AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Long Day

Another full day, so I don’t have much to say. Mary’s getting help; Andrea was ordained a priest tonight; Si had a good interview at Bowdoin.

I’m a tough audience for Bible humor, for reasons you can guess, but I enjoyed this.

Margaret had her second seminar presentation this afternoon, and it went every bit as well as her first. Pippa says, “Hop like a bunny, waddle like a duck.”

Oh, my copy of The Meanings We Choose, the volume in which my web-writtern essay on integral and differential hermeneutics appears, arrived today. I’d send copies to Tom, David, and Phil, but it’s European-academic-press priced at $125, so I’ll just give ’em this online shout-out to go with their footnote. Actually, David provided the epigraph for the essay that appears in New Paradigms, so I’ll show that one, too.

Chilling Effect

It may look like an entirely different issue, but I’d argue vigorously that the flap over quoting from the published SBL Seminar Papers bespeaks the same chilling effects that now are afflicting my friend and colleague, Mary Hess.

Read her tale of woe and intrigue for a fuller account, but the short version runs thusly: Mary has written a scholarly book on the relation of popular culture to theological education. Unfortunately, the legal department at her publisher has advised that she must not only remove all the quotations from song lyrics that she was using as chapter headings, but that she must altogether remove all quotations from popular music.

Remove the quotations of song lyrics — from an academic book about song lyrics?!

In what conceivable sense could Mary’s book be construed as a departure from the strictest fair-use precedent? And what possible baneful effects could come down on songwriters from Mary’s quoting their work? I can see it now: “CD sales plummet, sheet music profits disappear, as musicians buy copies of a critic’s scholarly essay on theological education and pop culture.”

This kind of IP-intoxication demonstrates the utter poverty of the present tottering ideology of copyright, an ideology that tries to restrict the prerogative to quote from publicly published works, an ideology that extends copyright beyond any intelligible “promotion of the progress of science and useful arts.”

Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones

Well, I had forgotten that I was supposed to participate in Seabury’s team-taught introductory class this morning, so the time that I thought I had allotted to walk the dog and burnish the timeless prose of my half-done sermon yielded to a hasty apology to Beatrice and undeserved clarity about how I wanted to make the transition from the hook to the body of the sermon.

I’ll say more about transitions later in the afternoon, but now Bea is demanding my attention.

(Sermon, as usual, is appended in the extended entry below, to shield readers who want to avoid encountering sermons.)

By now, the rookies have had time enough to discover what the veterans have long since known: these solemn choir stalls are a great deal more scenic than they are comfortable. We may account this a mere accident, the effect of unquestioned tradition on institutional architecture. This morning’s lesson, though, invites us to imagine that these hard wood pews, these straight-back stalls benumb our buttocks and stiffen our spines as a reminder of Jacob’s headrest, of the rock on which he laid his head that night. On this feast of St. Michael, we can dedicate our discomfort to the Lord, and in our uneasy chairs we can look around all the more vigilantly for any heavenly visitors who might be ascending and descending among us.

Of course, you don’t have to be uncomfortable to see an angel; sometimes you may be doing all right in your world, and God reveals an angel just to shake things up a little. But Scripture suggests that we perceive these messengers from God most often, most readily, when affliction prods us out of our habits, out of everyday upholstered predictability. Our daily life demands that we tune out much of the explosive kaleidoscope of feeling and meaning in which we’re immersed — no one can take in all that beauty and sorrow, that pungency and harmony. We filter our world just so that we can get by; no one has the time or energy to register every sound, every option, every possibility, every vision.

That filtration system gets us by, day to day, but when hard times come we can’t hold circumstance at arm’s length by the strength of denial or ignorance, by a willful refusal to hear, to choose, to see. When extremity disrupts comfort, when unease dislodges ordinariness, our blinders fail us. Our capacity to build a limited, safe, protected, comfortable, world of our own flickers and halts. There’s a glitch in the Matrix.

Stripped of the comfort behind which we can try to hide, naked before God, we’re ready to recognize a messenger from God. We’re ready then, because angels, God’s messengers, can only communicate the truth, and when we’re content with a theme park simulation of real life, the truth makes no difference to us; truth-bearing angels would only distract us. But when we’ve been thrown out of the amusement park, sitting at the curbside with empty soda cans, discarded bubble gum, wrappers from someone’s McSnack, not sure how to get a ride to a home we don’t even know if we have, then our cracked world opens a fissure into which some truth can infiltrate itself.

“Behold!” The angel message directs our gaze, our heart’s-eye view, away from the falsehoods and disappointments by which the dragon torments God’s children. “Don’t be afraid!” The flaming sword of truth frightens the vestments off any who dare to listen to the angel’s call — but that same call is always, entirely, a promise of assurance that God is with us, that our flimsy complacency cannot separate us from the love of God. There’s no escaping the truth, not in our home parish, not in seminary, not in our apartments, not off the block, and especially not in chapel — and that truth cuts away fond illusions, and that same truth heals us with unwavering fidelity.

So shimmy in those choir stalls, wince and squirm and open your eyes to see not only Michael and Gabriel, seraphim, cherubim, watchers and holy ones, but the multitude of the saints who brought us here this exquisite morning, the communion of our sisters and brothers around the world, the glimmering hope of generations yet to arrive here, stretch and see angels! For behold, this is indeed the house of God; this is the gate of heaven!

A Byword To Them

Thanks to Lisa Williams (and an unnamed police officer in Nantucket), I’ve become a figure of speech: “maxing the AKMA,” soaking up bandwidth from an open wifi signal (I reckon that’s what it means). Granted the number of things with which I could have been associated (by associates in college and grad school, by generations of ingenious students and years of creative friends), it’s not just an honor, it’s a relief to have been idiomatized thusly.

