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February 28, 2005

Perspective

I’m feeling a little quiet , just now, as news came through last night that friends from church have apparently been murdered.

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Address On The Right Use Of Speculative Literature

Yesterday BoingBoing flagged an argument by sf novelist Will Shetterly that reading science fiction helped make him a better Unitarian — and in the cited article, Shetterly makes an appealing case. On the other hand, students from Seabury’s Early Church History class may remember that nearly 1700 years ago, St. Basil [the Great*] of Caesarea made a comparable argument relative to the pagan literature of classical antiquity. The earliest Christians distanced themselves from pagan literature, as the Apostolic Tradition 16 illustrates when it limits the possibility of schoolteachers to become Christians (presumably because they inculcate the myths of Hellenistic civil religion). Basil, on the other hand, argued that when young people (“young men,” to Basil, despite Macrina’s good example) study the classics, they apprehend the dim outline of such Scriptural truths as they are not yet ready to encounter directly. The youths who study literature stand to learn nobility and virtue from authors whom everyone admires for their insight. At least, they stand so to learn as long as they don’t linger over the salacious passages.

Pretty good for an old guy, especially considering that Basil hadn’t read Dune even once!

* I was about to mourn the era in which theologians got jazzy nicknames like Basil the Great or Gregory the Wonderworker or Peter Comestor (“the Eater”) — but given the temper of the moment, when the cleverest nicknames flying around seem to involve calling the U.S. Presiding Bishop “Grizzy” or tagging the Archbishop of Canterbury as a “sick chicken,” I suppose we’re better off without, for now. . . .

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Memo

Have I mentioned lately that I hate exercising?

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February 27, 2005

Short Conundrum

I’m thinking over the Primates’ Statement, and although I’d have wished it different, I’m not surprised by its general tenor.

One source of puzzlement, though: why do the Primates ask that the US and Canada withdraw from the Anglican Consultative Council? Does this imply a hierarchy of the Instruments of Unity, such that the Primates constitute a “higher” instrument than the Consultative Council? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the Primates to ask the primates of the US and Canada to withdraw, and to let the Consultative Council make its own requests relative to particular delegations?

Isn’t this request especially odd since it coincides with a request that the U.S. and Canada return to the Council in special status to explain their actions?

I’m not lobbying against asking for “withdrawal” per se; that seems a consistent gesture on the part of the relevant authorities. I am curious about what the present request implies about the Windsor process, its present standing as a guideline for institutional action, and its standing as a goal.

If you want to have a conversation (as the Primates expressly said they do), it seems odd to kick some people out for not cooperating, then invite them back provisionally to hold up their end of the conversation. It would make more sense to me for them to simply say, “You didn’t convince us; you’re out, for now,” or to say, “We want you to give us your best shot at making a case that we’re sure you can’t make. Come back to the Consultative Council; we’ll give you a hearing, then you can decide what to do when we ask you to withdraw.” To that extent, the outcome of the primates’ meeting misses the opportunity to stake out a clear message.

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Time For An Update?

Seems as though the Bad Guys have devised a way to induce Safari to generate pop-behind windows, even when the “block pop-ups” preference is checked.

I’m just saying. . . .

Posted by AKMA at 03:38 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Liturgy, Meaning, and Teaching

Tripp pursues one of the main topics of his thesis in this morning’s post. He worries about the dialectical relationship between “teaching” and “worship” in liturgy: “How do we understand the purpose of liturgy as a teaching tool? It seems that whenever we become too didactic, we cannot worship, but the moment we stop explaining then worship becomes meaningless.”

[Disclaimer: With regard to what follows, readers should bear in mind that I am not a card-carrying “evangelical” (as Tripp seems to have become, at least for a day) nor a scholar of liturgics. I am what the jargonmeisters call a reflective practitioner of leading worship, and (most to the point) an avid student of semiotics, of the study of meaning and what we do about it.]

Tripp seems to have gotten stuck at the wrong point in the argument, though. It’s not that liturgical worship is ever meaningless, any more than a Unix manual, or a volume of the Summa Theologia, or an essay by a postmodern theorist. “Meaninglessness” applies neither to the published words of people whose expertise doesn’t overlap with our own nor to the enacted words and gestures of a worshipper whose relation to those actions doesn’t overlap with our own — in these cases, the kind of meaning we (presumably) seek eludes us, but the words and gestures nonetheless continue to mean. If nothing else, they may mean something such as “the author of this work (of worship or prose) expects me to regard baffling obfuscation as mystical profundity.” Japanese isn’t meaningless because I don’t understand it; the problem lies not with Japanese or its speakers, but with my ignorance.

