AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Clued Planning

In the aftermath of the Moveable Type plug-in contest, and with the announcement of MT 3.1, may I state for the record what’s obvious to many, but still no persuasive to some? SixApart (I’m through saying “Ben and Mena,” since that’s no longer even approximately the right characterization of the 6A troupe) executed a fine stroke of strategic differentiation. Since a pair of the things that set MT apart from alternatives (“rivals”) in the blogging software field is the tandem of a capitalized business structure (which the OS candidates can’t call on) (yet) and its plug-in structure (for which developers had been producing modules for years), they brought the two together and offered prizes for developing useful plug-ins. They treated positive developer relations as an essential dimension of their plan, cultivated a core of excellent plug-ins, cultivated an array of good plug-ins that didn’t quite make the grade, cultivated an even greater number of developers with some experience working on plug-in customizations for MT (who therefore are already acquainted with the ins and outs of manipulating MT, and thus stand to work more effectively with MT with future clients), and gave their users another reason to adopt/stick with MT (access to all these plug-ins), for the price of some snazzy hardware.

Well done, SixApart!

Never Rains But

Passed through western New York today, on our way toward the East Coast, and were staggered by two successive torrents of water between Buffalo and Rochester. Liz, I know it snows a lot out here, but I had never heard about the rain!

Not Quite

Max Cleland put his life where others only put their big talk, and he lost a Senate race on the basis of outrageously groundless accusations. I respect and admire him immensely.

That doesn’t give him a free pass on theological claims, though. Last night, he quoted Jesus’ saying that “no one has greater love than to lay down their life for their friends” — true enough, although for Jesus that saying plays a different role from that which it plays in the lives of soldiers. Cleland then went on to say, “greater patriotism has no one than this” (I’m quoting from memory here, typing in the car without access to a source for direct quotation). Let’s keep matters clear: Jesus was not about patriotism. If anything, his life and words describe an anti-patriotic critique of national idolatry, and a consistent pacifism.

Margaret asked, “Isn’t it worse than Constantinianism [the pernicious merger of ecclesiastical and state power] when one claims to respect the separation of church and state, but then co-opts the church’s message for political purposes?”

Formal Observations

I had been hoping to share the results of some of Pippa and Jennifer’s fantastic clean-up efforts — that would be, photos of some old posters that have been hiding, curled-up, in a closet. There’s a poster for the Clash gig at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh (Combat Rock tour; I love the fact that the poster doesn’t mention the year of the concert), a poster for the Clash’s first album, a Who Are You poster, and various posters of Margaret’s heroes (and mine):Bruce Springsteen, Pete Townshend, David Bowie. But that’ll have to wait till I get back from my triumphant “All Over Heck and Back” summer tour.

Two other great things happened today. First, the local house-call bike-repair guy came around and spruced up the family bicycles, during which operation he refused (on more than one occasion) to perform more work on them than the bikes themselves warranted). Then he looked at the beat-up second-hand bike I’d picked up to replace my even-more-beat-up long-term bike, and he said it just wasn’t worth any work at all. My old long-term bike, though, was worth oiling, adjusting, and putting new tires on — so he fixed it up nicely, for little money, and told me that as much as I loved that old beater, he really wanted me to save up and buy a new bike rather than invest in repairs to a rusty old one. I got the sense that I might have to mug him to force him to accept my money.

Second, I crept up to our financial officer’s desk holding some intimidating forms from our new medical insurance plan (this is our third plan in four years), and asked her if she’d help me figure out how to answer the questions correctly. She took a cursory look at the sheaf of documents I offered, made a scornful face, and dropped them in the trash before my panic-stricken eyes. It turns out that these really were not my responsibility, that I had already provided the necessary information, and I was off the hook. Bless you, bless you, Lynn!

But that brings me to my outcry of protest for the evening: What sense does it make for medical and financial decisions to tremendous importance to be determined on the basis of forms, forms that are so obscure, tedious, simultaneously repetitive and subtly different, that a visually- and verbally-literate writer and thinker positively dreads filling them out? I know, Eric will jump up and start talking about the benefits of DigID for HIPAA; at moments such as this, I’m a soft touch for those arguments. I just want to go to the doctor, find out what’s up with my thumb, pay a bill moderated by insurnace for which I pay a reasonable premium, and live without fear that I’ll be bankrupted or killed for putting the wrong number in the wrong ambiguously-labelled space on a form. . . .

Hmmmmm

I don’t know, the new flickr theme song sounded more like the old Nestle’s Hot Chocolate Quik theme to me (turn down the volume before you click on the mp3 link). I have a vivid memory of the version that Danny O’Day sang, with Farfel the puppet dog snapping his mouth closed at the end of “Chocolate!”

David Weinberger, Bon Mot Factory

I was just getting over “the main difference between seeing it live and seeing it at home is that at home you get better reception,” from yesterday’s blog and one of David’s radio interview segments, when, perusing Jeneane’s place over my wife’s shoulder (your hit counter should register twice for that one, Jeneane) I noticed his remark quoted in USAToday, “Objectivity is a worthwhile objective, but it needs to be recognized that it can't be reached.”

I’m working on a slightly tighter version — something like “The only people you can trust to be objective are the ones who know that objectivity can’t be reached,” something like that. Hmmmm. . . .

[Added later: The line is all David’s; I’m only in this as a touch-up artist. I am an incurable (my students would say, “insufferable”) editor. That is all.]

Important Linguistic Research

We’ve spent a lot of time reviewing these research results, and all I can say is, this is what makes scholarship exciting.

[Later: I’m supplying these illustration of Margaret’s comment to this post:]

Constructive Conformity

They’re he-e-e-e-ere (and Si has a bad case of counter-consumer lust).

And David says, “Googlenym,” and so say I. (My Googlenym is “AKMA,” nice and simple.)

Quotations Needed!

I got a solicitation from Jim Rafferty, a friend of mine who’s helping organize a conference on teaching, religion, and technology in a few weeks; Jim’s looking for pithy quotations to use as thought-provokers to stimulate theological pedagogues to imagine broadly the possibilities and practicalities of the relation between our work as teachers and the applications of internet technology. I’m passing along to him Dr. Weinberger’s “writing ourselves into existence” and Tfute’s “PowerPoint corrupts absolutely” (I had the sense someone else said it first and Prof. Tufte quoted it, but I can’t find an earlier source), but I was looking for some distilled wisdom from Searls, Lessig, Doctorow, Locke, and others to propose for him — and I’m having a hard time isolating gems from generally-useful observations. Does anyone have other suggestions?

On The Ground

In an example of the strength of weblogs as a source for feet-on-the-ground perspectives from outside the pre-packaged channels of information, Danya has posted her photo-essay on the ramifications for Bedouin of the authority of the Israeli state. As Danya points out, the problems that Bedouin face are not unique to Israel’s governance; the U.S. has been there, done that, and Canada, and numerous other states. The Bedouin autonomy and nomadic way of life constitute them as an antigen for the body politic of the modern centralized state (even apart from the religious tensions that affect the Mideast) — could any modern state tolerate the existence of a distinct, mobile, self-determined people within their borders?

Cheers

To Suw Charman, now an offical blogger with her own page at Corante — and to the fifteen churches of Australia who just signed an historic agreement toward the goal of mutual recognition and sharing (thanks to Jonathan for noticing and realizing I’d be interested).

And in a note unrelated to anything, I’m trying to puzzle out how to make Kung-Tunes work with my MT blog template. Not now, I mean — I’m working on my commentary now — but in stray moments. I’m not quite at the geek threshold required to make the bits I understand hang together into a functional interaction.

Pippa Against Carnivory

We weren’t planning on going to this picnic, but now that Pippa has had her way with the response form, it’s probably better that we lay low [or “lie low” and “ ‘lay low.’ ”[

Picnic Invitation Originally uploaded by AKMA.

Complicated

I’ll be leaving for a working vacation soon (two conferences, visits to family, a book deadline hanging over my head, and Margaret leaving for Durham halfway through, argh), but I’m going to try hard to pretend that it’s all pure vacation. I could use a few carefree days. I make myself dwell in the complication zone, but a little simplicity would make a relaxing break.