Fishing

I think I have a hook (involving Jacob’s headrest); now, I need to write the sermon out. I will post the results tomorrow.

Au Revoir, Pip!

My unique daughter Pippa — seen here modelling her latest creation, the successor to the tinfoil bonnet — will leave tomorrow morning to spend the next few weeks with beloved Margaret in Durham. “Let’s see,” I hear you say; “Margaret’s going back to Durham; Pippa’s going with her; Si is on the road (at Jennifer’s tonight, actually). That means. . . .”

Yes, it does: I’m on my own for the next week or so. Not counting Bea, of course, and she doesn’t really count that much.

Single parenting is a strain, make no mistake. You would think I’d be delighted to have a week on my own schedule, and then have only Si to take care of when he gets back, which is rather like saying “to wave at as your paths cross once every couple of days.” But we know I’ll miss Margaret, and I’ll miss Pippa very much (my art supply will be cut off cold turkey, a frightening thought right there), and I even miss Si for the next week, especially since people keep calling us up with glowing reports of what a good guy he is. I mean, really! We know him pretty well, and he’s not that great. Why, we could tell you about the time. . . .

But I digress. I’ll miss them all, and I hope Pippa sends me her patented variety of illustrated mail, and Margaret video-chats with me, and Si comes back soon. Otherwise I may turn into a gibbering maudlin old fool. More so, I mean.

Matter of Principle

I noticed in passing a flurry of controversy over this year’s Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers, the annual publication that incorporates the essays that have been prepared in advance for the Society’s conference (published, so that they don’t have to be read aloud at the meeting, and participants can proceed directly to discussing the merits of the papers). It turns out that the Seminar Papers now bear an explicit reservation against the works being “quoted or otherwise cited without permission from the author” — a novel gesture, and one that hardly anyone, if anyone at all, has observed in the past.

Links to the preceding contributions:

Mark Goodacre here, here, here, and here
Jim Davila here and here
Stephen Carlson here and here
Ruben Gomez here
Paul Nikkel here

It’s great to see my colleagues getting all worked up about one of my favorite topics. As you might expect, I’m firmly in the camp of those who regard this as a spasmodic contraction of the failing muscles of the moribund model of print publication. Jim frames this as a fair-use problem, and that certainly plays in; in his second post, Jim does a lovely job of eviscerating the argument against citing these essays. Publication is publication; if you don’t want people crediting you with having expressed ideas in public, then don’t express them in public.

But more important, the whole issue points to the extent to which this constituency of academia has yet to come to terms with the changes — and especially the opportunities — that online publication entails. Trevor and I have been knocking ourselves out, trying to find people who were willing to publish their work online at all. We’ve encountered all varieties of resistance, to what will be a matter of uninteresting fact in a few years. Rather than seeing the positive implications for disseminating scholarly debate over biblical topics, the guild responded with fear and with futile clutching after an illusory control.

Give it up, give it up.

Margaret — here for the weekend, soon to be gone again — points out that in Paul Griffith’s recent terrific book Lying: An Augustinian Theology of Duplicity, he cites the theological malignity of thinking about words and ideas as subject to ownership. The truth, after all, cannot be owned; if we speak the truth, we need to renounce anxieties about owning our words. That which is original and our own, after all, depends on a source other than, less reliable than God. To the extent that our expressions bespeak the truth, they escape our ownership, and to the extent that we cling to ownership of our expressions, we distance them from the truth. . . .

One Down

I finished up the syllabus for “History of Christian Life and Thought I” and — what is more bother — putting it together with links in the class wiki. Now I have to redouble my efforts toward production of Theology Cards (I’ve been making, but not uploading them).

Whacked!

I received an email the other day (from Lionel Matsuya) indicating that this site houses a Googlewhack. I won’t cite the terms of the whack in the body of this blog, though you can find out by running this search.

Need A Hook

I’ve blogged some of the ideas I’ll work with for Wednesday’s sermon, but having ideas for a sermon still falls far short of the requisite stuff of a full-formed sermon. The difference makes itself felt especially at the beginning and the end.

At the beginning, sermons need to elicit voluntary attention from a congregation. Unfortunately, most congregations with which I’m acquainted have been trained to expect a sermon that amounts to vague harmlessness (at best) or grating tedium (at less than the best). That permits the congregation to shift into an attention-neutral zone as soon as a preacher signals that he or she will fulfill their expectation that nothing noteworthy is about to happen. A generous congregation will allow you thirty or forty seconds to win their attention, but one can’t assume they’ll offer more than ten seconds (even that may be generous). If, after ten seconds, the preacher hasn’t won the congregation’s interest, it will take a pretty dramatic reversal to make up the goodwill that’s been lost.

Some preachers tackle this problem by beginning every sermon with a Very Dramatic Short Statement (or “Question”); “What would they do with the elephant?” or “I hadn’t expected the ladder to fall backward.” Openings such as these supposedly pique the congregation’s curiosity. What does an elephant have to do with anything? Which ladder?

This tactic works best when used sparingly. I know of a preacher who begins every sermon that way, and after the firsts six or seven, the effect modulates from “piquant” to “tiresome,” and the goodwill evaporates just as quickly as ever.

I tend to attempt a gentler, less arresting approach to these precious seconds. If I were to characterize my compositional style schematically, I’d say that I look at where I want to wind up (when I modulate into the main hortatory section) and then try to figure out how to get there. The path at which I aim will look for a quirk, a turn, a hook, that serves both to frame the sermon’s point in an unexpected way, but without strong-arming a congregation. That’s partly personality style, partly rhetorical preference, but partly my theological commitment to premise that people will more readily and more deeply apprehend the Way if they themselves open their hearts to it (rather than having a preacher pound the door open).