With regard to liturgy and Tripp’s dilemma, then, it looks as though Tripp is conflating the kind of teaching by which one learns a language (or a discourse or a sort of cultural behavior or a craft) with the kind of learning by which one moves from the dim, frustrating perception of what each word means toward the appreciation of sentences, thoughts, meditations, and so on. It takes a long time to learn Greek, and once one has attained elementary acquaintance with the language, one still has a hard time puzzling out what Aristotle thinks about ethics; but it seems worthwhile to distinguish the two processes.

The notion that liturgy should be self-explanatory, should comprise both the expression of thankful praise and the metacommentary that articulates that expression in plain, open terms, serves particular theological-ideological purposes. That notion eases the transition between not having the vaguest idea why Christians do the sorts of thing that they do (or having a misguided idea) and recognizing the rationale for liturgical behavior.

At the same time, some ideas and some gestures depend for their intelligibility on prior formation. Schoolteachers try to inculcate the background knowledge and sensibilities by which students may relish Shakespeare’s plays or von Bismarck’s statecraft — but without some sort of preparatory instruction, few learners will find King Lear especially “meaningful.” I once found myself in an argument over the extent to which “meaning” transcends cultural specificity, in which debate my interlocutor cited the example of Antigone as evidence that something about our common human essence binds us to the great works of antiquity. That example seemed contrariwise to demonstrate my point: unless we’re instructed beforehand about Antigone’s family history, about ancient piety and burial practices, about the politics of Sophocles’s own day, Antigone may well seem absurdly meaningless, not because of a defect in our alleged common humanity, but because the drama relies on a context of shared information and assumptions on which we just can’t draw. If a vendor won’t exchange her goods for my foreign currency, the problem isn’t that the currency is intrinsically worthless, but that we haven’t worked out a context within which it might have value.

Back to liturgy: we shouldn’t expect every service to teach the faith at an introductory level, or to evoke the deepest mystical truths, any more than every book be written by Dr. Seuss or Jürgen Habermas. I think it’s probably fair to wish that every service point toward the greater mysteries, and that no service constitute itself so as to repel visitors — but a great part of the life of faith (as it comes to expression in the liturgy) involves putting into practice things one has learned outside the liturgy. Just as one is taught table manners over time, usually at home, before one attends a formal dinner, so the teaching ministry of family and congregation prepare people, over time, for the fullest participation in a solemn mass.

In any case, the meaning subsists not just in a participant’s experience, not just in the leader’s intent, but in a complex of intentions, conventions, receptions, and innovations that (to recur to one of my favorite topics) we don’t control. The challenge for each worship leader, or for each participant in liturgical planning, involves not a simple dialectic of teaching and worship, but a negotiation among the calls to nuance and to explicitness, to that which is shared with generations of worshippers reaching into antiquity and to that which stimulates the most vivid sense of contemporaneity, to theological truth expressed in actions and words whose intelligibility derives from their roles in a great shared discourse of liturgical art, and to evangelical transparency expressed in a shared vernacular discourse of colloquial immediacy — among other urgent imperatives.

So I’d suggest (at a minimum) specific effort among regular members of the congregation to assimilate and understand the congregation’s liturgy so as to be able to bring visitors into the stylized theological conversation. (Catechizing the regulars provides all manner of benefits, this just one among them.) At the same time, it wouldn’t hurt if the congregation provided (along with its regular bulletin, assuming that they use a bulletin) a very simple guide to the congregation’s worship. It needn’t pares every technicality or define every term, but should provide enough guidance that a visitor not feel quite lost. The combination of a friendly, helpful congregant and a basic, direct guide-leaflet would do a lot of the work of elementary liturgical instruction.

Simultaneously, the congregation could devote serious time and consideration to the reasons for its liturgical practice, and the significance of the liturgical decisions it makes. Tripp knows how vexed I get when people think that “ ’Cos I like it that way” trumps all other reasons in shared liturgical deliberation. Common worship involves a tremendous amount more than your or my individual likes and dislikes; if we want to communicate among the historic, dispersed, contemporary, and future saints, we need to attend to ways that our behavior signifies beyond our preferences. To that end, we should be cautious about adopting purely local idiosyncratic formulations — however much we may like them, they may exclude the saints from taking their part in a worship God longs for all to share in.

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February 26, 2005

Doubleheader

Fresh from yesterday afternoon’s victory, Pippa and I crowned my efforts today. Early in the afternoon, she found the book on cartooning lying on the table irresistible. She perused it over her lunch, and afterward sat down and pencilled a sketch for me (I’ll post it on flickr when I have a chance).

