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August 31, 2005

Come Together

Dylan urges everyone to consult the Bear’s “Blog For Relief” Day site. Instapundit and Technorati are serving as cornerstone sites (see [Technorati tags:flood aid] and [Technorati tags:hurricane katrina]).

Posted by AKMA at 02:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 30, 2005

Proportions

Take a second or two to think what it would mean to be a priest the least of whose burdens is that the parish church was just washed out to sea.

[From the Times-Picayune website this report: “Long Beach: Most buildings within 200 yards of U.S. 90 disappeared ...” — my emphasis.]

We’re thankful that David and his family survived the hurricane in good shape — but my mind reels at what David will be facing as the waters recede and his congregation comes to grips with what just happened among them.

[In case readers here don’t know where to make donations, here’s a link to Episcopal Relief and Development, where you can make send money designated for Katrina relief. Just don’t try to explore the site; I’ve hit a lot of 404 links there. Richard has an eerie picture up here.]

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Stromateis

E called my attention to Metroblogging New Orleans, from which I’ve gotten a much richer sense of the situation there than I have from listening to the official news sources. She also reminded me there of how unevenly the weight of calamity (and attention) there has been distributed.

I heard from storm-affected Annie — she’s OK, hosting refugees from New Orleans proper. No report from my other friends in Louisiana-Mississippi.

I’m working on the last sheet of the starter deck of Ekklesia: The Congregating cards (last sheet now done and posted). In the shower this morning, it occurred to me that I could make up some special cards as a supplement: for instance, a “Persecution” card that beat everything except a martyr, no matter what category was chosen; a “Miracle” card, that won for the person who played it the next two cards (but then it had to be discarded — only one miracle per game); a “Council” card would require the next two plays to be determined by Orthodoxy; and so on. From there, we could begin to revisit Derek’s wonderful sketch of a game more deliberative than random.

In case you were worried about Josiah, he seems to be having a great time.

Last night I watched Hook, Line, & Sinker — back in olden times, when you couldn’t just choose to watch any movie ever made, but only had available the movies that local theaters and TV stations deigned to show, I hit a streak of Bert Wheeler/Robert Woolsey movies early Saturday morning on a Pittsburgh TV station; Netflix is now feeding my reminiscences. I’ll say this: it’s no Night at the Opera or Philadelphia Story, but I think it holds up exceptionally well (and some studio would be better served to remake this than to generate yet another puerile gross-out feature).

We made the turn into Volume Three of the Theological Outlines project (relying on a first-edition copy, much different format); Chapter Twenty-Two (“The Economy of the Holy Ghost”) is online.

Posted by AKMA at 12:27 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 29, 2005

Glancing Blow

I spent the day in a backwater of news updating — I rely on NPR and the Net for news (and just now I’m away from my radio). I gather that New Orleans had a severe, but not catastrophic interaction with Katrina. I hope Long Beach MS survived intact, but haven’t heard anything yet.

So New Orleans fared better than I feared last night; all through the day, I was unnerved by the contrast between the seriousness of the [possible] havoc and destruction (on one hand) and the amount of public attention (on the other). In the aftermath of a natural disaster, we can find a lot of news coverage, but in the hours yesterday when it wasn’t clear that this wouldn’t be the most devastating hurricane strike in U.S. history, I heard more time devote to pledge drives and read more web pages replete with lite chatter.

Now, my worries don’t oblige other people to change their programming (“Hey, Roone — there’s a guy in Chicago worried about the hurricane; let’s cut away for some special coverage, right?”). It did, however, heighten my attention to the discrepancy between post facto coverage and the preparatory reports (and on-going news).

I kept busy whipping up the fifth sheet of Theology Cards. Forty cards is plenty good for the game of which Scripture would say, “Naomi called its name Ekklesia: The Gathering.” I compiled and submitted a heap of receipts from the Disseminary, and got some necessary office work done. I’ll try to get to sleep early tonight, maybe catch up after a rest-less weekend.

Posted by AKMA at 06:13 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

August 28, 2005

Change in Plans

The plan was for me to rush home after church, take an immediate nap, and get some work done this afternoon. I had gotten very little sleep — the sermon didn’t want to come together, it had been a very difficult week of homiletical wrestling. The sermon turned out all right (posted below the fold), but it wasn’t done till low-digit hours of morning that I hardly ever witness.

So after two services and a long Adult Ed classes, I was ready indeed for a nap, but I took a quick look at my online neighborhood where I noticed Shelley’s stark alert that Katrina — which had looked like a garden-variety Bad Hurricane when I had last checked Saturday night — had turned into The Worst Hurricane Ever, at least as far as New Orleans was concerned. My nap time disappeared into an afternoon spent catching up on the scale of Katrina, the vulnerability of New Orleans, and the magnitude of the possible catastrophe.