But now Pippa and I have to wander downtown to meet Margaret. . . . .

Department of Homeland What?

I do try to show patience and respect for reasoned arguments with which I disagree — for which I’m often unpopular with everyone who cares about contested issues. But the Bush administration has truly exhausted my capacity to imagine what it would be like to develop plausible positive arguments for policies from which I dissent.

The occaasion for my impatience was quickened when Seabury sang “Morning Has Broken” (a song of which I’m good and tired) at Morning Prayer. Now, be it admitted that George himself did not command that Yusuf Islam be barred from visiting the United States (at least, I assume he didn’t, although maybe he’s sick of “Morning Has Broken” too). The policies by which the Bush administration claims to work toward making the U.S. safer show a consistent lack of imagination and effectiveness. Simply repeating the word “leadership” doesn’t make one a leader; simply repeating the word “security” doesn’t make one safer.

Sadam Hussein was a brutal despot, and Iraqis are well rid of him; but how much better off are they — if at all — subject to chaotic and capricious violence, as opposed to Hussein’s more-or-less predictable violence? How much safer are inhabitants of the U.S. now that Iraq has fallen into civil war, some participants of which are active sympathizers with Al-Qaeda, than we were when Hussein kept Iraq under iron-fisted control without any WMDs or any productive links to terrorist organizations?

How much safer are we now that the Bush government is spending vast sums on defending us from a musician and educator, on developing black-box “do not fly” lists, while the front line of protection against direct attacks on civilian air travel falls so far short of adequacy.

And on what is, I hope, an entirely unrelated note, Jimmy Swaggart. . . what is there to say? I hope that my meetings this morning are encouraging, because the news certainly isn’t

Slacker

Josiah is now on his tour of prospective alma matres, after he drove to Virginia with Tripp (to serve as the family rep at Tripp’s upcoming wedding). That means I have home-schooled Pippa with me without back-up.

So what did I accomplish yesterday? Well, I finished the laundry, fixed the recumbent bike, recumbent-biked a mile or so, walked the dog, went to morning prayer, caught up with Margaret, cleared some back email, went to mass, helped Pippa get her lunch, met with a student about my tutorial seminar on “Meaning and Ministry” (alternate title: “Truth, Beauty, and Information,” alternate alternate title “Offbeat Stuff AKMA likes to read that makes him think differently about ministry and communication”), dashed back to go shopping with Pippa (home economics class), forgot to take along a couple of checks I had meant to cash, wandered back to the office to prepare for a herd of entering students who were supposed to drift through for the second half of the afternoon, straightened up the office somewhat, set out the chips and the Zen Party Mix (who named that stuff anyway? I have a feeling that D. T. Suxuki didn’t scoff down handfuls of spicy rice crackers, sesame sticks, peanuts, and almonds in between “Ommmmm”s), waited for the stream of entering students, scoffed down handfuls of Zen Party Mix while waiting for students, had a nice sympathy visit from Jenni, which we spun into her fall advising meeting, had some more Zen Party Mix, headed home for dinner, defrosted some dishes of indifferent convenience nutrients, worked with Pippa on a Top Secret Project while watching Rocky and Bullwinkle, and collapsed in a heap.

Today, I’ll try actually to get something done.

On Café Performers

At opposite ends of the chronological spectrum: On the young end, Josiah and his pal Ian were joined by a Real Musician Tripp at Open Mic night at Kafein. It was dimly lit, the only room for Pippa and me was pretty far from the stage, and the inverse square law made photography, well, a blurry experience (though, as Pippa notes, with some artsy surrealistic effects).

And at my end of the age span, today is Leonard Cohen’s seventieth birthday. I’m pretty blasé about the sixtieth birthdays of my rock’n’roll culture heroes, and I know that Cohen was (obviously) always older than his r’n’r admirers, and I’m not a big follower of his. Still, that seems more of a landmark than most that I’ve heard of; best wishes, Mr. Cohen, and many more.

Sermon, Advance Warning

It’s been ages since I preached, but not so long that I’ve forgotten to work out my sermon prep online. I’m on the rota to preach next Wednesday, on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels (for whom Michaelmas Term is named). It’s a major feast, so we’ll be pulling out all the liturgical excitement in our bag of ceremonial.

Apart from the good stuff — the incense, the genuflections, the chanting, the incense — I’ll be preaching, on Genesis 28:10-17, Revelation 12:7-12, and John 1:47-51. I’ve preached on St. Michael several times, and the sermons have worked well enough that I feel obligated to come up with something new. This is made all the more difficult since the cultural atmosphere has become much more congenial to the notion of angels recently (at least, to “angels” of a relatively cloying and theologically imprecise sort). Where once I could speak firmly about angels as a notion that my auditors might not be expected to take seriously in the least, we’ve come to a moment when angels have come out of the cultural closet (so to speak). By the way, I haven’t seen Angels in America, not on stage (even though I was ministering among AIDS-affected congregations back in the day) nor on TV (since we don’t have cable), so I can’t plausibly introduce allusions to that momentous work. And no, that means I haven’t actually seen Touched By An Angel, either.

Which brings me around to what I was thinking for this particular homily (five-minute max, though I may stretch it a mite for a major feast). Instead of the “angels aren’t chubby and cute, they’re scary” angle that I’ve heard a fair amount over the last few years, I want to probe at the convergence of scariness and reassurance. The premise involves thinking of angels in the etymological sense as messengers; as they are God’s messengers, their function is invariably to communicate the truth. (This is partly why angels don’t, can’t have a sense of humor; the perfection of their existence in truth makes “incongruity” an empty category for them.)