Then I mentioned that I’d been meaning to go over to the Block Museum at Northwestern. Pippa indicated a reluctant willingness to go with me (she feels that art museums are too boring), but when I was ready to go, she preferred to stay in the basement working on a massive laundry project. That was okay; I tackled further steps in the massive financial aid project. About forty-five minutes later, Pippa showed up at my back, holding a pair of socks for me to put on, and together we spent an hour or so examining furnishings and designs by William Morris and his colleagues. I have a weakness for the Arts and Crafts style (all the more so after a visit to Glasgow and its Charles Rennie Mackintosh House), so the wallpaper patterns, books, tapestries, and stained-glass windows all captivated me. Pippa was less vividly enthralled than I, but as always she engaged the works on display quite studiously.

On the way home, we stopped at the Norris Center for a snack sushi and Chex Mix. The walk home was clear and cold, brilliant and exquisitely illumined. Glorious.

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Forms and Play

I’ve just finished the family taxes (Nate comes next, hang on, fella), and a spate of forms that I fill out annually when Seabury sees what kind of medical insurance it can afford, and I’m working on financial aid applications. Permit me to say, relative to all these, that I have yet to encounter a form that doesn’t invoke my deepest anxieties about making a mistake, misunderstanding or forgetting something, and having my house surrounded by flare-orange-suited agents from a federal agency, armed with automatic weapons. I’m not math-phobic; I appreciate some sorts of legal puzzling; but this particular high-stakes game gives me a terrible allergic reaction, and the ways that tax software (no doubt itself constrained by dread legal forces) and insurance companies elicit information from me aggravate every confusion and fear my unconscious mind could rev up.

Again, next year I hope I can send our taxes to a professional. This year I needed to do them in a hurry so that I can submit financial aid information (late) to go with Si’s college applications (Happy Birthday, 18-year-old son!). There’s a lot of good work to be one simplifying and clarifying information-gathering for these agencies.

At the other end of the spectrum, Burning Monkey Mahjong 2005 has just been released, and this ludic user interface has me very positively impressed. If only I had more opportunity to play this, and less obligation to fill out the former.

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February 25, 2005

One Victory

Pippa does not read my blog, so far as I know (this would be a good time to tip me off if you are reading, Pip!), so I’ll crow about Margaret’s and my subtle method for inducing our children to read books that we know they’ll be interested by.

We hit them over the head with it.

No, no quite that obvious, but still — the time-honored method in our family entails leaving the “interesting” book in some incredibly obvious place (Margaret used the middle of the floor for a while), until the target child can no longer ignore it. This doesn’t always work, but it’s more consistently successful, and a lot less costly, than nagging.

On today’s library trip, I spotted a book on drawing comics that I knew would interest Pippa, if only I could induce her to look into it. As Pippa hit the comics section upstairs and the children’s section downstairs, I settled into the adult recent acquisitions section with a book by Paul Ricoeur that I’ll ignore until it’s due, Neil Gaiman’s Marvel 1602 (which I enjoyed immensely, though wityh a slight let-down at the end), and the how-to-draw-comics book on the library table in front of me. When Pippa finished her browsing, she came to get me. I continued reading 1602 until I reached the end of a chapter. She glanced at the cover of Ricoeur, looked at her own stack of books — then picked up the comics book. When I decided it was time to go, she had been reading intently for a good ten minutes. I took that book out along with the two that interested me, and it’s sitting prominently on the dining room table. . . .

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Forgot To Remember

Somewhere I thought I had learned that the obsolete word “eke” was used to fit into metrical lines that needed an extra syllable — hence the expression “to eke out” meant “to draw to necessary length by adding the syllable ‘eke.’ ” I thought I had learned this, but I can’t find support for that usage anywhere online. So, to everyone to whom I’ve asserted this to be the case, I issue a blanket reservation: maybe so, maybe not.

Certainly the use of “eke” tends to fit that characterization, even when editions of Chaucer gloss “eke” as “also.” The value of this syllable frequently entails only its contribution to the scansion; only rarely does an affirmation “additionally” flavor eke’s semantic role in a line. Still, absent an authoritative permission to continue my previous line of thinking, I’ll retract and wait further instruction.

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February 24, 2005

Usage Fussbudget

A subhead in the Baltimore Sun suggests verblessly that “Gonzalez latest to refute steroid claims of Canseco.”

May we agree that Gonzalez “contradicted” or “disputed” or even “gainsaid,” Canseco’s allegations, but unless Gonzalez presented ironclad evidence, he cannot yet be said to have refuted Canseco? For now, it’s one outfielder’s word against another.

