that don’t come to mind at the moment.
I first thought about doing a plain old step-by-step introduction to postmodern analysis: “This is what ‘mystification’ means, this is who writes about it, and this is what it looks like in the analysis of 1 Corinthians.” After a few moments’ thought, that seemed too unbearably pedestrian. I considered writing a plain exegetical essay about the passage, with a postmodern commentary on what I was writing ina separate column on the right-hand side of the page. I thought about writing the essay as a letter to the scholar who’s editing the collection. Nothing is working, though; much as I have material to back up the essay, I don’t have a frame within which (or “outside of which” or “around which” or whatever) to situate the exposition.
Today, we got Margaret off to the second day of SCE, Pippa shovelled the walk, I made pancakes, Si helped Heather move her stuff, Pip and I took Bea to the dog haircut place, then we did a huge shopping trip, then we returned and unloaded the groceries, then Pippa undecorated the tree, Si and I un-stand-ed it, I defrosted dinner, built a fire, cleared a space on my desk, and got almost up to the point of working on the postmodernism article I got a two-week extension on. There’s always tomorrow — for another day or so.
This morning I’m off to downtown Chicago for a meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics to a session on an article of mine from a couple of years ago. At first, I thought this was one of SCE’s “Breakfast With an Author” gigs, which seemed pretty sweet since I reckoned I’d get a hotel breakfast out of the deal. It runs out that this session takes place in the regular morning slot from nine to eleven-thirty, so I get no breakfast, and instead of constituting a conversational free-for-all only loosely associated with my article (that is: “the guy who wrote it is swilling coffee and pontificating down at the far end of the table”), I’m expected to give a presentation about the article, after which a formal group of ethicists will tell me what they think of it (more like: “Who told you that you had anything useful to say about ethics, Bible Boy?”) — not the casual, caloric engagement I had originally anticipated.
But I cobbled together some reflections to wrap around a summary of the published paper (which I’m confident that many of the attendees — assuming enough people attend that one can use the word “many” in conjunction with the group — won’ have read). Margaret, the card-carrying theological ethicist in the family, will spend the weekend downtown, having a wild time with other Christian ethicists. I’ll saunter home after my session and get back to work.
I’m all about peace — we’ve talked about that before, when Bush’s wars of conquest were starting — so one might think I was pleased to hear that just before New Year’s, Karen Armstrong issued a clarion call for religions to work for peace and justice.
But instead, I’m irked, and all the more so because columns from Karen Armstrong reflect what the mass media might think of as the kind of “informed insider” reporting that I called for below (if anyone in mass media types were listening, of course, which they can’t possibly have the free time to do).
Let’s ask the difficult question (that I wish an editor had asked): On what authority does Karen Armstrong determine that “religions” should be about peace and justice? Granted what any casual observer of world politics can see — that is, that adherents of every brand name of religion find in their faith the justification for killing others and for acts that Armstrong evidently finds unjust — on what basis does she claim that they misunderstand their own faiths? Is she claiming to be a wiser Islamic theologian than the imams of Wahhabism? A sounder rabbi than leaders of Israel’s extremist leaders? A more reliable Christian theologian than a just-war apologist for the Iraq Conquest? A more enlightened Buddhist than the leaders of Sri Lanka’s war against Tamil insurgents? In a word, on what basis does Armstrong make her case for peace?
So far as I can tell, she offers no positive argument for the premise that “religions”should support her vision of peace. That’s weird on the face of it; she certainly could have cobbled together a claim based in the texts that various people hold sacred. Her omission, though, suggests that her plea rests not on any particular religious faith, nor even on a general religious outlook, but on a cultural ideology that seems obvious to her. So long as that sort of naïveté passes for the voice of a theological observer, I can’t expect much of mainstream journalism’s attention to religion.
There are cases to be made for peace on the grounds of most every theological stance I’m acquainted with, in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, Buddhism, and liberal democracy. But each of these cases needs to be made on the premises particular to the outlook it addresses; a Muslim has no particular reason to be moved by a Mennonite’s argument for Christian pacifism, nor a Jew to be convinced by a Buddhist or Hindu account of ahimsa. And no one has a reason to listen to Armstrong’s un-argued case that religions should be all about peace and justice; at the least, she should specify the enlightenment ideals of universal human rights, justice, and social concord that transcend particular religious commitments, ideals that (I’m guessing here) probably fund her column. That wouldn’t convince people whose theologies run deeper than their commitment to enlightenment ideals, but at least it would offer a minimal justification for her perspective.