When we’re confronted by the truth, it can terrify us, since we so often rely on the insulation of [self-]deception and superficiality to keep the true scope and depth of our condition at arm’s length, or further. By the same token, though, when the world deploys falsity, slander, manipulation to wound God’s people, the truth can serve as a bulwark and shield, a comfort and a consolation.

As angels represent the truth, though, we need to come to terms with the fact that (contrary to conventional assumptions) angels obtrude in our lives not simply on fabulously rare occasions, but always, inescapably. We can’t escape from the truth if we want to (as we so often do). It’s by releasing the anxiety that averts our eyes from the truth, it’s by learning to embrace and rely on the giddying prospect of assenting to God’s way and our part therein, that we learn to celebrate the welcoming witness of throngs of angels, and in their company to bear our own witness to the truth.

Something like that. Only I’ll take these points, make specific (if not always explicit) the biblical starting-points from which I inferred all this malarkey, and buff and polish the rhetoric so as to approach the majesty of the day’s liturgy, if that be possible.

Arr, Like That!

In answer to yesterday’s musing about liturgical piratical diction, I note that Josiah offers a hypothetical pirate Mass, and “Calico Annie” points out (in an email) that the official TLAPD pages include a sermon (scroll down to ‘Rev. Dr. “Red Robin” Hill’).

Fine Line

Trevor and I were talking about leadership during our drive into town yesterday for Charlie’s wedding — somehow the topic just got drilled into us over that last few years, and we can’t keep ourselves from picking at it — and we covered a lot of areas we would hope for as Seabury searches for a new dean.

As we enumerated the various qualities we thought valuable, it became unnervingly clear that there is, as the rock’n’roller might have said, such a thin line between leadership, and narcissism.

More On Mixing Feds and Libraries

In the aftermath of recent experience, I’m more sensitive than ever about what happens when federal authorities take it on themselves to protect America by policing libraries; thus I was pleased to find this page about the “Patriot” Act’s ramifications for library administration (via Dave Winer).

Bless Like a Pirate

Josiah and I were wondering what mass would sound like on Talk Like a Pirate Day. Maybe we’ll find out tomorrow.

Off to Charlie’s wedding. . . .

Testimonial

I bang my head against the wall of visual instructional materials for seminary teaching (more than maps only), but for a long time I’ve known about the work of Fred Sanders, who helped pay for his grad-school education my self-publishing a series of comic books called Systematic Theology, subsequently rolled into his Dr. Doctrine’s Christian Comix series (1-4). I have copies of numbers 6, 8, and 10 of the Systematic Theology comics (thanks, Erin), and just re-ordered copies of Dr. Doctrine; Steve Lahey nicked mine. It’s not available from Amazon any more; I ordered my copies from “Christianity 101.” Fred isn’t an oracle; I disagree with him here and there. Till we develop our own Anglo-Catholic combination of Rowan Williams and Scott McCloud, though, we should encourage Fred and his publishers.

Full Day

Today’s tasks included fleshing out the [revised] syllabus for Early Church History (not yet reflected on the wiki), walking Margaret through an unreadable-file problem with her teaching assistant (a problem complicated by Microsoft), talking with Connie about a website redesign for Seabury, and helping her set up a flickr account to use as a temporary online repository for Seabury-related images, coming home and working on housecleaning, preparing a dinner of grilled portabella sandwiches with corn, and now sitting on my posterior thinking about picking up Trevor on my way to Hyde Park for Charlie’s wedding tomorrow.

Maybe I’ll watch The Magnificent Seven tonight — or The Naked Gun 2 1/2, the two movies we have out from Netflix. Then sleep.

Structure Signs, and Play

This morning Margaret and I were relishing (in our separate locations) the entry at Boing Boing that described the illustrations and translated advice for travellers in case they were hijacked while flying Tajik Air.

That reminded us of the warning sign that had been dutifully slipped into the bookshelf that Margaret chose for her living room. (She chose a single folding wooden bookshelf as her main decorative shelf, with numerous milk-crates as her back-up and storage option.) The manufacturer had arranged for this semi-English-language note so that we would not worry about the scent of the finish — but even better, it afforded us persistent delight. I uploaded the picture of nthe sign (now mounted on Margaret’s refrigerator) at flickr.

I also uploaded several ancient photos, of the boys and of Margaret and me, all when we were much younger; and I further uploaded a couple of photos of Pippa in her most recent self-made fashionista guise. Frank would be envious of her tin-foil beanie. . . .

New Year

L’shanah tovah tikatevu for friends in Blogaria — David and Ann, Naomi, Alex, and all.

Moltmann and My Associations

If I’d known there would be requests for notes, I’d have taken down Motlmann’s observations in greater detail; I hope y’all will pardon my negligence. As it is, I even left such notes as I took, back at the office.

The lecture was entitled “Control is Good, Trust is Better,” playing off Lenin’s converse aphorism (“trust is good, control is better”). Moltmann rehearsed the experience of the security regimes in Eastern Europe in the Cold War (specifically, of course, the DDR); he noted that since anyone might be a spy, one could afford to tell no one the truth. Under those circumstances, the value of universal surveillance begins to break down under its own weight — if one knows that everyone lies persistently, of what values are the spy’s reports? And who maintains control over the spies? And who controls the controllers?

No, said Moltmann, control is not the answer; only trust can lead toward security.

At this point, he began citing examples wherein estranged peoples moved toward trust in social relationships: I remember his noting the German people’s confessions of complicity with regard to the War and the Holocaust, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but the others slip my mind, because while he was speaking I was distracted by the ideas he provoked.

For instance, I recognized, the effort to establish security by means of control generates a continual failure — whose very failure justifies an intensified effort to control, which will fail, which will then evoke further efforts to attain security by control, indefinitely. In this vicious cycle, the very failure of the security mechanisms to realize their promises justifies an intensification of the security mechanisms.