The dioceses of Louisiana and Mississippi have sent a lot of seminarians to Seabury over the last few years — people I’ve worked with, people I love, people who’ve gone back to a region they love to serve God and their neighbors. Mary, Richard, Jeff, Dave, A.J., Annie, Bill and Susan — and Andrew’s and Laura’s families — I don’t even know what to hope for, but I’m thinking of you all, and will want to know that you’re well and safe, as soon as I can.

Sisters and brothers, I’ve been very eager for this morning to come. We have something urgent to talk about – but I must apologize that I can’t get to it directly, that I’ll have to come at it the long way around. You see, I need to assure you first of all that I did not mean to avoid my high school reunion. Anyone who wants to find me can do so pretty easily, and in a moment of weakness I even signed onto one of those internet high school alumni services. I’m eminently Google-able. So when years five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty went by without so much as a peep from Taylor Allderdice High, I had no reason to expect that this week – out of the clear blue sky – I would wind up exchanging messages with three of my high school colleagues, all because somebody on the high school reunion committee listed my name under the heading for “missing” classmates.

I haven’t thought that much about high school for ages – not for more than thirty years. The one overwhelming impression that came back as I read down the names of the Class of 1975 was of time after time when I felt that dreadful awareness that although I was talking up a storm, I was not making any sense whatever, that I was making an arrant fool of myself, and yet not knowing what else I could do. The mere mention of my high school years brought that feeling back in a disorienting wave of retrospection – but the wave was amplified and intensified by the fact that this particular week I have been meditating on our brother Peter and his misplaced exuberance for the gospel.

Poor Peter hardly ever enters a gospel story without blundering. If there were crystal glasses in the gospel, he would break them. If there were just one key to the apostolic tour bus, he would drop it down a storm drain. When we read about the Transfiguration, Peter got sidetracked worrying about room arrangements. A couple of weeks ago, Peter plunged overboard and nearly drowned, as if he just had to prove how tenuous his faith was. And this morning, right after he finally puzzled out the right answer to the Jesus’ question, “Who do they say that I am?” Peter rushes ahead to explain to Jesus that that he had a much better idea about how they could spend their upcoming days in Jerusalem.

Jesus, meanwhile, evidently missed the day in teacher training class where they explain how to deal with obtuse students. If I were to speak to somebody – Ryan, perhaps – who gave a foolish answer to one of my questions, saying “Get behind me Satan!” I would have to expect appointments with the Academic Dean, the President, and perhaps even a Bishop or two. But Jesus’ words sting exactly because of how badly Peter had misconstrued the message. Like eager Christians gobbling down apocalyptic claptrap under the misapprehension that Left Behind bestsellers will unveil the secret of what Jesus really has in store for us, or like an inept high-school stumbler blurting out all the wrong words, Peter interrupts the man whom he has just identified as the Anointed One, the very Son of the Living God, and brother Peter cuts Jesus off and says, “Wait! I have a better idea!”

At that moment I imagine a silence. It doesn’t really matter how long the silence lasts, since for Peter, and for us, even a few seconds of that silence will have felt like a month. Even the briefest pause gives us more time than we need to bite our tongues, to wince and hear a syllable by syllable slow-motion instant replay of our painfully explicit folly. To paraphrase Jeremiah, we have uttered what was foolish, and not what was precious, and our Savior snaps back, “Get behind me, Tempter, Satan – you’re peddling human ideas, when what we need around here is God’s wisdom.” Ooops. I heard Peter’s ill-timed interjection, and recollected every stupid thing I said to every girl I wanted to go out with, every lame excuse I made to every teacher, every malformed attempt at wit, every feeble lie, every faltering effort just to get along and fit in. And Jesus’ voice carried over those years, too: “You are setting your mind on human things, not on divine things.”

And this, friends is where the urgent element comes in. There’s nothing very urgent about my high school years, they’re old business, and everyone involved has gotten over them. But the vitally urgent part comes with the advice that Paul gives to the Romans and to us as well: While the world around us displays many pretty vistas, and surrounds us with charming people, God’s creation crowned with the children of God – if we try to fit into the world on the world’s terms, we invest our energies, our very lives, in an effort that will inevitably will come to a dead end. We are set as perishing creatures in a perishing world; indeed, I may say that the world we see is an adolescent world, full of the strength and beauty and waywardness and folly and sometimes even the cruelty of those high school years. God loves those years, but God calls us onward, out of our adolescence.