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Freedom At Reduced Cost

David Isenberg reminds me that “there’s one week left to register [for the Freedom to Connect conference] at the Early Bird price of $250. The higher price, effective 12:01 AM on March 1, will be $350.” Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

There’ll be a tremendous line-up of ’net policy thinkers, with a passel of other geeks and wonks in attendance. I missed the WTF!?! — A Gathering of SMART People conference last year; I’m tickled to be going to F2C this year (this year, David lowered the standard from “smart” to “available,” in the theologians category, anyway). Disclaimer: I’m giving a keynote at F2C, so take that in consideration when I say it’ll be a conference full of chewy, nutritious net-policy goodness, apart from one keynote’s worth of theological reflection on freedom and connectivity. I still think the other speakers will be good, the company will be heady, the conference productive, and the Early Bird Special a better deal than last-minute registration.

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Feature, Someday

Something I’ve wanted to do for a long time: collect a bulletin from a garden-variety congregation and go over somme elementary steps by which one could make the bulletin a more effective device for communicating with its users — sort of a makeover program for church bulletins, such as Mean Dean provides for websites at Heal Your Church. “Teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteous bulletin design. . . .”

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Is That the Clue Phone?

I’m not sure how I got to this article [also described here; sorry for the busted link, Mitch and Joe!], but it’s double-edged message delights and daunts me.

The first cut, of course, enables me to chortle that other people show so little awareness of their folly. Not only are they foolish, but their limitations prevent them from recognizing the full extent of their occlusion! Lord, what fools these mortals be!

The second cut so neatly severs my vanity from me that one might easily miss the line of the cut. If semi-competent people can’t see their own limitations, then my own confidence that I’m not one of them. . . may be misplaced.

Luckily, I am protected from error because I so regularly encounter people who know so much that they couldn’t possibly be wrong.

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February 23, 2005

Churches and Managers

Once upon a time, I was a church-management know-nothing. I deliberately avoided any of the tawdry books about increasing attendance, about church marketing, about management and leadership with a thin theological icing. I knew I was spiritually superior to people who relied on such works, and I didn’t bother to learn anything about the claims I rejected.

That was a long time ago. I’m still cautious, skeptical, about the relation of “management” to the life of that peculiar institution, the church, but I’m more guardedly skeptical, and I hope I’m humbler. For instance, although I agree with some of the points Jay Bauman makes in an article for TheOoze, I would want to couch his criticisms differently, and to register an appreciation for management/leadership theory. Yes, you heard me right.

I’ve learned enough from my neighbors online — some of whom include those grievous sinners, the marketers — and from experience in churches and academic institutions, and from my retired colleague John Dreibelbis, that I see ways I’ve benefited from business theory. I’d steer away from thinking of that as “management” (for reasons I’ll stipulate in a minute) and “marketing,” but I participate more productively in various contexts through a refined understanding of organizations, communication, and desire. I expect that a large part of Bauman’s work as an Executive Pastor draws heavily on responses and insights informed by his business experience.

At the same time, Bauman’s arguments rightly point toward subtler versions of his critique. No one has laid this out with more clarity and theological nuance than my friend Phil Kenneson in Selling Out the Church. Alasdair MacIntyre tackles the ideology of management in After Virtue and Against the Self-Images of the Age. Even Chris Locke has gone on record (in last night’s Chief Blogging Officer report, if not earlier) as an anti-marketer. I’m not going to rehearse here the points they all make at much greater length, with admirable subtlety, but will simply assent that a great proportion of what gets passed toward churches as management theory or appropriate marketing ought to be passed even further — to the dumpster.

That last increment, though? The what’s-left-over after we throw out the dross? I hope that my colleagues don’t fall for the same spiritual pomposity to which I fell victim. We can’t afford to decide in advance that we have nothing more to learn, in any area. Sometimes, though, we learn most when we’re learning something a little different from what the teacher thinks we should be learning. I’m still cautious and skeptical.

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February 22, 2005

Webs of Solidarity

(a) I hope that enough people support Jason Kottke that he can make it as a full-time blogger. I threw my change in the guitar case.

(b) Speaking of supporting people, Blogarians band together today to call attention to the situation of the Iranian bloggers Mojtaba and Arash.

(b) If a place like Seabury wanted to start with its MT-based web page and commission someone to redesign it using CSS and templates — something like a page from the CSS Zen Garden — roughly what ought they expect to pay? The question will probably turn out to be purely hypothetical, but the answer should be worth learning.

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Hunh!

That was odd. For the past two days, posting has been closed down here due to “Got an error: Bad ObjectDriver config: Connection error: Too many connections.” I don’t know what that means, but it kept me from posting yesterday.

Posted by AKMA at 02:15 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Illicit Pleasures

I realized recently that if I don’t start reading again, I may lose the will even to try.

It’s hard to clear my mind enough to read a serious printed work, and the tenor of Seabury life militates against thinking of reading as something more than a self-indulgence. That’s a fatal attitude, though, and I simply have to read a number of works to prepare for my inaugural lecture in the spring. Today Yesterday I indulged myself with a dip into the essays of David Jones, an English artist-writer who had a special interest in meaning, the topic of my lecture.