A month or so ago I pointed to The Right Christians, where Allen Brill and his colleagues blog about God’s lefties; today I followed up a note from Bob Carlton to check out Jeff Sharlet’s (of Killing the Buddha) new blog, The Revealer.
Jeff and I traded emails about this project last fall (my email folder hierarchy is so very sophisticated that I can’t figure out which folder I slotted this memo into). It’s great to see interested and articulate public discourse about theological topics; Revealer writes about Nick Kristof’s callow discovery of religion in the NYT, Slavov Zizek’s advocacy of orthodox Christianity as a means to Marxist ends, the NYT Sunday Magazine’s story on Bishop Peter Lee and the Rev. Martyn Mimms, and paganism, communes, and so on. Jeff writes excellent journalistic prose, refreshingly distinctive among various treatments of religious topics. The design is sweet, the site’s sponsored by NYU with Jay Rosen as the publisher, and it’s all backed by the Pew Trusts — so this is high-class stuff.
Two comments, one specifically for Jeff, and one for the world, God, whomever: First, dude, get some permalinks! (That was for Jeff.) Second, both Revealer and KtB, and media coverage of religion in general for that matter, all still take an interested-outsider’s-eye view of religion. Now, that’s justified, to some extent, by the fact that many of the good writers and the readers they seek inhabit the ranks of interested outsiders. Still, somehow, if “religion” merits the coverage that these signal-flares suggest, is it too much to ask that NYU or Pew or the Times or someone actually seek out a theologically-informed, articulate writer whose reporting calls attention to the news that matters (or should matter) to the adherents to particular faiths, more than advising outsiders what those pagans or Episcopalians or Pentecostals or whomever are up to this time?
It’s been a busy couple of days. Margaret and I got home fairly late on Monday; then I had to finish off a syllabus for the Romans seminar I’ll teach at Northwestern this term. I did manage to get the readings squared away before class started yesterday; then I had to finish off pinning down the readings for the New Testament survey I teach at Seabury this term. Did that, then I had a meeting with Trevor and Micah concerning the Disseminary. Now I just have to teach these courses.
A significant part of the extra effort involved in compiling these syllabi comes in seeking out readings from authors outside the river of dominant-culture interpreters. The frequent refrain that “there just aren’t any interpretive articles by African-American [or ‘Latino’ or ‘feminist’ or whatever] scholars” is demonstrably false. The problem is that the extant articles are hard to find, and there may be relatively few among which to choose. The work of compiling a diverse syllabus is a problem of time and (limited) options — not a question of “possibility,” but of “practicality.”
It’s perhaps a sign of how non-postmodern I really am (or perhaps not — depending on how you define “postmodern,” as usual) that my sense of well-being responds so markedly to geography. Just walking around the few blocks of New Haven that Margaret and I have covered, my feet and the climate and the topography and civic life all contribute to the sense that my life and vocation make sense here in a way they don’t, to the same extent, in some other places.
We’ll go to midday mass at Christ Church, then thankfully accept a ride to the airport from David Cobb; we’ll sleep in our Evanston beds tonight, reluctantly uprooting the tendrils of affection that already have sprouted into the New England soil (and pavement) we’ve been visiting.
I didn’t make any wrong dance steps (which at Christ Church is saying a little, because the liturgical choreography here is more fine-tuned than in most kung-fu movies, and the consequences of error as lethal). I remembered some of the expected moves, and for others I responded quickly to cues from the Master of Ceremonies (who was but a wee college student when I served here). I don’t think I’ll be on the local evening news, but someone from Christ Church will be.
It was a joy to see again some long-ago friends, to find out that the catcher whom I coached in Little League is finishing up his medical residency in New York, that a daughter I didn’t even know is ordained and serving a parish in Kansas, and so on. Best of all was seeing that a historic Anglo-Catholic parish, beset by waves of troubles over a long haul, can pull itself together and regroup in solidarity and determination to thrive again. With joy for that accomplishment, and with hope for other such institutions, I preached the following sermon (warning: some readers may recognize bits from previous sermons in other locations!), with special intention for the blessed memory of Sam Frye, who was born on the doorstep of the church, raised in the church, served the church as sexton for decades, and who died and was buried from Christ Church during my time as an priest-associate. (not done editing as of 4:30 EST; at 12:20 AM (!) I think I’ve caught most of the character and punctuation problems — goodnight!)
+ + + + + + + + +
Sesquicentennial Processional and Solemn Mass
4 January, 2004
Christ Church, New Haven
Jeremiah 31:7-14/Psalm 84/Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a/Matthew 2:1-12
“I pray that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which God has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.”
+ In the name of God Almighty, the Blessed Trinity
One substance undivided, and ever in persons three. Amen.