The awkward, impulsive Peter who steps on Jesus’ lines, who promises to follow Jesus all the way to the grave and who then denies three times that he even knows the guy, the Peter who’s drowning in his eagerness to prove that he’s the disciple Jesus called him to be – we see the same guy in the Book of Acts, calmly leading the first generation of Christians as a statesman and orator. Where did that come from? No one reports Peter taking time out for a Dale Carnegie Course; the New Testament doesn’t show us a Peter who willed himself into being a calmer, wiser man, any more than back in high school I could have willed myself more mature. That’s not how it works. In fact, the more furiously we resolve to conform ourselves to a given set of characteristics, the deeper we embed ourselves in the limits that constrain us. We know that at St Luke’s; we’ve walked that road, we’ve felt the trap of good intentions snare us into re-enacting the same mistakes we were trying so hard to avoid.

And therein lies the urgency of hearing Paul, of hearing Jesus, who promise us that if we let go of the thin-lipped, teeth-clenched determination to fix ourselves, if we allow God to work on our lives in the plenitude of ways that the Holy Spirit can operate on us and with us, that grace will indeed transform us. Our anxious need to fix the world, to “reinvent ourselves,” to improve on a beauty that’s already God’s gift to us, our fears and our determination hinder the grace that already has begun its work, if we can look on it with the eyes of patience and possibility.
Patience and possibility, sisters and brothers, not passivity; the effervescent vitality of grace brooks no idleness. Grace got you this far, perhaps reluctantly, perhaps doubtfully, but grace will bring you all the way home if you make room for the Spirit, if you be not conformed to the world of fear and perishing, but allow grace to transform your imagination into a vessel for hope and trust. Grace will bring you home to Jerusalem, even as we know that people may insult and reject and resist you. Grace will open your senses to the loveliness of a world a-borning, not yet in full bloom, and once you’ve savored that captivating glory, everything else fades to unreality. If ever we knew beauty before, it was but a dream of grace, when now we awake to a luminous Truth that we can’t rush, we can’t coerce, we can’t force; and we attain that Truth only by relinquishing control, by giving away, by loving, by trusting, by offering our selves as a living sacrifice, not consumed but devoted to grace.

In offering our lives to a way and a power that transcend targets and projects, we open ourselves to Grace’s perfect transformation of our understanding. That grace has drawn out a little more of the sober judgment and discernment even in me; and although I’m no beauty myself, grace has entwined my life with a beautiful family, with this wonderful congregation, with dear students – and maybe when next I meet some of my high school cronies, they’ll perceive that transformation beginning to work in me. Grace transformed Peter from the embarrassingly hasty disciple to the deliberate chief apostle. Grace is transforming St. Luke’s with hopefulness and patience, and grace encourages us to wait for still more wonderful transformations to come.

And as we wait, as we give, as we bestir ourselves to share the joy that pulses strong, stronger as we patiently learn its unique rhythm, we more readily detect grace’s beauty sparking, kindling in our surroundings. There, the fire in her fingertips as she coaxes from silent paint and canvas a crescendo of line and color; there, as he wins from wood and metal and rose-voiced tongues the very songs of angels; here, if mists of your doubt part for just one second, and you sense even a flicker of the thought that you might be able to trust, to love a God who need not brow-beat or arm-twist to elicit thankful praise from free hearts; here, as by God’s perfectly distilled grace all the world, all creation, joins us in this room and we are one, transformed, setting our minds on divine things, the sublime harmony that draws us here seals us in one Body, in one perfect reunion from which not my name nor yours shall be missing.

Amen

Posted by AKMA at 09:06 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 27, 2005

David I. Has A Point

David Isenberg points to a constructive response to the Robertson inanity, and the idea comes from Hugo Chávez himself (I’m not talking about the “rather mad dogs with rabies” part of the remark, for which I can offer no intelligible explanation. I thought “mad dogs” were by definition rabid; and what’s with the qualifier “rather”? Unless that’s in for the Guardian’s English readership. Rather!) .

Chávez has been using Venezuela’s oil resources as a policy tool, enlisting doctors from Cuba in exchange for discount oil and offering oil to Jamaica at a cut rate. “We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor communities in the United States,” he says.

So far as I can imagine, there’s no way to swing that. “Poor communities” in the U.S. still obtain oil from the transnational corporations that import, refine, and distribute petrochemicals. A tanker of Venezuelan crude might make a nice present, but it wouldn’t provide any very direct benefit to, say, East St. Louis or Camden. Still, it’s more edifying to hear Chávez talk about helping the needy than to hear Pat Robertson bumble through his attempted justifications of his oafish bullying. “I spoke in frustration that we should accommodate the man who thinks the US is out to kill him” — so (if Robertson is being honest) he thought that the way to respond to someone who (groundlessly?) feared U.S. assassination squads is to. . . kill him? Open your mouth, Mr. Robertson, and insert entire leg.