On the topic of ways that “simple” communication escapes the limits of our intention and signifies more than we would wish, consider the two entries on “clothing” from Danya, who dresses day by day with regard to what clothing might imperil her life, what clothing might misrepresent her faith, what clothing requires what explanation to whom. Danya is Danya, and probably ought not be near the top of anyone’s hit list of dangerous people (nothing personal, Danya), but her clothing choices always outrun whatever might be her intent to communicate in clothing. As one correspondent [OK, Laura has given me permission to identify her] observed to me, “I was especially struck by the reversal of being safer looking like a religious Israeli or being safer looking like a tourist (not a ‘settler’), depending where you are. There’s no safe identity. So then what, is there a place where might as well just be ourselves? or is there no true self w/o cultural context(s), etc. ? Is it more ‘authentic’ to be your Berkeley self in Jerusalem and in the territories? or to try to translate/ inculturate your ‘self’ expressed in the language of where you are?”

That’s not as extreme an example as some might think; the points my correspondent makes apply quite as much in the US as they do in Israel and Palestine. The stakes usually differ, but the same conflicts of culture, the vocabulary of apparel available to us, the messages that our clothes imply, all overwhelm any wish we might harbor to send a simple message such as “This is my favorite shirt” or “I like pink!” Women’s clothing especially entails this sort of interpretive overdetermination, since men in this culture tend to infer a lot about a woman’s sexual behavior from how she dresses. How many times, for example, does the sentence “She dresses like a. . . ” end with the description of a sexual professional as compared to any other figure of comparison?

On a less interesting note, the question of when I wear my clerical attire comes up with wearying regularity. As I get older, I think differently about clericals from the ways I thought ten or fifteen years ago; on one hand, I don’t have a great investment in the statement that my black shirt and white collar make, while on the other hand I’m less inclined to care how anyone interprets my decision to wear black-and-white. It’s out of my control; I have my reasons, which may be as dull as “that’s what was clean,” and people can make of it what they will (as the man said, “people just love to jump up and down”).

If all this is true of so limited a rhetoric as the syntax and semiotics of clothing, how much more must we let go the illusion that we can control the flow of signification when we’re trading in words?

Doing Homework

This is what comes of not reading the comments.

Earlier today, I criticized Dave Winer for using a photo of a naked woman as attention-bait for his nifty new Convention-Blog-Image-Aggregator thingummybob. Dave wrote me to say that he had meant his pointer as a warning against clicking-through (for those who would be offended). I try to be fair-minded and responsive, and especially to apologize when I’ve gotten something wrong, so I edited my post to reflect what Dave told me about his intent. I err often enough that it behooves me to make amends as quickly as possible — particularly to do so publicly, lest people think I was reluctant ever to admit I was wrong, or that I was trying to rationalize and excuse my mistakes rather than coming out and admitting them.

Having gone back, now, to look at what’s on Dave’s site, and having gotten around to reading the comments he left here, I’m perplexed about his emailed protest to me. If I wanted to steer delicate sensibilities away from potentially offensive material, I wouldn’t make an link pointing directly to it, describing exactly what potentially offensive material to expect there.

“Meaning” and “intending” are elusive things, and (as I’ve argued here before) they always escape our control. Dave says he intended only to warn people away from material that might scandalize them, but in his comments he fixes attention on “nipples,” whereas my critique rests on his using sexual images to attract attention. If that wasn’t what he was doing, there’s no need for him to advise me to “loosen up.” I’m not fretful about the naked beauty of creation. I am concerned that as long as people want breezily to use the power of sexually-charged images of women to claim attention, but then to minimize the effects of that move, they perpetuate a dominant double-talking discourse and arrogate to themselves the authority to let themselves off the hook for insensitivity.

I have no interest in picking a fight with Dave; if I had, I wouldn’t have apologized right away, without even checking to make sure his explanations held up. But if he’s concerned to protect people from offense, he certainly has communicated that in a way that tends, I think, to confirm my original suggestion that his gender politics are somewhat tone-deaf. Whether that’s what he intends, or not.

Another Cool

Speaking of cool things, the iTunes Catalog app looks very attractive. It searches for album art, for lyrics, and it generates HTML catalogs so that you can post an online version of your recording collection (complete with Amazon Associates-aware links via which users can link to buy copies of your disks).

I probably won’t pony up the $10 to register it right away; I’ll stick with the now-OS Clutter (LazyWeb — how about making it search for album covers from Walmart instead of Amazon?), and see how badly I miss the bells and whistles of iTunes Catalog.

And Seth Godin’s new project, ChangeThis, is cool, too. (Thanks, Bob!)

Look At This

Dave Winer has cooked up a snappy new application for aggregating entries and images from bloggers at the political conferences, and has deployed it at a site powered by a high-speed server. All of this is very cool, and deserves all the link-love that Dave requests.

Using the prospect of seeing a picture of a naked woman to draw attention to his new site is would be not cool, but Dave has explained to me that he intended to give specific warning, so that people who might be offended wouldn’t follow his link. I would have constructed such a warning differently, but I was wrong to infer from Dave’s entry that he intended to encourage visitors to go and ogle.

Dave clearly cares that people not think ill of him on this kind of point, and although he and I certainly disagree about gender politics at a number of points, on this one I mistakenly concluded that Dave was up to something roughly the opposite of what he wanted to do — sorry, Dave, my mistake.

Q. E. D.

If the world needed any evidence that I’m an introvert, I think this morning proved the case. I had a final part of the interview process this morning, really quite a good conversation, but when I stumbled in from the car I curled up in a fetal position for an hour or so.

As you may imagine, I don’t type that well in a fetal position, so I’ve staggered downstairs to begin reintegrating myself with civilization.If someone has written something interesting online, I may find out about it over the weekend, because I’m now officially five days behind on Life, and only gradually regaining the capacity to read and think. So if you address me and I make a pained expression and withdraw into my pill-bug imitation, please be patient; it will pass, in a day or so.

Four In A Row

Days of non-stop exhaustion, that is.

This morning we drove down to Hyde Park; Margaret dropped me off and continued to O’Hare to deliver Phil Kenneson to his departing plane. I had a big schedule, but was early for my first appointment so I ducked into a Starbuck’s near my destination. As I contemplated my selection, a loud voice sang out from behind the latte machines, “Professor A. K. M. Adam!”

(Someone had blown my cover — uh-oh!)

“The Reverend Doctor A. K. M. Adam, whose weblog I read every day!”

I looked around, but I couldn’t tag a face to the voice. The Starbuckian leaned out from behind Latte Central and introduced himself: Tony, from a class I’d visited last year (and from this site, though he didn’t mention it at the time, nor did I say anything, since I wasn’t sure every blogger in the world advertised to their co-workers that they write online). It was spectacular to hear words of encouragement and praise first thing on a busy morning, and I set out for my day’s discussions heartened by Tony’s kindness.

The day went well; lots of intense conversation, and a serendipitous meeting with Alex, more intense conversation and a pleasant dinner out, and now I have to go to sleep to be better-rested for a breakfast meeting in Hyde Park tomorrow — after which I will come upstairs, crawl under the covers, curl up in a fetal position and zone out for the indefinite future.

Ekklesia Day Three

Amy Laura Hall gives this morning’s plenary; her talk is called,“The Irreproducible Gift and the Incalculable Gift of Life: Toward a Non-Teleological Theology of Procreation.”

She shows a collage of images that display the constructed distinction of “the well-planned family” as against the “merely accidental family.” She cites the Lilly Corporation’s advertising for their ADHD medication Strattera, the slogan of which is “Welcome to Ordinary.”; the American Museum of Natural History’s handout on the Genomic Revolution, “Get the right tests!”; a bipartisan congressional ad to prevent teen pregnancy that shows a pregnant girl with the word “Nobody” plastered across her in large red caps; advertisements for adoption agencies, complete with credit card icons, as love objects; an illustration of the American eugenics movement, including the “Fitter Family” movement; the atom as icon of the family, and the double helix as an icon for the healthy future; and advertisements for baby formula and appliances (she refers to the “factory-farming mother” who pumps her breast milk) and an ad that suggests “Physicans’ Babies Are Better Babies.”