One moment we and those other wise men from the East were leading ordinary lives, minding our own Gentile business, consulting our charts, going through the daily motions, punching the clock; and the next minute we were chasing down some elusive sign from heaven, tracking God’s glory from home to who-knows-where, when providentially we fell in with a procession who could help us find our way (one of the useful functions of a procession, after all, being to show us, lead us, where we ought to go). One moment our world was gray and bland, pallid, dull; and then, by obscure hints and incandescent lures, we found ourselves among a people proclaiming a glory whose attraction we could no longer resist. The moment our shared journey began, the plainness of our Gentile life was all over.
The pallor that had benumbed us ebbed and faded as we encountered a love unknown, a love so awful that we can answer it only with love. That dullness disappeared as we scented the savor of an unimaginable glory impressing its divine mark on our lives. That blandness evaporated around us, for now that we have tasted the heavenly gift we have begun a transformation that costs us our precious selves, that flavors us with a salty way of life that only a lifetime’s seasoning will truly infuse in us. Whether from now on we accept God’s gift, and stagger unsteadily toward a rising star, or on the other hand resist and close our hearts to the vital majesty of the glory set before us, our whole lives are at stake, now. Les jeux sont faits; the die is cast; and we beckon our friends, family, all, to come join our procession, for although we have to stop for directions now and then, although Herod and his minions may threaten us, oppress us, may destroy our mortal flesh, yet we’ve recognized that this way leads to heaven’s glory, and we wish nothing less than that God bring us with everyone to sing aloud on the height of Zion.
Now, as a procession of Gentiles, we meander toward heaven’s glory along a precarious path. We who come to God as outsiders, strangers to the Law and the Promises, as disinherited orphans of a secular world, we dare not push aside the children of God’s inviolate covenant. We look to God in hope, squeezing into the royal wedding feast at the last moment; it’s tempting to boast that we are numerous, that the beloved Son has called us his friends, it’s tempting boorishly to gate-crash into a sanctuary that properly belongs to our neighbors — but in the moment that we children of grace boast, we shrug off God’s free gift of adoption. We Gentiles can’t afford to risk that audacity, we can’t squander grace to buy the illusion of privilege.
We may want to be able to lay claim to God’s favor as though we had earned it, as though the glorious star risen in the East were ours to grasp and brandish and manipulate to our purposes, but that’s a shrill imposture. No one can enlist grace to mortal purposes; no one can dictate terms to grace. God may permit people to try to hide from grace, to insulate themselves from grace; it’s not God’s way, after all, to force grace upon anyone. But God’s grace then makes itself effective among us, around us, as a kind of chain reaction in our world: as the plot of a complicated story suddenly begins unwinding, unveiling both confusion and truth, misapprehension and understanding, obscurity and revelation; as one explosion in an armory ignites another, and that four more, and those even others; as Jeremiah prophesied, so it has happened and so it will happen. Joseph and Mary are there from the beginning. They watch as the prophecies about God and God’s salvation come into focus, reveal the ways that the God we have known and loved is so much greater than our wildest dreams allowed, and they watch as in Christ Jesus the Law itself expands, explodes and reveals the Truth that dwells at Law’s heart — and reaches beyond it.
When that Truth is turned loose, all manner of outrageous things are liable to happen. Walls tumble down, compassion brings strangers together, our flesh’s impulses and desires turn away from getting and keeping, toward offering and sharing. As we follow the Star of Truth, a spirit of wisdom and revelation enlightens our eyes and our hearts, and we suddenly can recognize the brilliant, celestial hope to which God has called us. The cynicism, the suspicion and ordinariness of daily life in the twenty-first century falls away like the gray mist of morning, and the blazing clear light of God’s love displays the radiant majesty of hope, attracting those who have eyes to see or ears to hear, leading wise (and not-so-wise) Gentiles to bring their precious gifts of wealth, of praise, of service, to offer as our way of sharing the greatest Gift of all.
Just that clear heavenly radiance, manifest in the birth of a boy child in Bethlehem of Judea, began unraveling the tangled mess that the powers of this age have made out of our world. A chain reaction: a baby boy, born in simple poverty, initiated strictly according to the liturgical rituals of God’s chosen people, and in an instant everything is different; time is blessed with explosive truth, Law is fulfilled with superabundant mercy, Gentiles come to worship not a star but a Son, paying homage with gifts of gold, frankincense, myrrh, as God’s chosen people are enveloped and accompanied by an innumerable multitude, dozens of dozens of thousands of sisters and brothers, now from every tribe and family and people and nation, all singing praise to the Father of glory, whom hitherto Israel alone had known as God’s firstborn children.