Posted by AKMA at 03:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Stock Up Now

Twenty-four shopping days till Ecumenical* Talk Like a Pirate Day! Time to snag that missing glass eye, Jolly Roger, and piratical attire. (Tidewater Tripp tipped me off to this venue.)

* Well, just trying to cast this momentous event in a more a theological vein. . . .

Posted by AKMA at 12:32 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 26, 2005

Theology Cards — The Game

As I work toward completing the starter set of 48 Early Church Theology Cards, I’ll post the links here. Right now, I’ve uploaded a design for the backs of the cards, and two sets of eight theologians. I think they’re pretty snazzy; Ryan and I had an impromptu game with the first set of eight to test-drive the game, and things worked pretty well (once he stopped cheating). Anyway, I’ll add links to this post rather than scattering them throughout my blog, and eventually we’ll have them linked from the main Disseminary blog, which is coming together bit by bit.

• PDF - Backs of Cards
• PDF - First Eight Theologians
• PDF - Second Eight Theologians
• PDF - Third Eight Theologians
• PDF - Fourth Eight Theologians
• PDF - Fifth Eight Theologians
• PDF - Sixth Eight Theologians
• JPG - Backs of Cards
• JPG - First Eight Theologians
• JPG - Second Eight Theologians
• JPG - Third Eight Theologians
• JPG - Fourth Eight Theologians
• JPG - Fifth Eight Theologians
• JPG - Sixth Eight Theologians

Preparations: First, determine how the variable categories will be directed: the “Date of Death” category may favor earlier or later saints, and the “Orders of Ministry” may favor Patriarchs (magisterial rules) or the Baptized (kingdom rules). Then deal the cards.

The divisions of Ministry are: Apostate, Baptized, Monastic, Deacon, Presbyter, Bishop, Patriarch. (“Apostate” always loses, whether by Magisterial or Kingdom rules.)

The divisions of Asceticism are: Virgin, Celibate, Chaste, Penitent, Unchaste. (The distinction between Chaste and Celibate is elusive and sometimes arbitrary. Virgins are always women; Celibates are men whose theology or practice foregrounded their sexual purity.)

The divisions of Orthodoxy are: Heresiarch, Heretic, Heterodox, Ambiguous, Orthodox, Theologian, and Doctor.

The divisions of Martyrdom are: Megamartyr (a martyr under extraordinary circumstances), Martyr, Confessor, Exile, Simplex (for those who just plain died).

The Play: Shuffle and deal the cards.

A turn consists of each player looking at the top card of their deck. The first player chooses one of the categories: Date of Death, Order, Asceticism, Orthodoxy, or Martyrdom. Players then compare the characteristics of the two cards in the category that the chooser indicated, and the player whose card is higher takes both cards and becomes the next chooser.

If the chooser’s card surpasses the responder’s card, the chooser gets both cards, puts them on the bottom of their deck, and and keeps the prerogative to choose the category when the next cards are drawn.

If the responder’s card is equal or higher when then cards are compared, the responder gets both cards, puts them at the bottom of their deck, and earns the prerogative to choose the category when the next cards are drawn.

[Later: Special Rules/specialcards to come. . . .]

When one player has all the cards, the game is over.

(Now I just have to come up with a sermon for Sunday.)

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August 25, 2005

On Virgin Martyrs

I was going to hold out against incorporating legendary saints in the Church History Card Game, but the weight of the present list tips so heavily to men that we may need to draw on the (copious) ranks of the virgin martyrs to attain even the semblance of equity. I can rationalize it by pointing out that many of these figures are well-known, and it will help my students to know more about their stories and to know whether this or that martyr has a basis in fact.

Derek (congratulations on your impending paternity, Derek, and you’re sadly right about church hiring) proposed the following candidates:

St Prisce, St Agnes, St Anastasia, St Brigida, St Agatha, St Pudentiana/Potentiana, St Felicula, St Praxedis, St Susanna, St Sabina, St Eufemia, Sts Lucia and Eufemia, and Geminianus, St Cecilia, St Catherine, St Lucia

We might add to this list St Barbara and St Margaret of Antioch (two of the Fourteen Holy Helpers). I suppose that I’d favor these two, plus Catherine (shudder) and Agnes, who has a decent chance of having been an actual person. Depending on how many cards we already have, we could add — hmmm — Cecilia? Lucy? And maybe Cosmas and Damian?

[Later: As I mock-up cards (curses on Freehand, not fully compatible with OS X 10.4!), I have to come to a resolution about the terminology of non-ordained characters, of characters who die of natural or non-theological causes, of people who die out of communion with the church — maybe some others, too. Suggestions welcome.)