What does she mean by the “Irreproducible Gift”? In Church Dogmatics 3/4, Barth says that the tension and pressure of the socially-instituted obligation to procreate has been removed by the Incarnation, but that now conception and birth now may be received as a true gift. She reads Barth through Kierkegaard; in Philosophical Fragments, the moment has decisive significance. The moment of the Incarnation, death, and resurrection has decisive significance; if the moment doesn’t have this significance, we are speaking merely Socratically. The decisive significance of this moment underlines the gratuity of the incarnation, the non-necessity of all that is, the non-necessity of Christ. Our existence in time is not the rolling out of the inevitable, but is a radical gift. Creation and eschatology cannot be teleological in the sense that the end is in any way a given.

What, then, of procreation? In Acts of Love, Kierkegaard suggests that there is no necessary narration of our identity; the child alone in the woods may be anything. Even more, the child in the womb may be anything. All our existence is radically contingent. But, by becoming receptive to Christ, we are incorporated into the narrative of Christ’s identity (I think; Amy Laura talks awfully fast).

Her concern about biotech is not Fukuyama’s worry that it will fragment society, will dissolve the sentimental ties that hold society together. She argues that biotech crafts serviceable others; we can narrate children in ways serviceable for teh purposes of a capitalist society. Kierkegaard doesn’t so much reject Kant’s Kingdom of Ends, but pushes deeper to ask what it would mean to go beyond Kant to ask what would it mean to see every other as an alter Christus. (I missing a lot; she does talk very fast, with little fluff.) She rejects the “primordial” critique that appeals to a pristine prior condition from which technology effects a division, that “enhancement” amounts to a meretricious artifice.

She does read biotech as a (not Thomistic) gratuitous normativity of grace, not of nature. It is possible to argue that the factory-farm mother is not natural, that the Fisher-Price aquarium in the crib with a remote control to put your child to sleep is not natural.

She wants to take a snapshot of a culture that is about crafting families and children to fit within a particular narration of children’s identity as those who will meet the demands of our present economy. The justification of biotech shifts as women enter the workspace. “The family that leads procreation up to chance risks a burdensome child; the family uses biotechnology to control conception and childbirth can expect to excel.”

The “atom” functions as an icon of the blessed future. As early as 1947, you can find images of the human nostalgic past dying and tangled up in red tape, contrasted with the restored well-beign of the human sphere blessed by the atom from the hand of God. The atom (according to this illustration) will revive agriculture, cities, the home, and human health (the nuclear family — modulating from the family that benefits from atomic power to the family members as the constituent subatomic particles).

The US government sponsors a display for gentic technology whose theme is “what makes you you.” Genes are what make you who you are. At the same time, the display stresses that everyone is the same genetically (lest one infer a basis for racial discrimination). She demonstrates that the public face of biotech presents it as a means of depotentiating the threat of danger that correlates with racial difference, a medical panacea for human difference. Aggression, anxiety, and obesity are allegedly genetic disorders. (She cites advertising copy that sells Lilly ADHD medication as a means for re-incorporating Dad into family life.)

Her main point is a critique of the biotechnological management of contingency, the means for mastering the uncontrollable. It’s a powerful talk, but it would be even more impressive if its elements were more smoothly integrated.

Brian Volck responds by citing a poem, the epigraph of which begins “We wanted to confess our sins, but there were no takers. . . .” The wealthy live as if we can save ourselves; only the poor truly hope, since they have no alternative.

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Unfortunately, I hadn’t fully charged the computer before the session began, and I ran out of power partway into Brian’s response.

We spent the time after the conference’s official closing ceremony (Brent, saying “Go in peace!” hanging out with our out-of-town pals, and drifting back to Evanston. I walked several miles in the course of the day (John Utz, his daughter Rachel and I got lost looking for a bookstore anywhere near DePaul), I woke up early and didn’t sleep much last night, and I have a big interview tomorrow, so I’m going to bed.

The Ekklesia Project holds a great conference for subversive Christians — a pretty good one for other interested folk, too — and it’ll be back next year; I’d be tickled to see you there.

Ekklesia Day Two

Kate Wallace will post the text of her presentation on her website; she’s asked that we listen, without taking notes, so I won’t expatiate on her talk. She and her respondent, Thomas Finger, have walked us through close readings of the Magnificat in Luke’s Gospel, Kate in the RSV English version, Thomas from the Greek text.

And I missed the morning session of workshops, as I fell into a conversation with Brent Laytham, so I’m sitting down in the book display working on the James commentary.

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OK, it’s after lunch, and I’m at the session on “Echoes of Mary’s Song in Popular Culture,” led by Matt Gunter and Rodney Clapp. They’re concentrating on the ways that the vision that Mary expresses in the Magnificat come back to our attention in music. They highlight three motifs:

• Anticipation/Eschatology
• Anger/Reversal
• Inclusion/Exclusion
  (Beyond “us” and “them”
  
  (Israel and the Gentiles)

The theological themes don’t necessarily appear with the refined precision of classical orthodoxy (likewise, of course, many favorite hymns), but they called these songs to our attention (with my nominations after Rodney and Matt’s):

1. Anticipation
• Bruce Cockburn, “Cry of a Tiny Babe”
• Sister Rosetta Tharpe, “This Train (Gospel Train),” 1960 version
• Wilco, “Christ For President”
• The Call, “Become America”
  I might add
• Talking Heads, “City of Dreams”
• The Alarm, “Absolute Reality”
• Tom Verlaine, “Kingdom Come”
• The Reivers, “He Will Settle It”
• of course, Thunderclap Newman, “Something in the Air”
• The Housemartins, “Caravan of Love”
  maybe even
• John Lennon, “Number Nine Dream” (depending on how you define your terms)


2. Anger/Reversal
• Larry Norman, “The Great American Novel
• Iris Dement, “The Wasteland of the Free”
• Tracy Chapman, “Freedom Now”
  To which I nominate:
• The Housemartins,, “Get Up Off Our Knees” and “Freedom” (okaya, so I’m a Housemartins fan)
• Kirsty MacColl, “Walking Down Madison”
• Elvis Costello’s “Tramp the Dirt Down” expresses, I think, none of the graced hope of the Magnificat, but he sure is angry about injustice
• War, “The World Is a Ghetto” (does this count, I wonder?)




3. Inclusion/Exclusion
• Steve Earle, “Jerusalem”
• Rosanne Cash, “Western Wall”
• Johnny Cash, “Down There By the Train”
• Jim White, “If Jesus Drove a Motor Home”
  I’d add
• disappear fear, “Who’s So Scared?”
• Talking Heads, “Creatures of Love”
• Laurie Anderson, “Strange Angels”
• Toni Childs, “Zimbabwe”
• Of course, Nick Lowe’s “What’s So Funny ’Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?” my favorite version of which is still Elvis Costello’s from Armed Forces

Now I’ve blown Matt & Rodney’s routine for any Chicago-area church groups, but it’s still worth sitting and listening and talking things over with them.

Ekklesia 2004 Part One

During registration, I ran into a man named Jeff Bullock. Our encounter very rapidly exemplified for me the strength of weak ties; he caught onto my vital commitment to the vision of the Disseminary. He and I had never met before, but we had been told to look out for one another, and when we ran into one another we feel right away into an animated conversation of mutual encouragement to brgin the Cluetrain to the life of the Episcopal Church.

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Jonathan Wilson began the conference by proposing that we think of our topic not so much as “the upside-down kingdom of God,” so much as the right-side up; refusing to concede the reality of the disordered cosmos, and asserting the greater reality of the rectified world. The Grain of the Universe flows with Jesus’ way, not against it. That contextualizes our discourse as a proclamation of Good News, of a positive Christology (as opposed to messages that the world and faith are uniformly grim and frightening) — otherwise, Christians internalize and reproduce the assumption that the temporal world is the only world that counts, that the temporal world sets the agenda for our lives; that the bondage to decay and frustration that characterize temporality are not the last word. Christian theology is about the good news that entropy does not govern the cosmos.