We’re caught up now, this very day, in the effects of a tremendous chain reaction set in motion before the foundation of the world, catalyzed more than two thousand years ago with the birth of Jesus Christ, by whose name we are called. That chain reaction shot out from Jerusalem to Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, even to Rome, Byzantium, to Canterbury, and in due time on to New Haven. Its slow but inexorable effects reach down through the years to us, through founding and growth, through conflict and restoration, through sorrow and exaltation, transforming our hearts, transforming bread and wine, transforming every element of a reluctant world into an icon of the God who created all things to be a blessing. That chain reaction teases, tinges every dimension of every morning, afternoon, evening, with the immeasurable greatness of God’s power. The transformative effects of that reaction encounter us vividly in our seeing, hearing, taste, smell, touch, the sensual clues to transcendent grace. That grace brought us here this morning, when we might have chosen so many other alluring Sunday-morning activities; that grace fills our hearts with the peace that passes our understanding.
One moment we were indeed leading ordinary Gentile lives, but now we’ve been caught up in a tremendous parade of saints, saints and sinners, traipsing, processing to glory. Teetering between timidity and presumption, we draw near to God confidently, humbly, unable to conceal our joy that we, too, have been adopted as children of God through Jesus Christ, to receive a portion of the riches of God’s glorious inheritance among the saints. We point our steps toward the goal that Jeremiah describes for us: joining with ransomed Jacob we travellers rejoice in God’s bounty, radiant in the goodness of the Lord. Radiant, because the joy of participating in heaven’s sublime harmony overflows from our hearts, because at last we recognize all our sisters and brothers in the company of Hilda and Peter and Paul and Mary Ever-Blessed, dwelling in God’s house ’ because all of us, with unveiled faces, have begun within these walls, among these dear friends, on these streets and in the hands to which we offer soup and spare change, we all have begun to see the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, and in seeing that reflection we ourselves are transformed into the same image from glory to glory. Radiant, because a hundred-fifty years of ceaseless shared prayers and shared praise strengthen our voices, echo our song, join in our genuflections and amplify our Alleluias, raising in our own voices the resonance of generations of our sisters and brothers who have gathered at this altar, testifying together to the glory of the Lord God who is both sun and shield. Such a glory will not be stifled but must radiate, and the light of that glory leads us ever onward into the sunlight of righteousness.
We came here in a procession, extending not only through the nave and around the aisles, extending not only from Broadway out to Fairfield and Cheshire and Washington, from all New England, from north and south and midwest, indeed from the farthest parts of the earth: a procession including not only all of us living and breathing here, but also Sam Frye, Father Morgan, the Edwards sisters, the Oxford Apostles, monarchs, martyrs, widows, evangelists, virgins, and plain honest disciples whose lives have been caught up and transformed into the likeness of the holiness they’ve learned dwelling at this threshold of the house of our God. The eyes of our hearts enlightened by the grace of the Lord, reflecting the radiance of the star that leads beyond us, knowing that this procession of saints leads not just backwards, behind us to Bethlehem, but ahead of us to Zion. We climb from the low-lying gray fog and dullness and obscurity toward the crystalline clarity of God’s presence, to the height of Zion where we will sing and dance, overwhelmed with joy, participating endlessly the fullness of God’s gift, perfected in donation, radiant with the light of heaven’s glory.
+ AMEN +
For a last-minute review of the Reformation, go to the Whirlwind Tour (thanks to Jordon).
(For non-Episcopalians, “General Ordination Exams” provide a means for commissions and bishops to prove to themselves that their ordinands have the capacity to cram vast amounts of schematic knowledge into their vocabulary for a week’s duration, at the whim of people who hold vast power over their futures.)
The sermon’s done; we had a lovely dinner with Ruth and David Cobb and their family; we talked for hours after dinner; and now it’s time for bed. I’ll pass the sermon along after it unfolds tomorrow.
As I wrestle with the last bits of tomorrow’s sermon, I suspect that part of the reason I preach as I do comes from having been brought up with a positive regard for oratory, for formal (in the sense of “deliberate,” not necessarily “stuffy”) public discourse. The literary influences on my childhood harked back to the nineteenth century at the most recent; I voluntarily memorized soliloquies, poems, ingesting snippets of Great Speeches and literary commonplaces as the intellectual vitamin pills of thought’s childhood and adolescence. I enjoy spontaneous conversation, and I admire preachers (and other public speakers) who can bring the vitality of conversation into effective speech. That’s not my style, though; on the occasion of speaking to a willing assembly about a topic of moment, my heart comes to expression by way of deliberation, selection, refining.