Reading Jones has helped me see the discipline of biblical hermeneutics as having hobbled itself by taking the special case of “translation” as the fundamental model for the much broader phenomenon of signification and interpretation. The notion of textual univocity loses its sense of coherence if the text in question is, for instance, an image (what’s the single correct meaning of the “Mona Lisa” in a non-da Vinci Code universe?). Meaning doesn’t cooperate with human (academic) efforts to constrain it to equivalences. (One idea I had for the lecture was to present my talk with a soundtrack; a strictly textual version would thereby signify very differently, in a way that most observers would acknowledge.)

Jones makes the point that sacraments (in a lower-case sense) surround us, and we participate in them daily, as our actions bespeak a meaning greater than their explicit, objective definition. Tonight Laura reminded me of an example from her caring for her grandmother, who died Sunday night. If a sacrament is “the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,” then much more sacramental activity is going on all the time than only the church’s seven sacraments (that’s right, Protestant readers, I said “seven”). But when we locate the matter of signification in the domain of sacramentality, we situate our participation in the economy of singification (and in the ecology of signification) in a context that far surpasses our capacity to pin down or to limit to the narrow model of formulating ideal textual equivalences (What’s the meaning of anointing Grandmother’s feet with lotion? Don’t equivocate, now!). Moreover, a sacramental context appropriately invokes the liturgical, doxological dimensions of our acts of interpretation (biblical and otherwise). When we venture into the realm of signification, we can’t invoke any consoling regulative principles to protect ourselves from criticism, to ensure that we did the unassailably right thing; signification doesn’t work that way.

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February 20, 2005

Going, Going. . . .

In case anyone in the Evanston area cares, I’ve reached the end of my patience with the drywall that’s occupying one corner of our basement. We have about eight sheets resting on sawhorses, and if anybody wants ’em you may have them. But first come, first served, and if I don’t hear about them in the next few days, I’ll just dump them.

I’m reclaiming that space for some bookshelves. The kids and I will conquer the basement!

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Quarter-Baked Ideas and Recollections

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If Our Charity Were Not Already Exhausted

As the Primates of the Anglican Communion meet, I wonder whether it’s possible to acknowledge that we [all] have missed a long line of opportunities to respond with grace to the controversial course that the Episcopal Church has charted. If our charity were not already exhausted, we might put our faith in one another on the line by praying for the Holy Spirit to bring us to unity, and by ordering our institutional lives in ways that would make that possible.

First, we would have to agree that it looks as though our present differences will not immediately be reconciled by mediation or meditation or legislation. Some side or another can force its will on the other — in the name of God, of course — but having come so far in this particular direction, I have a hard time imagining that effecting anything but the violent excision of some part of the Body.

Second, then, we would have to acknowledge that some vital parts of the Body cannot honestly confess their sin if [what they take to be] an entire category of sin be overlooked, excepted, accepted; and by the same token, other vital parts of the Body cannot honestly confess their sin if [what they take to be] not-sin is included as sinful. The imposition of force at this point can only impair the conscience of some of the saints, and that serves no holy purpose.

Third, although God can raise up a Body whole and new from mere bones or dust and ashes, yet we ought not presume to dissolve the Body when that Body is surely stronger if all its sinews, organs, members are working together to their fullest capacities (and especially when it’s always possible that we have erred in our prayerful discernment of what path forward best reflects God’s will for the church). We need, for the sake of all, to do everything we can to sustain the fullest degree of communion possible.

Fourth, we should be looking for ways that hands and feet, eyes and nose can remain together in such ways as permit each the conscientious exposition and embodiment of their divergent understandings of the Body’s well-being. The hands, of their charity, should remain with the feet, at least to bear witness to the holiness and purity they espouse; and feet should, of their charity, remain with the hands, to bear witness to the expansive love and the commitment to covenanted fidelity that they espouse.

Fifth, with mutual charity, all Episcopal dioceses and agencies should develop their political and financial systems with a view toward flexibility (not coercion), toward oversight that strengthens (not erodes). Any office or budget line in the Episcopal Church should be ordered so that it could be administered by a hand or a foot, an ear or an eye, without a revolutionary reversal (so that the Spirit’s conversion can draw us from our entrenched positions without unnecessary resistance rooted in our institutional structures). Congregations of hands might have the oversight of a Hand Bishop, and congregations of feet might be guided by a Foot Bishop, freely and respectfully, without hands or feet pursuing coercive financial or legislative manipulation. We would acknowledge that such oversight reflects a condition of the very thinnest conceivable unity, but that we hope so ardently for the Body’s solidarity that we cling to that thinnest unity as preferable to the violent excision of even one faithful soul. We would have to endure an interval — forty years is a biblical precedent — of recognizing that sisters and brothers in duly ordered ministries, sharers of our tradition, had gone perniciously astray, and yet out of long-suffering and patient love, we all were endeavoring everything we can to prepare for a yet greater degree of harmony.