I Cor 1:18-25 expounds the right-side-up-ness of the theological message in the face of an upside-down world. The celebratory element of play bespeaks the vision that Mary’s word invokes. Playful interrogation of the world’s foolishness stands to accomplish a great deal more than solemn, detailed critiques of the economy, the state, and the idols that captivate us. Stan H observes it’s too easy to let our critiques of the world become more interesting than the Gospel.

Similarly, disciples are not obligated to effect change in the world, but to stand in the way of the right-side-up world, among people who see only the upside-down world. Jonathan described his vision of “standing in the way” in the sense of “getting in the way of,” or “interposing ourselves,” but I’d want to stretch his usage to include “getting ourselves into the Way” of Christian discipleship — even when all the apparent paths diverge from that Way.

Stan proposed several playful slogan-critiques of the world’'s practices, such as “Greed — its good for the economy,” “Vanity is only for the beautiful” or “Vanity — not for you,“ “Satiety is for the dead,” He notes that one reason Christians get so upset about sex is that we have fairly clear lines of demarcation for knowing when we’re doing it wrong, whereas there aren’t such bright lines that tell us when we’re being greedy. “How can you tell?” Stanley asks; “When you have two SUVs? One isn’t enough?”

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The session on “Ekklesia and Emergent Church” is being led by Scott Bader-Saye of the University of Scranton, and blogger Geoff Holsclaw of up/Rooted and Life on the Vine Christian Community. Scott and Geoff are devoting some of the workshop time to defining the emergent church (“the emerging church conversation,” as Geoff emphasizes). He sets the emergent church in the context of varying generations of evangelicalism and its instrumentalist outlook, and in the context of the church’s relation to temporality (where evangelicalism has tended toward an atemporal “me and Jesus” worldview, where many mainstream traditions have succumbed to the weight of their traditions).

Scott proposes that the Ekklesia Project may have put too much emphasis on the “counter” of our counter-cultural identity, and acknowledges that the positive theological vision of the emergent movement, and its self-consciously rich and critical celebration of contemporary cultural make its discourse an edifying complement to EP’s intellectual and ethical spirituality.

Scott suggests four vectors of interest from EP to emergent:

• Pragmatic ecumenism


• Ancient-future worship


• Generous orthodoxy


• Recovery of missional identity

Scott notes that “mission” tends to refer either to “converting people to be church members” or to “good deeds on behalf of others,” but for both Ekklesia and emergent, “mission” refers mostly to a way of being in the world that bespeaks the Gospel in action. Both Ekklesia and emergent derive a great deal of the energy toward self-identification from the matter of integrity, on the Ekklesia side with regard to the ways that the churches have compromised themselves through their dalliances with the state, with modernity, with capitalism — and on the emergent side, through the lived experience of the vacuity of the churches’ discourses, the distractions and busy-ness with which churches preoccupy themselves as a way to keep the radical demands of discipleship at bay.

Geoff suggests forgoing the construction of our neighbors as objects-of-evangelization (“Gen-X-ers,” “postmoderns”), and forgoing the spatial metaphors that tie the church to immobile geographic dimensionality (such metaphors as contrast-culture, resident aliens), but putting into play a sense of the church as culture of fulfillment. By this he means that Ekklesia could productively develop a sense of making the very best of the best that the world offers.

Scott problematizes the notion of “relevance,” but notes the need of a term to do the work of relevance; he proposes emphasizing the incarnational mode of the church’s identity, the manifestation of God’s presence in human activity. That entails both the churches’ very humanness and activity, and also its calling to make the God’s ways perceptible in the human sphere. Scott also cites Rowan Williams’s advocacy of the mixed-economy church, where the church honors the growth at its fringes (here Scott is thinking especially of the emergent church, of intentional communities and cell-based churches, pub church and café church). On one hand, you can say, “That’s not really church,” exclude and isolate them; or on the other hand, one can recognize these stirrings and affirm them and welcome them.

Ekklesia Blogging

Margaret and I venture forth today to take part in the Ekklesia Project’s annual meeting, where we’ll work on a richer understanding of our discipleship and gather with old friends. I’ll blog if they have wifi. . . .

“Those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly they chose evil.”

- Hannah Arendt

Maybe, Maybe Not

“I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.“ [all emphasis mine]

There are many things President Bush might have meant by that; some of them aren’t scary. [Link from the Lancaster New Era (registration required, sorry and puzzled), via The Revealer]

R is For Rosen — and For Religion

Jay Rosen, of The Revealer, asked his readers to think about what might happen if the population of the journalistic campaign bus included not only the seasoned political reporters, but also journalists on the religion beat: “If a religion writer covered the presidential campaign, how would campaign coverage be different?”

As a theologically-interested observer, this is how I’d answer Jay’s question:

---

First, Jay, may I rephrase your question? I hate to fulfill a destiny to become increasingly pedantic as I get older, but you asked “If Religion Writers Rode the Campaign Bus... what would be different?” That’s one I can’t answer, not only because of deficient mantic capacities, but because the term “religion” covers so much terrain that I can’t presume to address its range. Each of us speaks from a particular location within a particular tradition of construing reality’s texture; we all do better to acknowledge the horizons of our claims rather than pretending to privileged access to some presumably universal vantage point.

Instead, what if we asked what might happen? That permits me to imagine myself (or a like-minded journalist) on the trail, and that option better fits my capacities.

Among the first things that might happen could be articles, interviews if possible, actually probing the candidates’ theology. Sound-bite answers that identify denominational allegiances, favorite philosophers, or attitude to church-state issues don’t get at the substance of a person’s convictions about God, the human condition, and the ways in which a candidate’s understandings of God and humanity issue in judgments about social and political behavior. Why could not a congenial, fair-minded interviewer plumb the souls of these candidates to learn not simply what they say about God and faith, but also how they think about such topics? One might learn about the formative influences, authorities, practices, and ultimate convictions that shape the candidate’s behavior; and one might ascertain the depth of understanding with which the candidate speaks about these topics.

Another difference might derive from such a journalist’s alertness to inconsistencies and ironies relative to the political scene’s construction of religious topics. For instance, although the press tuned in to questions about whether the conquest and occupation of Iraq constituted a justified war, I have observed no attention to whether subsequent developments (relative to the presence or absence of WMDs, the international consensus or lack thereof, and the effects of the invasion) bear out or undermine the case for having regarded this as a justified war. I haven’t seen stories that analyze the divergent approaches to evaluating war as an instrument for foreign policy that have characterized Christians from the Catholic tradition (itself internally contested and heterogeneous), which has explicitly pursued and articulated the grounds for regarding war as justified, to the historic small-“b” baptist tradition (including Mennonites, Hutterites, and Church of the Brethren), within which a great proportion of Christian pacifists have found their home — let alone the manifold ways that Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and other traditions of reflection have treated these topics. Where political journalists often treat “religion” or “Christianity” or “The Church” as essentially homogeneous, a more religiously-alert writer might focus on the widely-divergent specific traditions that constitute the Big Category Names, enriching her or his material not only with awareness of the differences among and within theological traditions, but also with the themes that distinct religions share, albeit in different ways. When politicians deploy Big Vacuous Terms such as “religion,” or “the Church,” or “Judaeo-Christian values” to plaster over the constitutive theological disagreements among American citizens, the religiously-attuned journalist could be in a position to identify the narrower positions slant to which the politician is appealing.

Of course, it’s hard to see politicians offering any great detail on these topics when vagueness fits so well into the privatization and trivialization of religion. Any detail, any specific point to which a politician confesses adherence risks alienating votes. The religion reporter on the campaign bus who probes for ambitious answers to searching questions expends precious time and goodwill in an endeavor that stands to embarrass her or his source; better, perhaps, for all concerned to settle for anodyne rote responses to superficial religious questions.