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August 24, 2005

Defining “Out of Left Field”

Has anybody else noted the point of contact between Harry Potter and Reformation anti-Catholic polemics? That is, evangelical/Protestant advocates accused Catholic clergy of being Totenfresserei, “Eaters of the dead” (because they took offerings for saying masses for the souls of the deceased) — not precisely “Death-eaters,” but close enough to make a theologian wonder whether J. K. Rowling (from famously Reformed Scotland) has composed Harry Potter with a very subtle anti-Catholic subtext.

Not that that would stop me from itching to get hold of volume seven.

Posted by AKMA at 12:44 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Things I Didn't Want To Know (As It Turns Out)

The other night I succumbed to Si’s in-absentia blandishments and watched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I knew it was going to be stupid, but I was willing to believe him when he assured me that it was stupid and fun. Alas, I just didn’t enjoy it that much. The whole production seemed to shoot for “so bad it’s good,” and it overshot its target — it’s so bad that it missed its chance to be good, and ends up just really, really bad. I’m always willing to cut Keanu Reeves a break (among the various actors of the “make a quizzical expression and that makes it really profound” stripe, I prefer him), and I appreciate pop-cultural gestures toward acknowledging the value in academic knowledge, and I’m not an entirely humorless old grouch, but Bill and Ted just made me wonder how long the movie would drag on. Best parts: Clarence Clemons, Fee Waybill, and Martha Davis as the three governing people in the future, and the scene(s) where Bill and Ted meet themselves traveling through time. The rest? As Pippa frequently says, “I want my two hours back!”

The other thing I didn’t want to know came to my attention in the course of my research for the Theology Cards project. I was looking into the numerous examples of virgin-martyrs in early church history, most of whom turn out to be legendary. I wanted to pin down just which ones were more likely fictive, and which had a plausible claim to factuality. As I scanned down the list I came to St. Catherine of Alexandria, a wildly popular saint whose stature seems to serve as a displaced compensation for Christian complicity in the lynching of Hypatia. The Wikipedia confirmed my recollection that “Historians believe that Catherine probably did not exist.” It also, however, provided the answer to a question that had troubled me since I was a youth. though I knew that Catherine had been tortured on “the wheel,” and that the wheel was variously associated with spikes and with “breaking,” I could never figure out what wheels had to do with torture (and iconographic treatments of Catherine were of little help). I’ve asked medievalist friends and ancient historians, but no one I asked has ever had a clear idea how this torture worked. Now I know, and it took my an hour or so of queasiness to pull myself together again.

I noticed recently that I’ve gotten more sensitive to cruelty in my advancing years. Margaret and I went to see Mr and Mrs Smith, and we both appreciated many aspects of the movie (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, the tension in their relationship, Vince Vaughn), but Margaret was troubled by the plot holes. The plot caverns, to be more precise. I, in turn, was almost sleepless over the way the movie could invite us to delight in a couple’s love to such an extent that we were expected simply to disregard the staggering quantity of people whom they killed.

That experience catalyzed my latent horror at the ways our culture deals with denies mortality. (I may have disabled my capacity to enjoy the spy/thriller movies that our family has long enjoyed.) But reading about Catherine, watching the Smiths in action, I couldn’t help thinking about the U.S. government’s determination to sacrifice lives and torture captives in order to buy a respite (ephemeral at best, illusory at worst) from fears that its own belligerence reifies and magnifies.

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August 23, 2005

Words To. . . Something By

Jennifer called my attention to the latest manifestation of Pat Robertson’s wisdom: “You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if [Hugo Chavez] thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.” This, as Michael Crowley notes over at Talking Points Memo, comes from the same man who suggested that activist judges (the ones who aren’t conservative activists) endanger the U.S. more than Al Qaeda does: “Over 100 years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that’s held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings.”

Mmmmm hmmmm.

Posted by AKMA at 02:47 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Housekeeping

We’re going ahead with the first edition of Volume Three of Hall’s Theological Outlines; better a complete version of an older edition than no third volume at all. Chapter Twenty-One of Volume Two is up (“Mysteries of Christ’s Exaltation”). And we’re firming up the list of cards for the “Top Trumps” version of the Theology Game, over in the comments of yesterday’s post.

I had a great email conversation with David Moore from the Participatory Culture Foundation; we’re looking into a way of setting up a Disseminary channel on DTV — audio only, for now — and Trevor’s pounding out the pixels on the site redesign. Are those pixels, or is it plaster dust?

Sermon: One of the readings is the beginning of Romans 12, and it’s hard for me to resist preaching on the verses, “ I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect.” That fits harmonizes with the part of the Gospel that includes Jesus’ rebuke of Peter, “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” On the other hand, when I start deciding ahead of time what point I want to make, I usually get blocked; I have to just let go, let the readings slop around in my mind for a few days, and wait for the hook to coalesce. We’ll see what happens.