We might offer one another such accommodations, in the earnest mutual hope that the Spirit would bring clarification to what now is murky, nearly opaque — if our charity were not already exhausted. I pray that we, with no remaining charity to offer one another, not all be found at fault.

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February 19, 2005

Day of Rest

I actually got off to a leisurely start today — but that disappeared quickly. During Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Pippa needed her pancake breakfast. After breakfast, we needed to go to the library (Pip was wrongfully accused of keeping their copy of Harriet the Spy overdue); we vindicated her good name, and proceeded thence to pick up some storage boxes for Pippa and some rutabagas for Si, whose birthday comes up Thursday.

(“Rutabaga” is the family circumlocution for surprises and presents. Back when Pippa was too young to understand the idea of “secret,” she would repeat the last few words she had heard without knowing what they meant. When we were shopping for presents, the boys and I would always make sure that we said “rutabaga” a lot after we finished talking about the specific gift we bought, so that Pippa wouldn’t blurt out “necklace” or “Legos” at an inappropriate moment. Thereafter, we’ve used “rutabaga” to signify a surprise.)

Got back from the rutabaga farm, and I had a half hour to shower up, wrangle Beatrice down to get her hair cut (photos tomorrow), and keep headed south to pick up Phil Kenneson and take him to O’Hare. We had a great conversation, caught up on various developments, and I got back to the pet groomers just before they closed up shop. (Actually, they called Margaret to tell her that her dog had been abandoned, but that wasn’t true; I had told the groomers that I wouldn’t be back till 6:30 or so, and they called Margaret at 6:35).

Got back here, worked on uploading images from Juliet’s wedding (many of the nicest ones are protected, since neither Juliet’s nor John’s relatives live with the expectation that any expression or gesture could be immortalized for a Web-reading audience), tagged, titled, rotated, and protected/unprotected them.

IM’ed with various people about Seabury, Pippa, life, the universe, and everything. Now I’m ready to crash. I hope tomorrow I get a little less rest — I need a break.

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Chuffed

I can’t express how gratifying it is to find that other people think highly of Pippa’s work, as well as I. e has dropped by the comments here before, but her laudatory notice of Pippa (just after Halley spotlighted her, too) makes me beam with paternal pride.

The way to a parent’s heart is through their kids.

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February 18, 2005

Reading Week

Next week Seabury celebrates a Reading Week, in which our usual piety and erudition continue, but at a more relaxed pace. No classes, only two services a day, and fewer meetings (an all-day faculty meeting, but hey — you can’t expect to go much more than two months without an all-day faculty meeting). This break comes at a vital time; with half a chance, I can keep up with this term’s obligations, plan ahead for next term, and get a little reading done toward my writing and lecturing obligations.

Even if none of that happens — apart from the all-day faculty meeting, which will happen no matter what — it’ll be a rest. A much-needed rest.

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February 17, 2005

And I Thank You

Hey, Halley, thanks for the hat tip! I’m touched that you had such kind things to say about me — but more important, you were calling attention to my fabulous young daughter!

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I Thank You

When Florent and the interview team were visiting with me, one of the topics we covered involved what it’s like for a priest to participate in online life. Florent’s question set me to reflecting about “e-Parish” ventures of one sort or another. The projects I’ve read about seem all to have involved replicating, in various ways, the notion of a “parish.”

But that premise relies on the kinds of geographical, physical relationships that online interaction renders supplementary (rather than essential). If something like congregating is going to happen online, it’s not going to happen because someone stakes out a virtual chapel, a virtual coffee hour, a virtual parish membership roll. That picks up the impaired aspects of the physical-world congregation, and makes them the definitive norm for digital congregation. That picks up the stick at the wrong end.

Contrariwise, I’ve found that something much closer to a “congregation” or (in a limited sense) “parish” arises freely in situations where people want to communicate with somebody on a basis that regards their theological identity. Think of the Real Live Preacher’s weblog; that (it seems to me) reflects something much closer to the full sense of “online congregation” than a posited “St. Somebody’s Cyber-Parish.”