A campaign journalist whose religious roots run deep could be in a position to explore the candidates’ positions on “life” positions such as abortion, war, stem cell research, health care, physician-assisted death, and the death penalty. On what basis would a “pro-life” candidate abolish legal abortion, but send troops to war and execute convicts? On what basis would someone who supports abortion rights hesitate to condone euthanasia or capital punishment? Moreover, deeply-held theological beliefs ought to shape our responses not simply to obvious questions of life or death, but to questions on the conduct of life in all it spheres. Numerous observers were surprised when Susan Pace Hamill's masters thesis on the Alabama Tax Code excoriated the laws enacted by legislators who make hay of their Christian commitments, but hers was only an isolated example of the application of theological reason to political process.

A religiously-informed journalist might know enough of religious history to be able readily to cite ways that the terms and practices of particular groups have changed over the years, to note that dogmas and rites inform their traditions in different ways under different conditions. Such a journalist might spot, and address on-the-spot oversimplifications, distortions, and blind spots that impoverish politicians’ statements and reporters’ coverage thereof.

Finally, a religiously-grounded journalist could be in a position to hold in suspension the primacy that virtually all culturally-prominent voices ascribe to pragmatic considerations, to political premises indigenous to American liberal democracy, to the postulate that “citizenship” (with its obligations and benefits) is an unproblematic characteristic for Christians, to the confinement of religion to the category of private sentiment rather than reflective discernment, and to the cornucopia of incoherent rituals, dogmas, offices, and rhetorical flourishes that the American political system substitutes for an explicitly theological account of life, the universe, and everything.

Thanks for asking --

Grace and peace,
AKMA

Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit

As I browsed through the image stream at flickr, I saw this neat shot, which in turn reminded me of a sight I had to spend a half hour trying to track down. As I recall, when I visited the Cathedral in Cologne while on a faculty tour of Germany, I found myself wandering around the courtyard, some of the paving-stones of which had been inscribed with various messages. I had been in Germany a day and a half and was getting acclimated to seeing the world in German, when at my feet was a stone that read, “This might be a site of historic significance.” I couldn’t find any reference to it on Google, though, more's the pity. Maybe I just imagined it.

sidewalk stencil Originally uploaded by vÃcÃpinta.

Personal Pangrams

As a type enthusiast — and laborer in the mills of digital typography back in the day when everything was bit-mapped, before even personal computing — I harbor more typefaces on my computer than I actually use day-to-day.

My type management software (Extensis Suitcase, which isn’t perfect, but good enough) permits me to view non-installed faces in a sample window, for which I determine the text. Since I want to see all the letters, I have until recently used generic pangrams familiar from typing class (“The quick brown fox” or “Sphinx of black quartz”) — but the other day I noticed Mark Simonson’s fabulous Pangrammer Helper, Now, instead of seeing sphinxes and lazy dogs, I see type display itself in personalized pangrams: Hazy “Margaret backs down jive flax quip” and “Queer jowly AKMA dupes zaftig beach vixen.” It’s a simple pleasure, but satisfying nonetheless.

This is Great

Just wish the images got poster-sized. . . .

More Flailing About Copyright

By title:

The New York Times (registration required, sorry) bemoans the sale of used books on the internet, leading with a misguided comparison of used-book sales online to Napster (great line: “There aren't any easy answers, especially as no one is breaking any laws here”).

And megastars U2 agonize over the loss of an unfinished draft of their next CD. I enjoy U2’s work, and I sympathize viscerally with their frustration that someone stole a copy of their unfinished work — oooh, that would upset me. But after what Wilco showed the world with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, it’s hard for me to get on board with reported fears that “illegal downloads of the music could cost the band and the record company millions of dollars in lost revenue.“

Wouldn’t Have Thought of That

Somehow, a mystery soft-drink cup has relocated to our home. Margaret and I noticed it on the dining room table the other day; it bore the proud inscription, “Kum & Go” in big red letters. Each of us looked at the cup, realized that we had never seen that cup before, and gazed at the cup in puzzlement. “When did that get here?” say I. “I don’t know,” Margaret answers. “I put it there,” Pippa tells us; “I’m having a drink of water.” When we indicated that we wondered how she had obtained it, she told us that she’d gotten it out of the cupboard. (Parents can be so very dense.)

After we explained that we were more interested in the question of how that particular cup arrived in our kitchen, the whole table went silent. None of us had ever been to a Kum & Go, so far as we knew, nor were we aware that we knew anyone who had been to a Kum & Go.

So we had to Google it — whereupon we learned a great deal, primarily that we weren’t the only ones who found that business name outlandishly absurd. If Kevin Smith had incorporated it into a Jay and Silent Bob movie, we’d have moaned and rolled out eyes at what a dumb gag he’d just inflicted on his audience. But it’s real, and it’s the subject of serious concern.

And we still don’t know how that cup got here — though we have our suspicions . . .

Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil

I’m very eager to see Sy Hersh’s next major report. I hope it come soon; I hope it’s not soft-pedalled.

This is George W. Bush administration policy in action — we’ve read the memos.

Really, It’s An Improvement

I followed the links to All Music’s page for feedback on the new design, to leave them my observations on the way the site falls short of adequacy, when I noticed a link to a defense of their redesign.

That was yesterday, though; today, the defense of their redesign seems to be gone. (Whoops! Thanks, Waxy, for capturing and posting it.). I’m curious to see what develops next, but so far I haven’t seen anything vaguely approaching a positive response to the new design, and plenty of hostile responses.

SixApart and Neoteny Avoid Nasty Lawsuit

The legal department at the University of Blogaria is standing down from DEFCON 2, to which condition it had snapped once it became known that a European weblog server company was trading under the name UBlog, a clear violation of the University’s long-established prerogative to operate internationally in the public domain under the UBlog monicker (with a branch campus abroad).

Luckily, cool heads prevailed, and no one needed to go through years of litigation. Six Apart, the developers of Movable Type and the hosting company behind TypePad, intervened (perhaps through the behingd-the-scenes wizardry of literary lion Joi Ito), and bought out the European trespasser, so that it now forms the European branch of the 6A parent company.

Well done, all, and no hard feelings. Donations to the annual fund and capital campaign (or campus store purchases) always welcome.

America's Pretty Much Best News

Alert reader and new Seabury Dean (well, “Associate Dean and Registrar,”) Micah calls my attention to the front page of this week’s The Onion — specifically the “In the News” headlines relative to “Copies of Da Vinci Code Litter Crash Site,” and “Alpha-Bits Now Available In Serif Font.”

I commented on both of these over at flickr, but since not everyone here will go over there, I’ll note regarding the da Vinci Code image, that that’s what happens when you load up a plane with too much trash (I can’t believe they’re still selling like hotcakes in hardback!). I’m hoping that Doc’s misfortune (reported by Euan) had nothing to do with da Vinci-related instability.

All the flights that were carrying readers of What Is Postmodern Biblical Criticism? landed safely, you notice.

And regarding the Alpha-Bits image, the funny part is that (if I recall correctly) Alpha-Bits always had serifs; remember the H's and T's?

Commenting on Commentary

A week or so ago, Pete Phillips proposed the irony of a postmodern type such as I, writing an instance of the very traditional, very modern genre of the commentary (in a comment, of course) (by the way, Pete, your email sig and comment URI give the wrong web address for you — they say "dot org” rather than “dot com,” unless that’s your own postmodern gesture toward the social construction of URIs). (Pete has a few provocative reflections on a new book by Eco, too.) (Back to the point:) “Isn't this colluding with the guild's mystification of the word which you oppose elsewhere? Is a commentary a recording of a reading - or the opening of a new door — or a re-emergence of the intertextual game?”

Well, perhaps it’s a mystification, although most of the Greek students with whom I’ve worked would find it more of a radical demystification. The point of the series is to go through the Greek text, parsing and defining and construing, and (as much as possible) sketching out plausible alternative possibilities without pushing a party line. And once I look into the passages, many of these constructions do look “complicated or obscure,” — and if they look obscure to me, I don’t feel presumptuous in reckoning that they might look difficult to my students as well.