Posted by AKMA at 10:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 22, 2005

Hollywood Theology

I’m not referring to Travolta’s Scientology or Gibsonian sedevacantism, but to the kind of theological thinking that adopts Hollywood’s standards of unambiguous right and wrong, with “right” gloriously triumphant and “wrong” stamped out in disgrace. Way, way too much of contemporary theological arguments operate at the level of sophistication one expects from a grade-B action drama, where the flawed protagonist is forgiven every lapse because he is the Good Guy, and this protagonist kills the despicable antagonist because he or she is the irredeemable Bad Guy. [Later: And all problems are resolved within a manageable duration of time: “OK, it’s been two hours; let’s wrap this up!”]

Contemporary polemics to the contrary notwithstanding, that approach oversimplifies doctrinal discernment to the point of falsification. Arius was not an evil conspirator, gleefully leading duped souls to perdition; he and his supporters were wrong, but not maleficent, as careful studies by a number of scholars (including ++Rowan Williams) shows. Whoever is right and whoever is wrong about the various topics that inflame our tempers, the problems won’t be settled by repeating “But we’re right, and we know it!” or by mockery or by counting votes. Anyone involved in the discussions might be wrong: I, you, your hero, my hero, anyone. When we presume to suppose that we can’t possibly have misread the signs of the times, or when we refuse to stipulate criteria by which our position could be discerned erroneous, or when we exacerbate division by amplifying the volume and intensity of theological debate at the expense of the truth, we’re propagandizing for ourselves, not glorifying God.

If we’re part of a school for sinners, there’s an unaccountable quantity of stones flying around here.

Posted by AKMA at 01:31 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Disseminary Report

Theological Outlines, Chapter Twenty (“Mysteries of Christ’s Earthly Life”) is now, up, and in the comments thread on the “Top Trumps” entry, we’re making progress toward a basic version of the Theology Card Game of which Derek proposes a more elaborate version. And Trevor’s hard at work on the snazzy redesign of the site.

Mustn’t forget that I’m preaching Sunday.

[little note here from trevor: if anyone has a ready solution to the display problem on ie in both mac and windows platforms of the current version of the redesign I'd be happy to learn]

Posted by AKMA at 11:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 21, 2005

Something to Think About

From today’s New York Times article on “Intelligent Design”:

“All ideas go through three stages — first they’re ignored, then they’re attacked, then they’re accepted,” said Jay W. Richards, a philosopher and the institute’s vice president.

Note that: evidently “all ideas” will eventually be accepted, regardless of their soundness. Intelligent design has a future after all.

I tried to figure out a charitable reconstruction of this philosopher’s glib blunder, but the best I could come up with is something like, “All good ideas are ignored, then attacked, before they’re accepted.” It doesn’t have a catchy ring to it — but then, it’s not out-and-out false, either.

Posted by AKMA at 05:10 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Why I Am Not In Church This Morning

Laura and I are dropping Si off at the airport this morning. He starts his Marlboro College entering-student team-building exercise tomorrow.

Kid Number One is launched.

Kid Number Two is launched.

Even though I’m not in church, I’m praying a lot, for Nate and for Si and for Pippa. I know Margaret and I couldn’t be prouder of any of them. You hear?

Take care, and God bless you all.

[12:30 — Landed safely in Hartford. 15:00 — Safe in Brattleboro.]

Posted by AKMA at 05:52 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 20, 2005

Theology Game, Follow-Up

I’m impressed by the possible pedagogical value of Bryan’s suggestion of a “Top Trumps” model for a basic version of a Theology Cards game (in the Cluetrain-ed version of Top Trumps, someone gets word to the manufacturer that requiring people to register in order to learn about your product is not good Gonzo Marketing). Here’s an unofficial online example — I’m linking to Kings and Queens of England (Queen Anne had 19 children?!). The follow-up questions would be, what cards would one want (how many? what categories?) and how would one rate the various possible cards?

Anyone want to brainstorm?

Posted by AKMA at 11:55 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

August 19, 2005

Let's Push Things Forward

Before I start ranting, today’s chapter from Hall’s Theological Outlines is Chapter Nineteen (“The Offices of Christ”). We’re getting close to the end of Volume Two, and none of my probes has yet turned up a copy of Volume Three, second edition, so if you’ve been holding out on me, this would be a good time to come clean. If not, we can just go ahead with the first edition — not as satisfactory a solution, and some risk of duplicating effort since the second edition is much revised, but better than nothing.