Moltmann drew his argument from a fairly strictly social starting-point (his treatment of the Stasi in the DDR was nothing more than social history) toward a theological rationale for forgiveness and reconciliation. First, he required honesty and penitence; then forgiveness; then gestures of mutuality toward trust-building. These he asserted in theological, sometimes Christological terms — though carefully emphasizing the humility of honesty, and the Christian’s obligation to bear witness rather than to convert.

All in all, an impressive, theologically-rich presentation to a packed chapel (at Garrett), and one that sparked many more thoughts than I carried home apart from my notes. I’m glad the faculty meeting was productive enough to permit us to get out to listen to the lecture.

New Day

Another all-day faculty meeting today, though this one incorporates a visit to Garrett Seminary across the street, to hear a lecture by Jürgen Moltmann (if we behave ourselves and finish our administrative business on time).

Bea did not meet any hungry dogs this morning.

Omega Dog

Beatrice, the dog who lives out the gospel injunction to become “like the least of these,” was nearly devoured this morning on her daily start-up stroll. She passed a dog on the opposite side of the street, a mid-sized white model with an indulgent owner who, when she saw that her canine wanted to get acquainted, let her dog drag her over to our side of the road.

Bea and the guest dog snuffed one another calmly, till the other dog suddenly growled deeply, bared his teeth, and took a serious bite at where Bea's thigh had been a split second before. I was pulling Bea away as firmly as I could — I didn’t want to have to call Margaret and say, “Hon, remember that dog you entrusted to me?” — and the owner held her dog steady. “Oh,” she fluttered, “I didn’t think that would happen.” (That was a relief; I’d have been even more upset if she had said, “I deliberately walked my dog across the street so he could eat your dog for breakfast.”)

It turns out that the Other Dog had been abused as a puppy, entered in dog fights, was doing only marginally well at re-learning appropriate behavior from a trainer. Call me conservative, but if I owned a dog such as that, I probably wouldn’t let him within dining distance of dogs who couldn’t effectively defend themselves against him.

Then, as if to underline Bea’s status as The Last Dog, Pippa and I took her out this evening and we met two of the few dogs in the world who are smaller and less threatening than she. A couple of sweet little Pomeranians walked past us — and Bea hunkered down on her belly in her “I’m the most submissive dog in the world” posture. These were two of the few dogs on earth that Bea might have taken in a fair fight, but (perhaps in part as a response to her morning close shave) she was utterly non-resistant. But I won’t call her a pacifist dog, lest anyone direct at her some of the opprobrium that descends on pacifists in my comments.

Imaginary Felonies, Version 2.0

I’m not endorsing speeding, driving so as to endanger, or any of the activities associated with this sub rosa rally. What I can say is that I understand the frustration of being hassled on the basis of “a law which the Spanish embassy later told his organisation does not exist.

‘I think it is absolutely outrageous the police can make up laws as they go along,’ Porter said. . . .” I can hear you.

Status Report

Back in Evanston. Weary and a little sad to be leaving Margaret behind. All day faculty meeting tomorrow.

On the positive side, the flight from RDU to ORD was smooth, sparse, and cheerily-attended, and Pippa was not only a provocative documenter of the visit, but also a wonderful traveling companion.

Politics as Mir[im]age

Does John Kerry still seem as “electable” as he did in the early days of the primary season?

The chimerical quality of that vacuous characterization should be increasingly obvious. Why don’t political observers simply eliminate this perniciously empty label from their repertoire, and analyze electoral behavior with regard to specific issues, concerns, and qualities, rather than collaborating with poll-driven “perception” politics?

Repetition and Difference

“The relation between the divine principle of the world and creation is defined not according to the mode of repetition but according to the mode of creativity.”
— Nikolai Sergius Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb

I’m Right, and You’re An Idiot (Heretic, Traitor, Luddite, _________, etc.)

I’m not going to comment on the forthcoming Lambeth Commission report until it’s been through official release; respect for the complexities obliges me to be careful. It has been reported that the commission will enact some kind of “suspension” of the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A., an action intelligible in light of the predominant theology of Anglican provinces around the world. The details will make all the difference in how theologically-serious advocates of the recognition of gay and lesbian relationships may respond to the declaration.

When and if this comes down, though, it will be interesting to see if ascendent conservatives treat their liberal counterparts with as little patience and and respect as the conservatives claim to have been shown. It would offer a tremendous opportunity to extend a grace and compassion that would falsify the casual condescension that has rubbed salt in the wounds caused by name-calling, institutional powerlessness, and discrimination.

It will be a great day when people can disagree without vilifying, but I doubt that this moment is more bilious than others past, and I don’t hold out starry-eyed expectations that the short-term future will mark a pronounced up-tick in discursive self-restraint.

EFF, Ahoy!

[I don’t know how this happened, but as I was back-deleting unwelcome comments, this post from the past somehow got stuck into my new posts. Rather than delete it, I’m just adding this note of perplexity, and calling it a night.]

Just in time for this year’s “Blog Like a Pirate Day,” I saw a t-shirt today in one of the stores dedicated exclusively to t-shirts and sweatshirts. It read, “Piracy: Just Like Hostile Takeovers, Without the Paperwork,” and features a skull and crossbones. Because I was in a Free Culture sort of mood, I was thinking about piracy and what it was “just like,” considering the ways that a Free Culture, Open Source kind of guy resembled a pirate, and the ways he might differ.