Of course, there’s no way to avoid applying some degree of rhetorical pressure, but we’re trying to put a higher value on discussing the alternatives than to persuading people to adopt one position or another. The series’s orientation is resolutely grammatical-textual, so we don’t fret about whether James wrote it, or where he lived, or whether it’s a composite of six fragmentary letters (although now that I say this, I realize that back at the beginning of chapter 2 I minimized the likelihood that the name “Jesus Christ” is an interpolation — although I have firm textual grounds for so doing).

At the same time, Pete is right to point out the absurdity of multiplying the number of commentaries in the world. I like this series and its goals — to help along readers whose Greek may not be up to full strength — but I doubt I’d want to write one of those passage-by-passage commentaries that purports to tell you what was really on James’s mind as he wrote those very words.

[My book about Matthew’s Gospel will take a more thematic approach; in some respects it may resemble a commentary, but I deliberately take the tack of saying, “When you consider these things, doesn’t it seem as though the whole bit fits together in this way?” It’s more an invitation to read Matthew along with me (closer to what Pete called “a recording of a reading”) than a scientific demonstration that I’m right and everybody else wrong.

But neither my James book nor my Matthew book quite escapes the challenge Pete raises:

Don’t Feel So Bad

Okay, so I thought that the Episcopal Church website was a pretty failure, an ornamentally clueless exercise in design-for-ineffectiveness. It’s a technologically tone-deaf organization, so although I’m always hopeful, I don’t expect much.

But who told the All-Music Guide that their redesign was a good idea? What person, with what eyes and what brain, flipped the switch from their former (clunky but functional) page layout to the present monstrosity? And who tipped them off that it would be a good idea to base the design on one browser? The least secure browser around? And to present a headline advising users that “You are accessing allmusic.com with a browser that is not currently supported. The appearance and functionality of the site could be impacted. allmusic.com is optimized for Internet Explorer 5.5 and above for Windows”?

Someone should make allmusic.com the target of a serious redesign makeover. And heavens to betsy, if a professional web design firm can get paid for that presentation (although maybe it was redesigned by somebody’s in-law), why are any excellent designers looking for work?

[Later:] It’s even worse than badly designed. The interface now requires (free) registration, but it keeps logging me out, requiring recurrent re-logging. Queries time out constantly. And the database still has numerous misspellings.

Still Spinning

I got home from the Open Space Giving Conference totally exhausted — really quite disproportionately tired — and several days behind on work, blog, and family time. So I did what any sensible person would do. I had a quick lunch, went to bed, and woke up in time for dinner.

I tried to make up lost time on the commentary today (and I owe Pete Phillips some remarks on that topic), but one thing and another interposed themselves between me and massive productivity. I wanted, when I got home from work, to blog with Tom about lectionaries and canons, and to respond to the Tutor’s challenge relative to theology and marketing languages (and Hi, Michael!). Still a shade too weary, though, so they’ll have to wait.

And just a quick word to acknowledge Joi’s response to my thoughts about Jitterbug Perfume and Even Cowgirls: I deeply admire Robbins’s way with words, with character, with plot, and I’m tickled that Joi turned me on to him. But I can’t say as much for Robbins as a novelist of ideas. The story of Cowgirls bogs down when Sissy has to explain everything to Dr. Robbins and he explains back to her. (And really: “Dr. Robbins”? Even as a self-conscious conceit?).

It’s not my being shirty about my faith; give me Kurt Vonnegut (no Christian apologist he) any day when it comes to novelistic critiques of religion. Robbins impairs his own art when he tries to show off insight he doesn’t have — that’s my complaint.

Don’t Do it!

Joey, don’t be a hero. . . .

(Besides, U.S. citizenship is probably one of their prequisites.)

Thank-You Note

Joi sent me a copy of Jitterbug Perfume the other day, and because he wants to protect me from idleness sent me Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (actually, the latter had more to do with mutual thumb impairments).

I’m enjoying Jitterbug immensely; its scope and vigor delight me. Unfortunately, I’m nettled by Robbins’s persistent specific denunciatory asides about Christianity; they seem to fit too neatly into a glib cultural resistance to all of Christian faith out of keeping with a novelist’s, an artist’s obligation to tell the truth. Indeed, the irony of Robbins’s powerful claims to be telling the truth (over against what he represents as an oppressive, imperialist Christianity) seems lost on this writer whom I would otherwise expect to be keenly attuned to such twists.

If you share Robbins’s distaste for Christianity, or don’t much care what he thinks about it, this should be a seamlessly delightful literary argument for his vision of immortality. His prose works so sweetly that even I, dedicated as I have been to cultivating a discourse of theological practice and identity that stands squarely athwart Robbins’s path, have found it a toothsome progressive dinner of character, plot, and philosophy. I only wish he didn’t reveal a painful paucity of wisdom in his facile derogation of my faith.

True Gifts

One of the [numerous] reasons I wanted to come to the Gift Hub Giving Conference was my curiosity about seeing OpenSpace in action. I’m impressed, and tempted to adopt an OpenSpace approach to some of my classes next year. I’d have to take a deep breath and jump, but it would be a worthwhile experiment.

The context is so provocative that I keep having idea-seeds — indeed, they come so fast that I haven’t time to develop them (now or, likely, when I get back). But it’s exhilarating and promises even to be productive. If you’re at all interested, and can get to Chicago in the next day or so, you might look into it.

Test Drive

Hey, what about Joe Duemer’s idea for knitting the Kerry-Edwards campaign more intimately to the hopes and needs of actual people? Take a look, and give some feedback (and a link?).

Much To Do

I was hoping to return to the topic of marketing and theological vocation before the Gift Hub conference, but today I didn’t squeeze it in. I’ll try to manage it, lest I incur the wrath of my tutor.

Breathtaking

Simon pointed attention to the Iron and Wine video (available for viewing from the iTunes Music Store), and even points to a free download of the MP3.

And it’s amazingly powerful. Thanks so very much, Simon!

Lectio[nario] Difficilior Potior Est

A long time ago, Tom left a comment relative to sermon in which I noted and ruminated on the rationale of liturgical lectionary-compilers. I was preaching on the conclusion of Revelation (I think I’ll offer a class on Revelation this winter — not because I know so much about it at the start, but because I’m fascinated by the book and the questions it poses for interpreters) and the way that the particular day’s lesson was constructed to omit some specific curses that John took pains to include — including a curse on people who omitted the curses. It’s not clear how irony-impaired the lectionary workers are.

Tom left a question in the comments, asking, “Is this repression of the actuality of the sacred text a matter of theological practice (and if so, how?) or is it merely a cultural aversion instigated by the same drivers that manufacture Our Daily Spectacle in the US?”

After Tom left the comment, I thought, “That would be something worth answering in a blog entry, not just in a comment appended to a comment.” Bad move. It meant that it went on the figurative heap of things in my intellectual inbox, such as ”devise articulate explanation of pacifism in light of al-Qaeda, 9/11, and Iraq,” and “Write a version of The Cluetrain Manifesto for Education,” and “Find some theological authors who are willing to write, or to publish stuff they already have at hand, for real American money, in time for us to distribute them via The Disseminary.” Tom sent a polite follow-up note that said, “No, really, I’d like to know,” but to no avail. That which has gone to my memory’s inbox has gone to near-permanent repose.

But not absolutely permanent, since I’ve been haunted by the recollection ever since. And now, never having been invited to participate in the lectionary industry, I’ll speak about the process from a position of unassailable ignorance — but since I’m a companion of David Weinberger’s, I’ll take heart from his example and brazenly operate by googling, guesswork and inference, unimpeded by expertise. (I spent fifteen minutes searching for one of his hallmark assertions of uninformed expertise, but didn’t come up with a good example. I’ll look again later.)

“Is this a matter of theological practice?” Well, sort of. The points of a lectionary are to associate Christian observance of liturgical seasons with especially pertinent readings from Scripture, and to encourage preachers to work with a selection of different texts for their sermons. For a long time, the Episcopal Church had a one-year lectionary; every year, you would hear the same reading from the epistles and the same reading from the gospels on the third Sunday after Epiphany. (You would not, ordinarily, hear the Old Testament read at mass at all, if I understand correctly; my copies of the Book of Common Prayer show only gospel and epistle passages.) Sometimes people infer, incorrectly, that Anglicans/Episcopalians didn't hear about the Old Testament during their services in those days, but that conclusion overlooks the richness of the liturgical use of the OT and Psalms, and the likelihood that most capable preachers were richly steeped in the OT and freely wove Old Testament texts and themes into their sermons.