Now, yesterday brought some celebration and interesting conversation. Tripp will be at work wrangling audio files of readings from early church history, and he and Bruce (Mr. Musings) may be able to record a few psalms, hymns, and sacred songs performed by One of the Girls, which the Disseminary can then distribute. My colleague at Northwestern University, Richard Kieckhefer, put together a book of very brief introductory readings to topics theological and historical, suitable for parish educational purposes — I’m negotiating for the rights to publish that online through the Disseminary, too. And in the “We told you so” department, the Guardian reports that educators can make use of podcasts!”

By the same token, I’ve pleaded with several granting agencies to help produce textbooks that would obivate Beth’s and Frank’s (in the comments to Beth’s post) complaints, for online distribution. The premise is simple: commission introductory textbook chapters from a targeted community of scholars; pay them more than they would ordinarily expect to get for an essay on a given topic, which in real-world money is still not much; publish the individual chapters online and in a bound-together print-on-demand volume. The chapters are available to anyone with an internet connection, thus making the textbook by [scholarly subgroup of your specification] instantly the most accessible, affordable textbook in history. There’ll be a limited economic motivation for a for-profit publisher to produce an introduction to the New Testament by scholars of color, but if we can eliminate the profit motive (and add the philanthropy motive: “The Lilly foundation announces An Introduction to the New Testament by leading women scholars”), we can push things forward (apologies for the dreadful flash-glutted site; Mike Skinner, shame on you).

You say everything sounds the same
Then you go buy them!
There’s no excuses, my friend
Let’s push things forward.

All of this took place while Heather was hosting a merry, populous farewell party for Si, who now actually has to leave Evanston (lest someone write a song about “SiBorg’s Last Night in Town”).

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August 18, 2005

Coming Up

Let’s see: I’m preaching at St. Luke’s on the 28th (reading Jeremiah 15:15-21/Psalm 26:1-8/Romans 12:1-8/Matthew 16:21-27), and on Sept. 24th (still not sure what I’ll be preaching from, but song of Songs seems to be a front-runner). I’m leading a Clergy Day in Northern Indiana on Sept. 14. My commentary on James has fallen entirely off the rails, though I will try again to get it going this morning afternoon.

Oh, and a shout-out to Derek at Haligweorc, who whipped up a proposal for a theology-cards game in between chapters of his dissertation. He and his colleagues at Open Thou Our Lips (Bending, Topmost, Monastery, ) are conducting some refreshingly deep theological conversation. You young people may not remember this, but Blogaria used to be a tiny little neighborhood, where you actually had time to keep up with interesting developments. . . .

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August 17, 2005

Unquiet Mourning

I slept poorly, waking from a nightmare early in the morning (it involved a massacre, an image presumably evoked by Br. Roger’s murder). I’ve had a heap of financial details to square away.

Edward Tufte publicizes Charles Joseph Minard’s graph of Napoleon’s 1812 campaign in Russia as “the best statistical graphic ever drawn”; it displays the size of Napoleon’s army, the army’s location in Europe, the passage of time, and the temperature, all in a single extremely lucid presentation. That chart reminds me of our family finances — as the family disperses to various locations, supply lines get drawn thinner, and winter is coming on. We’re not in bad shape, but it’s all so darn complicated.

So in order to distract myself from visions of the Berezina River, I took the “Which Harry Potter character are you? Myers-Briggs quiz ” as much to see whether a short online quiz would return the same result that the longer, more elaborate version typically gives for me. Sure enough, it did: INFP, in this case supposedly Remus Lupin (the werewolf-Defense Against the Dark Arts professor of Prisoner of Azkaban, with whom I actually felt a strong pang of sympathy throughout).

Someday, I’ll have to take the Which Blogging Archetype Are You? quiz again, to find out if I’ve become myself after an interval of being David Weinberger.

Oh, and although we ran into a bit of a snag relative to Volume Three (Christ Church sent volume three of the full ten-volume Dogmatics, rather than volume three of the shorter Theological Outlines), I posted Chapter Eighteen (“The Properties of Christ”) of Theological Outlines. (No, he doesn’t always get Boardwalk and Park Place.) Anyone with a line on Volume Three, second edition, of the Theological Outlines, please let me know; otherwise, we’ll have to use the first edition, which Hall revised substantially for the second edition (unless the copyright holders of the third edition want to permit us to post that version).

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August 16, 2005

Ubi Caritas

Brother Roger, founder of the ecumenical Taizé Community, has been murdered.

“You wept at the grave of Lazarus, your friend; comfort us in our sorrow.”