And, to bring this around, I’ve found a very parish-like community of people who have offered their time and attention and thoughtfulness to the matters about which I’ written here. Only a small proportion of the people who come to this site profess an active Christian faith; that’s not a problem to my claim, though, because part of my point is that the who’s-in-and-who’s-out game doesn’t have the same compulsory urgency. Over the years, I’ve emailed and chatted and blogged with people about life and death, marriage and divorce, sex and loneliness, God and Jesus and Torah and gods and no-god. I’ve talked to you on the phone, theologized and interceded and just meandered. Sometimes we get together, which is a special treat. I’ve prayed for people who asked me to, and for some who didn’t ask (sorry if I give offense here), and in all these things I’ve felt a keen awareness of our connections to one another — even when I haven’t known your offline name. Sometimes people have checked back in to register a sense of how this connected with their faith, or lack thereof — but that’s entirely beside the point (not to them and me, I mean, but to the notion of “how we are together”). At the heart of what we do together lies the extent to which our connections, yours to me and mine to you, affect us, our hearts and dispositions and actions; those connections don’t reduce in any true way to a simple “in” or “out,” “parish” or “other kind of community” dichotomy. It’s more complicated than that.

That’s different from “being a parish,” you may say — and that’s just my point. It’s an online way of congregating; it makes sense of how we gather and disperse online, and it fits. People who congregate around here accept me as a priest, even if they’re not sure what to make of that. I’m a priest for them, and they’re friends to me — and we make a pretty snazzy congregation, as far as I’m concerned. Better than that ol’ cyber-parish any day, so there!

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February 16, 2005

Still Recouping

I’m working out from underneath my five-day absence from Evanston and my sudden return thereto. I’ve actually gotten a couple of necessary errands done, and met my classes, and had appointments, and so on. Tonight, as soon as I finished my plate of Pippa’s Extreme Red Sauce (and some tube-shaped pasta, not penne), I dashed out to the western subrbs, to St. John’s, Mount Prospect, for an Adult Ed evening discussion. The whole building looked dark, though, and I had a very bad feeling about things. I had traded emails with the rector just this afternoon, and it says right here in my calendar. . . “St. Hilary’s, Prospect Heights.” Oh.

I’d have been fine getting to St. Hilary’s — it is, after all, only one town over from Mt. Prospect — but the road I was taking wove in and out of the edge of Prospect Heights, so when I saw the sing that said I was entering Wheeling, I doubled back. . . then I doubled back again, and discovered that if I stayed northbound a little further than the sign for Wheeling, I’d be back in Prospect Heights. Eventually, finally, I pulled into the church parking lot.

We talked for an hour and a half about biblical interpretation, allegory, and the Temptation in the Wilderness. They were patient and appreciative; I was relieved to roll home and sink down into bed. In just a few minutes I’ll be drifting off to sleep.

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February 15, 2005

Catching Up

I don’t have a particularly good excuse — a time zone change of only two hours, and a day less busy than some — but I’m entirely exhausted. I had meant to post some photos to flickr, and to clear some backed-up email, but I can’t do it.

Mañana.

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Home Away From Home
Originally uploaded by AKMA.
I’m back safely, with the kids, without my Valentine — but we had a great weekend together, and sometimes when we looked at the signs around us, it seemed as though we had never been away. . . .

Posted by AKMA at 12:18 AM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2005

Recap and Return

It’s been a busy weekend, with limited net access, but with lovely times with Margaret and Juliet and John. The wedding-blessing went beautifully; Margaret wrangled some relatives to be a server and an usher, and Juliet and John could think of no reason that their wedding could not be blessed, and everyone could hear me. There was a threat of rain, which would have dampened both flesh and spirit, but the greater climatic threat turned out to be a persistent gusty wind — especially problematic since the communion vessels were light.

Vigilance and piety prevailed over the brute force of nature, and Juliet and John are married in the sight of God as well as of the State of New Jersey. I’ve added the wedding sermon in the “Extended” part of this entry.

Yesterday we spent the morning at the beach, where I did my best to avoid ruining my library pallor while Margaret toasted herself. I did step out into the light to swim around with my goggles on — it was like snorkeling lite, or like a National Geographic video special for the easily terrified. I swam along with a school of fish that looked about as exotic as haddock. In fact, haddock look positively ferocious compared to these innocuous marine travelers. It was a treat, though, to see through the clear water, to swim around with little fishies, and then scamper back to shore to curl up in the shade with a copy of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble. I grudgingly agree, by the way, that Butler ought to write more gracefully; unless I misunderstand her by a long margin, she could have made her points in much more vivid, clear prose.

An Anglican family who had come to the wedding wanted very much for me to bless their home, so Margaret and Juliet and I wandered over to give them a blessing. Their son was particularly concerned that we bless the space under his bed, so I was liberal with the holy water for his sake.

Today we leave for home; Margaret and I separate in Miami, and I’m scheduled arrive home in Chicago at about eleven o’clock (getting back to Evanston around midnight). I’ll be trading marital companionship and tropical leisure for full-time workand broadband access. Hmmmmm. . . .

The Blessing of the Marriage of Juliet Richardson and John Wynne
Ruth 1:16-17/Phil 4:4-9/Ps 67/John 15:9-12
February 12, 2005

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Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say, Rejoice!