In the mid-twentieth century, during the liturgical renewal, people got the good idea that (a) we ought to read the Old Testament regularly, (b) we ought to read more of the epistles and gospels, and (c) we’d need more time to read all this. So they shifted to a three-year cycle rather than an annual cycle, added OT readings, and spread the gospels and epistles through the whole series.

In the course of selecting the readings, the lectionary framers often tailored the passages to suit the exigencies of modern worship (fewer chapter-long readings, for instance) to fit “themes” for given days (the only time the church reads Zechariah, if I recall correctly, is on Palm Sunday, when we read about the King entering Jerusalem on a colt), and to put the best face on some awkward readings — as, for instance, the last verses of Revelation. (The readings from the Psalter often permit congregations to leave out the imprecatory verses. I have a funny story about that, but this entry is already taking too long.)

So yes, in a way, the lectionary framers are promulgating the “cultural aversion” about which you speak, and I have a pronounced tendency to incorporate those omitted verses into my sermons when I preach on days with censored readings. On the other hand, it’s not a new phenomenon with the recent generation of lectionaries; as you can well imagine, the selection of where a passage begins and ends will make a big difference in how the passage selected sounds to its auditors. And I know a priest who always ignored the lectionary (even the old one) and would come in Sunday morning to tell a reader to read “that story about David dancing in front of the Ark of the Covenant — you know, the good parts.”

I don’t envy these committees their work. I do believe in having a lectionary, though it hampers anyone’s efforts to preach to particular themes (which can be good or bad, depending on the gifts and theology of the preacher), and it’s something wonderful that many congregations across denominations gather Sunday morning and hear more-or-less the same readings; it’s not precisely “unity,” but it’s a step in a good direction. Lectionaries damp preachers’ tendency to ride hobby-horses (though dedicated hobby-horse riders will do that anyway; another preacher I know always made every sermon into an encomium on the Prodigal Son). I wish there were an expectation that sometimes preachers would carefully depart from the lectiuonary, but in actual fact what we’d inevitably see is ideologues using that liberty to pound their premises week after week, and slackers to recyclkke sermons every few weeks. So it’s a mixed bag.

And I apologize from my heart for taking so long to answer. As W. C. Fields says in The Bank Dick, “Things happened.” Sorry!

That’ll Teach Me

Guess what I just spent about forty-five minutes deleting?

Yup. Even circumlocution doesn’t work; next time, I’ll have to avoid even thinking about it.

Speechless

Britt Blaser’s reflections on war and the present situations in the U.S. and Iraq command our attention.

“We’re silent not because we’re strong but because we cannot comprehend how stupidly the inexperienced bulk of society speaks of war as a rational option that we're entitled to use on people the way a company might launch a hostile takeover: Boys with tin soldiers, attempting to seem grown up.”

Thanks for breaking your silence, Britt. Bless you.

Fourth of Flies

Great fireworks display tonight; didn’t take my camera this year, so no additions to last year’s crop; just as well, because we short-sightedly chose a fantastic spot, truly marvelous view, except that we were directly under a street light that attracted every mosquito, moth, gnat, and fly within yards. And since we were sitting by the Northwestern University lagoon, that’s a lot of insects.

I saw some excellent pyrotechnics between bobs, slaps, wiggles, fanning, and dodging, but next year we sit in the dark.

Marketing Inquiry

I was reading over some promotional material for the new Sony Walkman-would-be iPod-killer (as if — let's see, it doesn’t play any format except Sony’s own. . . .), when I noticed again that the abbreviation for their proprietary format is ATRAC.

Would you name a audio storage format anything that sounds just like “eight-track”? I sure wouldn’t; but I guess that’s why Sony’s PR people get the big bucks.

Pondering

I’d be the last to claim that I’m above superstition, but. . . .

I’m presently entertaining a hypothesis that may amount to no more than post hoc ergo propter hoc, fallacious thinking: namely that practitioners of a certain form of nettlesome online manipulation, commonly identified by combining the name of a canned meat product with the way that many blogs permit visitors to leave observations pertinent to the topic under discussion — i.e., c0mm3nt $p^m — seem to afflict my site more often after I allude to the practice.

So I’m carefully avoiding naming the phenomenon by its most obvious designation. Maybe it’s superstition, or maybe they have bots that look for entries that discuss their means of attracting attention, reasoning that sites that mention c.s. may be more likely to be vulnerable to re-infection. Either way, I’m not issuing any invitations.

I am looking forward to upgrading to MT 3.0 and its monitoring features, though, to give it a fair chance before I decide whether to change horses.

Why I’m Not Reading Cluetrain Aloud

Dave wonders why, when Lessig’s Free Culture audio book barn-raising was so successful, we don’t get together an audio version of The Cluetrain Manifesto. Crazy as the first go-round was, I’d lead such an effort in an instant — not just because I think Cluetrain is an important navigation sign for any endeavor concerned about its future involvement with the Net, but also because I think the world of David and Doc and Chris (author of Gonzo Marketing, still crying out for a re-release with new promotional push), and if Rick Levine is a friend of theirs, well, he must be okay with me (if in fact he really exists and wasn’t just a clever way for someone to get a double share of royalties).

But Dave’s got to know there’s a pivotal difference between Free Culture and Cluetrain. Larry Lessig wrote Free Culture as an integral part of his campaign to fend off the corporatization of copyright, to encourage and nurture the free online culture that Disney et al. are committed to stifling (by the way, there are some evil frames on the Free Culture site — eww, nasty). As such, he published the book with a Creative Commons license that explicitly permits derivative works. The Cluetrain Conspiracy didn’t release their book under a CC license, (a) because that wasn’t an explicit point of their book (more like a corollary, or an inference), but especially (b) because CC licenses didn’t exist back in those olden times. So as it turns out, there’s not only a Cluetrain book, but also a commercial spoken-word CD (abridged) and cassette version (also abridged), not to mention the version available from audible.com.

So, much as I’d relish making an unabridged downloadable free-culture version of Cluetrain available for everyone, I’m not going there. Partly cause I don’t want to take food out of the mouths of their children, but mostly because I don’t need the RIAA or Perseus Publishing or Antonin Scalia showing up at my front door with a subpoena.

Great idea, though. What would we do with the call-outs?

Two Years Old and Still Ahead of the Curve

Dan Miller points to a piece that Jordon Cooper wrote more than two years ago about churches and blogging. It’s the kind of reason I arranged for him to come talk to us at Seabury; the fact that only three or four people showed up underlines the point of Jordon’s retrospective reflections on churches and web-based communication.

Quoth Jordon, “The answer. . . most often given for not using technologies is lack of time, which is another way of saying it is a too low priority to be done. For many, the time spent on learning and integrating new technologies is not worth the time or the risk to use them.” But the churches devote vast amounts of hot air to the importance of young adults, flies bigwigs around to momentous commitee meetings, spends a lot on clueless brochure-driven websites, and simultaneously ignores a silver-platter, low-overhead, highly-effective means of reaching out to the young adults whom the churches supposedly want to attract.

It’s one of those days I wish I could draw cartoon, figures, even Tom-Tomorrow-style, so I could show a pointy-haired ecclesiastic saying, “It’s too low a priority. I don’t understand it, and I don’t want to listen to the people who do understand it. I know; we’ll recreate one of the least effective means of communication, and when it costs too much and doesn’t make a difference, we’ll shrug and blame the medium.”

I don’t know where Jordon and his colleagues go to let off steam, but I hope they’ll pull over a chair for me if I’m ever in the neighborhood.

Letter to Incoming Students

Dear Students,

I don’t know you yet, or I’d address you by name. I apologize for that, but I’ll work on it till I know each of you. I can’t promise that I’ll like everyone equally, but I can assure you that I love every one of my students. It’s an honor to work among you, and I can’t overemphasize that.