Then tonight, Pippa and I watched Jason and the Argonauts (it was a rainy night, and the Dreamland Theater was playing Open Water and the other downtown theater — I’ve forgotten its name, it used to be the Shaggy Dog, I think — was playing The Door in the Floor, and we didn’t care to see either of them). You may remember that the climactic scene in Jason involves a fight between three stupefied-looking Argonauts and seven animated skeletons; that jogged my mind back to the piracy and skull-and-crossbones theme.

I realized that a Creative Commons emblem couldn’t just be a skull and crossbones, since part of the point is that the culture for which we’re struggling isn’t properly someone else’s good that we want to steal, but rather is should be recognized as a common good, that we want to turn loose for the benefit of the culture in general. Instead of a skull, then — a light bulb (illuminating its surroundings, and itself an invention whose patent we would not want to have seen extended indefinitely). The crossed bones — a pen (obviously) and. . . a microphone?

We’ve already established that I’m not design wizard, but this is what I whipped up in Freehand. . . .

On and Off

It’s a lovely day in Durham, and Margaret and Pippa and I will spend most of it strolling around the Duke West Campus — Margaret’s been itching to show Pippa the gardens. Connectivity for non-Duke-personnel may be iffy, and the wireless signal at Margaret’s apartment has flickered too, so if I don’t have the chance to get back to all of you, have a lovely day and know that I’m having one also!

Economy of Signification

Unaccountably persistent readers of these pages will admit that I’ve been nothing if not a constant advocate of the position that meaning always escapes our intentional control. We offer communicative tokens — words, images, sounds, gestures — and in a complicated back-and-forth negotiation, we try to reach a mutually-satisfactory understanding. Such power terms as “literal sense,” “plain sense,” and “simplest possible sense” serve mostly as shorthand for “I’m willing to gamble that the preponderance of my audience will agree that my interpretation seems obvious.”

So I can’t say anything about the plain, literal, simplest possible sense of Dick Cheney’s words. Since (on the other hand) Lynne Cheney, in her role as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, opposed the kind of fancy-pants, Frenchified, postmodern theory that has so complicated my own thinking, maybe she would say that the obvious meaning of what he said was, “If you vote for Kerry, terrorists will attack.” He’s not going to flip-flop on that, is he?

Domain Homesteading

Whenever the topic of domain registries comes up, I immediately and vigorously endorse Domain Direct, a registry front end of which Tucows is the guts and brains.

This is partly because Elliott Noss is a patient listener, and a great guy with whom to have an informal theology conversation. It’s also partly because I have come to know, admire, and trust Ross and Joey, both of who work for Tucows. But it’s mostly because Tucows is the kind of company that would enter the lapsed-domain business in a way that shows particular respect for the former owners of domain names. As any number of sordid stories will attest — many of them associated with Verisign — lapsed domains offer a perfect situation for sleazy opportunism.

I tend to be skeptical and suspicious about large corporations; in fact, some readers will scornfully characterize my attitude with even less flattering words (less flattering both to me and to the corporations I mistrust). All the more reason, then, to repeat that I have for years been deeply impressed with the probity and business style of the folks at Tucows.

Scripted

Someone else must have observed before this moment, the irony that Hurricane Ivan is headed straight for Jamaica?

Here

In Durham. Safely. Exhausted. Talk to you later.

Negative Campaign

I’d be more smugly satisfied with Jimmy Carter’s stinging denunciation of Zell Miller apart from several significant details. I’m disappointed that the letter that Carter evidently intended to remain private was leaked; however gratifying it might be to see a man with some integrity dress down Miller for the shabby patchwork of misrepresentation that Miller wore as though it were a prophet’s robes, I recognize and sympathize with Carter’s unwillingness to make that response a matter of public record. I have no great interest in peeping through the office window as the principal shames the bully.

Even more disappointing than the leak, though, were the words that chilled my own heart as I read Carter’s letter:

I, myself, never claimed to have been a war hero, but I served in the navy from 1942 to 1953, and, as president, greatly strengthened our military forces and protected our nation and its interests in every way. I don’t believe this warrants your referring to me as a pacificist.

Now, let’s grant that Carter has good reason not to be called a pacifist (not, as Marhsall’s transcription has it, a “pacificist” — I don’t know whether the typo derives from Carter or Marshall). I surely wouldn’t have thought to call him that. But here, Carter makes the term sound like a loathsome disease: “How low can Miller stoop? He even called Carter a pacifist.”

Yeah, sure hate to be lumped in with losers like Gandhi, St. Francis, Tolstoy, Quakers, Mennonites, and (oh, that other guy) Jesus.

Sausage Synod

I have to admit that having read Naomi’s entry on Constantine’s alleged ban on sausages, then having followed up with both of Stephen’s, I’m itching with curiosity to learn where this factoid entered the discourse of church and culinary history, and whether it’s more closely related to fact or fancy.

Evidence (Where Are the Circles and Arrows?)

Since some of what I’ve said before has met with suspicion and doubt, it occurred to me that I could attenuate the skepticism by posting this photo of the story I couldn’t locate online. Yes, I might have Photoshopped this, but before you intimate that it’s a fake, please check with an inhabitant of Nantucket.

Look, I don’t have any interest in stirring up trouble with law enforcement officials, or reporters, and I certainly don’t care to stir up librarians. My two points all along have been (1) open access points should be open, and (2) no one should be rousted from a public space just because he or she might be violating a law undetectably. (Otherwise, who couldn’t be harassed? You might be breaking the law, too.) I don’t want to bust the Deputy Chief’s chops, or the summer officer’s, and after all it might be an Shakespearean play of coincidence and confusion. But (as librarian Jewell has now said) I ought to have been permitted to continue using the access that the Atheneum deliberately made available freely, and I ought not to have been shooed away from the library.