In the Name of God Almighty, the Blessed Trinity on high – Amen.

It’s an odd thing, from a logical and psychological point of view, to command someone to rejoice. How would I obey such a command? With a forced grin and a hollow laugh? Wan cheeriness and parched humor? And it’s all the more strange when St. Paul commands us to rejoice always, always, no matter what the circumstances, and then repeats himself: “Again I say, Rejoice!” Even today, on as joyous an occasion as we’re permitted to share, in the company of John and Juliet and so many beloved friends and family, we may be permitted to think that Paul has gone a little over the top in urging us to rejoice, rejoice, rejoice always.

Paul is not, of course, selling us a cheery positive outlook as the antidote to every misfortune, to the frustrations that sometimes accompany married life, to the griefs that befall all mortals. A positive attitude may offer all sorts of benefits, but it does little by way of theological illumination. Paul wants for the Philippians, and for us, an understanding of who we really are, of how God loves us, and of where we fit into God’s tremendous, sprawling mural of creation. Paul wants us to share the joy of knowing the God who loves us intimately, utterly, fully – so fully that our God enters this troubled world on our terms, knows our pain, endures our limitations, and breaks apart the bounds that evil and mortality impose upon us.

God comes to us in the person of Jesus, a plain man from an obscure province, a wedding guest – who once upon a time gathered together a knot of friends, and taught them what it means to love one another. There’s more to loving one another than going fishing together; Peter and Andrew were already fishermen. More also than the shared ups and downs of a joint checking account; the sons of Zebedee seem to have been running quite a fair business with their father. There’s more to loving one another than the urgent intensity of passion and release; women and men among the disciples had been there, done that, and Jesus called them, calls them, calls us to something greater, something wiser.

We know from Jesus what we’ve learned by living together: that love does not prevent annoyance, frustration, hurt and sorrow. So we gather today on this holy errand because in a fragile world Juliet and John have promised to stand together for life, as we promise to help them, in Jesus’ name: that is, in the name of a hope, a grace, a love greater than vexation and sorrow. They have brought us here today in the name of life, kneeling before God as frail flesh, then standing among us as angels, supported by friends, sheltered by God’s blessing. We know from Jesus that when such love draws us toward the heart of God, then nothing can stop it, nothing can harm it, nothing can break the love that God has forged.

So when this evening, Juliet and John have volunteered to devote their whole selves to the shaky enterprise of reflecting to us the patient, forgiving, hopeful, sweet love with which God loves us – when we hear them say, “I do,” and when we answer their promises with our own pledge “we will” – they bind themselves to one another, and us to them, in a covenant of trust among people who care for one another, among people who turn to God for the grace of true blessing, among saints and sinners and plain folks and doubters and especially, especially among lovers – among lovers whom God has woven into a brilliant tapestry whose beauty banishes sadness, and brings all our woe to a perfect ending, and seals it with God’s glory.

In these promises, in this hope, there always lurks something of St. Paul’s joy to sustain us. Juliet, John, speak carefully and speak true – because although the words you are about to utter will sound like the quiet, simple affirmation, “I do,” once you utter them they will echo from the ocean, from the trees, from the walls of your home, in the hearts of your loved ones, your words will echo back from highest heaven with God’s responding affirmation to you: “Then, rejoice, always! Again I say, rejoice!”

Amen

Posted by AKMA at 07:16 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 12, 2005

Saturday

Wedding in five hours.

Sermon done.

House-blessing service compiled and printed (just in case — it’s a long story).

The spambots have been busy, haven’t they?

Miss you. Back soon.

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February 11, 2005

Thin Linking

My Safari window is getting clogged up with pages I wanted to comment on and link to, but which I haven’t found time actually to write about. Some people solve this my putting d.elici.o.u.s links in a sidebar, but I haven’t girded my loins to figure that one out yet. I need to clear the decks, though, so let me point you to:

Adina Levin’s entry on friendship, conversation, communication, “social signals,” and online interaction — a very intriguing contribution to three or four discussions I benefit from.

Scott Matthews and Patrick Ross’s discussions toward a middle way in intellectual property publication, distribution, and remuneration. I’m resistant, not out of my determinedly piratical temperament, but from the sense that Scott’s proposal still owes more to perpetuating obsolescent economic customs than to maximizinng the efficiencies and possibilities of new technologies. But I haven’t taken time to think these over fully, so don8’t mind me.

Shelley’s fantastic overview and exploration of tags, tagging, memes, folksonomies, and how to exploit them. Speaking as someone whose name is already, in effect, a tag, I need to keep listening closely to her.

And in answer to her closing wish, she’s only one good tutorial away. . . .

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