People come to seminary with varying expectations and aspirations. Some of those I can help you with, others I can’t. I wish I could help everyone with all their goals, but no one on earth can do that; I console myself with the confidence that I’m good at what I do, that I know deeply what I’m about, and I invite you to make the most of your investment of time (and money) at seminary by tuning in to what I’m about. It’s no big secret, but it may help if I make the roots of my practice as a teacher explicit. If you don’t like them, that’s okay – no penalty. We’ll find some way to work around that.

I start from the premise that everything about discipleship (and ordained ministry is in many respects simply an intensified mode of discipleship) grows out of the practice of truth. All the different theological disciplines, all the techniques and skills and habits you learn, derive their importance from the Truth you live; whatever facts you memorize, whatever devices for handling parish (diocesan, academic) organization, if they do not contribute to articulating a Truth that goes deeper than your personal preferences, your family’s habits, your community’s prejudices, those learnings amount to nothing more than gilding on a goose-egg. sooner or later, the egg will rot, and a pretty exterior won’t take away the stink.

The Truth will sustain your discipleship, even the intensified kind, with a nourishment, a light, a harmony, and a sense that do not depend for their validity on buzzwords, platitudes, fads, simple answers or correct answers (whether of the popular or academic sort). It’s not for nothing that Acts shows us the earliest followers of Jesus calling their fellowship as “the Way.” Ours is a Way entrusted to us from saints who knew it much better than any of us is likely to know it. That Way grows in us by the work of the Spirit, but we ought to make room for the Spirit to form us in the Way and cooperate with the Spirit in bodying forth the Way in our lives.

Sadly, the Way doesn’t come easily to us. We all, to varying degrees, have adopted ways that diverge from the Way, and we cling to those familiar, comfortable ways. We determinedly project our will before us to hide a more unwelcome Way, and insist that others accede to our projection. To paraphrase Cher, “If the Way came in a bottle, everyone would be a saint.”*1*

Our best clues for attuning ourselves to the Way come from Scripture and from the teaching of the saints in whose lives the church has recognized the Way. These guides stand apart not just because Authority Figures said so (though that’s not irrelevant). They stand apart because the catholic testimony of the church identifies them as privileged witnesses to the Truth. If we try to discover the Way apart from their testimony, or in conflict with their testimony, we amplify the likelihood that we’re just projecting, again, what we wish were the truth into the place of the Truth that lies beyond our manipulation.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that there?s nothing more to learn than Scripture and doctrine of the saints. We belong to a communion that affirms that “the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred: so also the Church of Rome hath erred,” and we may add that the Church of Canterbury and Episcopal Church Headquarters at 815 Second Avenue are likewise subject to error. It does imply, though, that such fine-tuning as we presume to propose for the understanding of the saints must be well-grounded in Scripture and in other holy teachings. The Way is not ours to be bent and reconfigured according to our whims and fancies; one large dollop of the doctrine of Judgment involves coming to terms with our non-ultimacy in the Big Story. I will die, you will die, and the church will soon forget the ways we we thought we were smarter than the saints; but we will be held accountable for the foolishness we impart to others. The closer we hew to a faith that Scripture and the catholic communion of saints uphold, the sounder our great ideas may be; the narrower the strand of the tradition that supports our great idea, the more humble we should be about the likelihood that we’ve caught onto something that every saint and prophet before us missed.

And we grow closer in spirit to Scripture and the saints by learning them, deeply, thoroughly, sympathetically. While I may seem cruelly hard-hearted by expecting you to know the difference between Matthew and Mark, or the differences among Gregory the Wonderworker, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory the Great, and Gregory of Nyssa, a great deal lies at stake in your learning the differences and commonalities, the accents and grammar and surprises and reassurances of each and all. Ministry permits us simply to go through the motions without understanding what we do — but surely you aspire to more than that! (Don’t tell me if I’m wrong; it would break my heart. I’m serious.)

By growing toward the Way of Scripture and the saints, we equip ourselves for a ministry that relies not on reference libraries (whether they be physical libraries or online compendia), but on a more portable and limber wisdom. A spirit attuned to the Spirit equips us for adaptive ministry, for the discernment that recognizes Truth under unfamiliar circumstances and protects us from popular error. Such a spirit offers richer sermon preparation, sounder pastoral guidance, holier liturgical formation, wiser theological insight than one can obtain anywhere else.

A callow reader will leap to the conclusion that one therefore need not learn anything from historical critics, from family systems theorists, from systematicians. Far from it! These all stand to enrich our understanding of the faith, of the communities who gather in the name of Christ, of how we should offer our praise, of — in short — the Truth itself. Neither “all antiquity“ nor “all modernity”; it’s more complicated than just that. Lean deeply into the heart of the saints’ teaching, and you’ll see their own struggles to balance fresh insight with honored tradition (if your favorite saint doesn’t show this inclination, then surely you will see it in interaction of that hero with the saints who disagreed with her or him). We can’t avoid change; the question is, What do we need to change in order to honor and preserve that which must not be seen to perish? What do we change in order to perpetuate the unchanging?

I think that by saying what I have, I will sufficiently have irritated my sisters and brothers who explain that my job should be to impart without deviation the simple, clearly-articulated faith handed down from the apostles, and also to have alienated my sisters and brothers who can’t understand why anyone would feel constrained by the oppressive speculations of credulous authoritarians. That saddens me, since it’s hard to teach people who don’t trust you, and neither students who suspect I’m just an apologist for Griswoldian doctrinal evasiveness nor those who find me complicitous with the forces of reaction have sufficient ground to trust me to teach them well.

On the other hand, I’m the teacher to whom God has brought you, and Providence presumably has some obscure purpose in that circumstance. If you bear with me, you will at least learn how holier souls than mine have drawn near to God. Pray for me in my error, and I will always pray for you, and our faithfulness to the Truth may light such a candle by God's grace in all the world, as shall never be put out.

God’s grace and peace be with you always —

*1* Yeah, this refers to a commercial that probably none of you saw, since I stopped watching broadcast TV roughly fifteen years ago, and it was aired well before that. Chalk it up to my quaint antiquity. Which still isn’t as ancient as Cher is.

Cause and Effect

Maybe you can help us.

We’ve been out to the movies the last two nights. Tonight we went to see The Day After Tomorrow, since within six to eight weeks six to eight days six to eight hours, Someone in the family wouldn’t be able to catch it on the big screen (and I can assure you that there wouldn’t be much point to watch it on a small screen). We just barely made it in time for the show, on account of circumstances I won’t go into just now. Short answer: as Margaret herself said, “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” She liked it, I thought that it was, well, not as bad as I thought it would be.

But we need help figuring out Shrek 2, which Margaret and Pippa and I saw together last night, and which we all enjoyed immensely. We were trying to untangle the plot over dinner tonight, though, and that’s where we ran into questions. {CAUTION: Spoilers in the extended entry!}

So, let’s work on this. Fiona seems to have been destined for a certain amount of time to meet and marry Prince Charming (hence, the diary). That “destiny” seems to have been arranged by the Fairy Godmother, who has power over the King/Father; she enabled his happiness, she threatens, and she can take it away. Does that mean that she set him free from being a frog to marry Queen Lillian? If so, was the marriage of his daughter a precondition for transforming him to a king? If that’s the case, then presumably Fairy Godmother gave him a package deal including guranteed birth of a daughter (evidently as only child) and her own giving birth to a son. But it gets more complicated than that, since not only is Chraming destined to marry Fiona, but he has to rescue her from the dragon in order so to do; and one reason she's stuck with the dragon is her peculiar condition (is that genetic, from her father’s froggiosity, or a causally distinct curse from the Fairy?); so the peculiar condition must have been part of the Fairy Godmother’s plan as well.

At which point, one may well wonder why the Fairy Godmother didn’t just destine Fiona to be happy, and Charming to win her heart; that doesn’t seem any more complicated than the baroque tangle of circumstances that determined the plot.

Don’t misunderstand — none of this really bothered us during the movie, and it mayhave enhanced the air of suspense (sicne nothing really was making much sense). We just looked back and wondered how on earth the backstory could possibly work out.