I didn’t resist when I might (lawfully) have refused to turn off my wireless card nor when I might (lawfully) have continued sitting quietly on the bench. I didn’t give the officer a hard time other than discussing, in a calm tone, the complexities of the topic. I didn’t name the officer. I didn’t make a stink at the Atheneum. I don’t care to make life more difficult for any of these parties even now — again, I have on-island family who might be discomfited by my association with this whole fiasco. But in case someone thinks that the newspaper story alludes to my saga, then I will firmly and persistently set the record straight.

Case Closed! Closed?

My mom sent a clipping from the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, the island’s weekly news source (the site seems not to be searchable, and Google doesn’t turn up the story online, so I can’t link to it).

The headline reads, “Atheneum has no problem with outdoor wireless use,” and the story begins, “Rumors notwithstanding, the Nantucket Atheneum’s wireless Internet signal is welcome to those who come within the signal’s 300-foot radius.” It goes on:

“We have no objection to people tapping into our signal,” said Frank Jewell, the library’s interim director.

Questions arose about the library’s stance on the issue after the Nantucket police a month ago intercepted [!] a man tapping on his laptop while leaning against the rear of the Atheneum during the day.

Deputy Police Chief Charles Gibson said he noticed the man while driving up Oak Street behind the Atheneum. Gibson asked a nearby summer police officer to check into what the man was doing. He said he would have done the same if he’d seen someone with a laptop tapping at the rear of a business or residence.

The summer officer told the man to “don’t be hanging around back here.”

“It did look a little suspicious,” Gibson said.

From there, word began to spread that the police considered outdoor users of the signal to be engaged in a theft of services.

Jewell, however, said the service is free to all comers.

The story goes on to explain that the Atheneum restricts usage within the library (to the second floor, to permit more space for reading print books on the first floor), and that there have been some acts of vandalism in the past year (though not electronic vandalism, just old-fashioned hooliganism).

After I first read the story, I was amused, and put it aside to blog here. In transcribing the story for this entry, though, I’m struck by the odd inconcinnity of this account with my own experience. The Deputy Chief’s story sounds very little like what happened to me.

• The mysterious “tapper” was leaning against the rear of the Atheneum; I was sitting on a public bench beside the Atheneum.


• The newspaper story says that this incident gave rise to a “rumor” that “the police considered outdoor users. . . to be engaged in a theft of services,” but in fact that’s exactly what the officer who rousted me told me.


• The story says that this took place “a month ago,” but if the article was published last week (when the weekly paper would have had to go to press in order for it to get to my mom, who then clipped it and mailed it to me), the incident couldn’t have taken place longer ago than two weeks, give or take a day.

Now, it could be that the police had chased away some other laptop-user two weeks before my surprising run-in with the constabulary, and that word just hadn’t gotten around to the officer who chased me off. Oddly, though, the officer who asked me not to hang around the Atheneum with my laptop open himself used the specific charge of “theft of signal,” amplified with the explanation that the Secret Service had instructed the local police on this point, when this was the precise allegation that the newspaper identifies as a misguided rumor. Or it could be that the story is indeed about me, and that the reporter, or police spokesperson, muddled the dates a little and was confused about exactly where I was sitting — while explicitly disavowing the felony warning that the officer made against me.

Whatever — the end of the story, assuming this is actually the end, turns out to be just as weird as the beginning. At least the librarians come out as heroes of free use!

Bea

Jennifer took this terrific photo of Beatrice, and I wanted to pass it along to y’all who know our trusty Bichon Frisé.

May 1, Too

Happy Labor Day, everyone! Take a moment to remember the sweat, blisters, bruises, insults, and tedium that only deserve substandard wages, according to suited millionaires reclining in their leather chairs, in air-conditioned offices. One day is not enough.

A Clean Nation. . . .

A long time ago, Margaret and I scooped up an armload of old magazine advertisements, framed them, and gave them as gifts. I think we were planning to give this one to Stan Hauerwas, but it was too hard to part with. It now hangs in our bathroom as a reminder for our guests to do their patriotic duty, albeit with a disappointing mere imitation of Sapolio.

Tonight when I ducked into the bathroom, I felt the strong impulse to blog this image. There’s so much to work with: the way that Mexico and Central and South American just disappear (though the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico receive the whitening rays of the U.S. product), the identification of military power with cleansing, the contrast drawn between “civilized” “enlightened” people and their “darker” (repeated below) and “diseased” objects of liberation.

You could probably remix this into a campaign ad that would sound pretty familiar.

“Sapolio must clean, that the flag may civilize.”

“A clean nation has ever been a strong nation.”

After The Tsunami

In the aftermath of the Slashdot wave that passed through here, I regret not having saved the message I saw, that I can't find again, that said something like “if this guy is a priest who knows what ‘h4x0r’ means, maybe I could go back to church. . . .” (If I got that wrong, I’m sorry; my first glance at the Slashdot responses went by in a blur, and I haven’t been able to relocate it.)

Psuche, Pneuma, and Identity

Chris Locke (whose surname guarantees philosophical rigor) raised an interesting question about ten days ago when he commented (via his alter ego RageBoy, a matter which itself raises dozens of interesting questions about identity, psuche, and pneuma) on my first psuche and pneuma post,

hmmm, the essential antipathy of psyche and spirit... Has it occurred to you to render this as: just plain wrong?

as to whether these terms were translated "correctly" or not, the error has passed down the centuries with as little resistence as a greased pig at a county fair -- though what a simile to interject into such otherwise erudite hermeneutic exegesis. my god! anyway, speaking from unspeakably nasty personal experience from childhood on, I'd say the antipathy has been all too well preserved. if we're going to yell at Descartes, shouldn't *his* sources be taking part of the rap?