This discovery engenders some frustration, though, as I live in a non-oratorical culture; perhaps it’s even an anti-oratorical culture. The friendly casualness of conversation so dominates the field of public expression that I see hardly any evidence of oratorical consciousness around me — and I live in a public-discourse-saturated setting. What has banished oratory from the agora?
Perhaps (and I’m talking through my historical hat, here, so the true rhetorical scholars should weigh in to correct me) the weight of oratory grew so burdensome that a thorough-going conversationalism served as a forceful corrective to portentous, stupefying speechifying. Perhaps a cultural shift toward celebrating vernacular expression, democratizing public expression, undermined the notion that one might ever aspire to a different pitch. Perhaps the admirable examples of conversational public speaking combined with the regrettable examples of burdensome oratory to give the impression that conversation was ipso facto preferable, and oratory oppressively artificial.
Whatever the reasons, I — perhaps defensively — believe that public discourse benefits tremendously from a harmonious coexistence of conversation and oratory. Absent oratorical consciousness, public expression rarely attains the richness that painstaking deliberation can lend to discourse (and I suspect I’m not alone in wishing that our political leaders and critics devoted more deliberation to their discourse, and I know I’m not alone in wishing that the church’s leaders devoted more deliberation to their discourse). While oratorical speech doesn’t guarantee thoughtfulness or excellent composition, it offers the opportunity for these benefits in a way that conversational speech tends not to.
Where both oratory and spontaneity flourish, speakers of either temperament, either capacity have an open path toward expression in their strongest expository mode, raising the stakes of vividness (for oratory) and profundity (for conversation). Everyone benefits, perhaps except those who want to participate in public discourse without the wisdom or brilliance that command an appreciative audience, or those mediocre speakers for whom “spontaneity” masks their superficiality. . . .
I deleted it ’cos it was spam, but I’m extremely flattered that Jan said this about me:
In the world chaotic and chaotic infomatsii your page helps to find and receive that information which is necessary.
Readers like Jan the bother of make blogging all worthwhile.
Margaret and I landed safely in Hartford, and the rector of Christ Church picked us up and drove us down to New Haven. We had a glorious, happy, wide-ranging conversation about churches and seminaries and clergy and friends and so on, and now Margaret and I will go have a modest dinner at some secluded rendezvous (that overlooks, well, York Street). We’ll come back to the rectory, I’ll work on the sermon some, Margaret can read and nap — what a treat!
Margaret’s perusal of online news sources suggests that we’d better get hopping for our flight to New Haven. We’ll be in touch if our warwalking (as in “wardriving,” not based on Wargames, but at least as Doc tells me, on “Wireless Access Reconnaissance”) turns up any wifi around Yale.
Today Margaret and I were enjoying a New Year’s brunch at a friend’s house, when someone asked when we left town next. “Tomorrow morning,” Margaret said, and I nearly dropped my coffee cup — but she was right, and tomorrow morning we will get up bright and early to catch a cab to O’Hare on our way to New Haven. The sermon is coming along nicely; not done, exactly, but growing nicely. I read it to Margaret tonight (a highly unusual step, as I prefer to keep a sermon quiet while it’s still in development); that helped considerably, and as we packed I worked out a few knots. To be exact: “as Margaret packed up the clothes I brought her from the bureau and the vestments from my office.”
We’ll see my cousin Daniel on Saturday, and perhaps even my sister Holly may get a chance to come up the coast from Greenwich, to see me wear the sweater and suspenders she gave me for Christmas.
I don’t have any special wisdom or resolutions for 2004. The calendar doesn’t shape my character or behavior that much. But I have very much to be thankful for, day by day: Margaret’s support and affection, which have only grown stronger as we’ve dealt with one challenge after another; our fantastic children Nate (who’s just blown us away with his patience in spending time with his family while on break, with his growth into his musical gifts, and with the signs that he’s moving along from strength to strength both personally and intellectually), Si (a local hero to seminarians, home-school kids, parents, and to his family, and perhaps soon to an employer from whom he will not bring home any more pets), and Pippa (just a breath-takingly impressive learner and thinker, full of intensities, determined to relish all the world in deep gulps, and then to share her discoveries with the rest of us); for friends and family around the world, offline and online, all of them very, very real; for a steady job, and more demand for my attention than I can satisfy; for staggering health and prosperity in a hungry, war-wounded world; for the puzzle and challenge and confidence of my calling; for the odd, fascinating community of people whose thoughts touch on what I write here. Thanks be to God for all of these, for all of you, and for the opportunity to spend more time among them all each day of this year.