Well, somewhat, although I take myt assignment in this commentary to involve elucidating the grammar and lexicography of this letter — not whether it’s right about anthropology or psychology. But the point is well taken, especially with regard to the complexities that envelope discourses of identity after Descartes (and Locke the elder) (not that Chris Locke is any spring chicken). As I puzzled over the ramifications of all of this — and I’m still musing, not at all decided about most of it — what should come to my attention, courtesy of wood s lot, but Mary Midgeley’s article on “Souls, Minds, Bodies & Planets.” I’ll spare you my undigested thoughts after this article, Chris’s comment, the Digital ID World conference, and the epistle of James — but the bookstore is waiting for my reading list for Michaelmas Term, and I need more time to think hard.

Theology and Truth

I started thinking about this the other day, in conversation with Si and Pippa, and having been reading Rusty Reno’s book in the bathroom. I’m planning a tutorial for some of my students on “the economy of signification” and the way that meaning always escapes our control, and what we can do relative to that. Then I got an email yesterday morning that provoked me to sketch some ideas (roughly), and I felt impelled to blog some of it out.

What I’m gnawing at concerns the way that theological premises can justly be called “true” (I’ve been in this thicket before, I know). One approach to theological truths assumes that truth has a single, consistent texture, so that theological truths have the same epistemological and scientific attributes as chemical truths or mathematical truths. The strength of this approach lies in its simplicity (Dick Cheney can’t sneer and accuse you of flip-flopping for suggesting that there are many ways of defining “truth”) and its respect for the actuality of truth-claims: their inescapable, unappealable pertinence. (Philip K. Dick defined “reality” as “that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away” — exactly the point.)

Another very common angle would claim that all truth is perspectival, that especially since theological truth can’t be verified or falsified in anything vaguely resembling lab conditions, we have to regard theological truth-claims as deeply-held opinion, but not at all matters of fact. We can therefore finesse religious disagreement simply by saying, “Well, you have your religion, I have (or don’t have) mine.” By the same stroke we undo authority problems in theology; everyone has her or his own perception of the Deity (or absence thereof), so none of them can appropriately be called “true” — just “true-for-me.”

There are more nuanced ways of handling these positions, but I’m blogging, not writing a book (as my editors would remind me if they caught me at this). Besides, relatively few people bother with the nuanced versions; most adhere to a simplified version of one or the other understanding. The hard-fact version of theological truth just steamrollers other people’s dissenting positions; the no-factual version evacuates theological truth-claims of any durability (they become the things that, if you stop believing in them, do go away).

My stake in “postmodernity,” such as it is, which isn’t that much in the end despite what my rap sheet of publications looks like, derives from the possibility that I learned from reading those French types and their Anglophone fellow-travellers that there might be a way of thinking about truth that respects the complexity acknowledged by the softies, but which nonetheless maintains the conviction that our doubt or belief, our pious adherence to different theological systems, none of these affects the enduring truth that one of these systems may be true in a way that the others aren’t. And each of us shows a built-in propensity to think that her or his own angle on this whole schmeer is right, and rightly so. What, after all, would it mean to think that some (a)theological account of reality is true, but that the one I profess isn’t it?

So the case I keep trying to make to seminarians involves first, the pivotal importance of actually committing yourself to the truth of the thing you claim to believe. Then, I hope to convince them that believing that theological disagreement shouldn’t make a difference traps them in an anti-intellectual (anti-critical, anti-theological, and untrue) position of upholding far-reaching metaphysical and ethical claims whose meaning they simultaneously annul in favor of what they take to be politeness or broadmindedness. That goes double if they want to claim to be right about one or another point of church order (currently it’s most likely to involve sex), about which they want to claim to be right; there’s not much left of one’s intellectual integrity if one suggests that Christians, Jews, and Hindus should get along together because their theological disagreements don’t make a difference, but “fundamentalists” must be set straight because they’re surely off base.

Now, it’s all very well to say, “Neti, neti,” but if I’m correct, then I ought to be able to give a positive account of truth that deals with difference, but still produces hard truth-claims without self-contradiction. Well, yes and no. (That’s a joke — partly.) One element in the problem/solution is the way that the notion of “contradiction” gets thrown around; while I don’t want to solve every problem by calling it a theologically-productive paradox, I do believe that we may need to develop a way of allowing for these antinomies as constituent parts of our discourses of ultimate reality. Until we have demonstrably plumbed the depths and pinned down every subtlety of reality, some antinomies may be truer than either one-and-only-one of their constituent premises.

In the face of the problem of theological truth, then, I counsel that Christians (since I don’t presume to dictate theology to non-Christians) identify those theological claims to which they will adhere, and humbly and peaceably live out the consequences of those claims. Coercion falsifies claims about the character of a God of peace; it’s no cop-out, then, to strive for cooperative neighborliness among our dissenting sisters and brothers, so long as we do not back away from the robustness of our truth-claims. “Nonviolence is not only an ethic about power but also an epistemology about how to let the truth speak for itself” (John Howard Yoder, The Wisdom of the Cross); “Truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth, as it makes its entrance into the mind at once quietly and with power” (Pope Paul VI, Dignitatis Humanæ). That’s no less the truth — but we relinquish the temptation to force others to live by a truth that they do not acknowledge.

City of Brotherly Felons

Boing Boing points to reports that Philadelphia is considering going wireless over the whole municipality. Wait till the FBI and Secret Service hear about that. . . .

That Time Of Year

Eric reminds us that it’s fall, when geeks young and old turn their eyes to Colorado for the annual Digital Identity World conference. If you’re concerned about privacy, copyright, identity theft, or (as some of us theologically- and philosophically-inclined types) about the constitution of “identity” itself, this is the place to be. Registration is steep, but there's a discount available (show code:
AKMA0200), and especially if you have a financial interest in DigID, it’s the place to be.