Few details are available, but this sounds just horrible; pray for his assailant, for the horrified witnesses, and for the community, as everyone who’s acquainted with Taizé and their work wonders how such a thing could happen. (Via Jordon)

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Dreaming On

In the alternate reality where George Soros calls me up and funds the Disseminary with enough support actually to do all the great things we could do with the opportunity, we would be all over DTV. This is a giant step toward the right idea about digital video transmission, and I’m tickled pink that the Participatory Culture collective would launch this terrific app.

On the reality-based side, we have an arrangement for professional voice artists to record texts from early church history, which won’t amount exactly to podcasts — though we could always set up something like that, hmmm — and we published Chapter Seventeen (“The Person of Christ”) of Theological Outlines. If you’ve been up late worrying about the hypostatic union, this is a hot chapter for you. No, the Hypostatic Union did not just split off from the AFL-CIO.

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Hostage Billing

As Jeneane’s recent experience shows, the hotel industry — it would be an overstatement to call it the hospitality industry, although some hotels can show hospitality (Margaret and I had a good time at the Metropolitan Hotel in our June trip to Toronto) — needs a thorough shaking. I’m still annoyed about our recent trip to South Bend, where a check-in clerk assigned us a room that the desk knew not to have working cold water in the shower. (I’m surprised to see that I didn’t blog about it; I think I must have wanted to wait till I could do so without losing my temper.)

The problem seems to lie with managers and executives who think of their hotels as pay toilets — they know you need to use it, and they reckon that they can extort payment from you because you’re in a hurry, or don’t see any alternative. Changing hotels causes more bother than putting up with inconvenience or overcharging. Somehow, though, I’d rather stay at an inn that thinks of itself in terms more commodious than “pay toilet with lumpy bed.”

When I temperately pointed out to the management of the venue at which we stayed that the clerk indicated that they checked me into a room in which they knew I wouldn’t be able to take a shower Saturday morning, I was accorded a twenty-dollar credit for the night’s lodging — a better deal than Jeneane’s been offered, but still way more than I’d have been willing to pay if someone had said, “We’ll give you this room without a shower for $50,” and more, I think, than I should be expected to pay for a nasty surprise. And Holiday Inns should positively hire Jeneane to work on their customer relations.

She’d set ’em straight about how to handle their internet connectivity, too, so Doc won’t be all over their sorry cases.

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August 15, 2005

Monday

I’m having a slow Monday, not intensely productive. On the plus side, I broke the back of my fall syllabus, learned a little bit about imposition and PDFs, and published Chapter Sixteen (“The Incarnation”) of Theological Outlines (admit it, you were looking forward to that one; I like the section entitled “The Convenience of the Incarnation”).

On the minus side, I didn’t accomplish much else. Yet. Maybe after I go buy groceries, I’ll feel more motivated.

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August 14, 2005

Triumphant Farewell

Josiah made his farewell to the Evanston stage, and to the Thin Ice theater group, in a compelling performance as Tom in The Glass Menagerie Friday and Saturday nights. All four actors did a very impressive job; Thin Ice actors have consistently shown admirable insight into roles and situation more “adult” than one would have expected for a group of high schoolers, much to the credit of Eileen Rosenthal and Paula Sjogerman, their directors.

I don’t have time for an expansive review, nor the impartiality for a reliable one, but I was proud and impressed by the production. I had a conversation with a more sophisticated blogger before I went, in which I had to confess that I just don’t know the Tennessee Williams oeuvre that well. This production introduced me to the style and themes I expected from Williams, but with a fine hand for the humanity of the characters involved. Cheers all around, and anyone who lives in convenient distance of Marlboro College dramatic productions, keep an eye out for Si.

I’d say “He’s a keeper,” but this is the time for us to let him go — with love and pride and our warmest blessings.

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August 13, 2005

Saturday Productivity

OK, today I’ve already published Chapter Fifteen (“The Fall of Man”) of Theological Outlines; that’s no big accomplishment, since it’s been sitting there in draft mode for weeks). Next, I have some academic study/writing to do, email to catch up on, and tonight I go to see Si in The Glass Menagerie. Last night’s notices were wildly enthusiastic, so I’m looking forward to his triumphant farewell to the Evanston stage.

If I need a break, I may make up a theology card or shoot a scene from the life of Ignatius — but the weather is cloudy today, and I rely on the sun for illumination for the photos.

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August 12, 2005

Miscellanea

On the way home from the Tufte presentation that I blogged about yesterday, Trevor and I stopped off at a Catholic bookstore so I could pick up some holy cards. Me, I think the lamination is tacky, and I prefer the ones with nineteenth-century illustrations to this batch’s Hallmark-y airbushed effects, but it’s delightful to have a handful of holy cards that aren’t just printed images from online sources. I suppose the lamination renders them more durably eligible for blessing with Holy Water.

We’ve been churning out chapters of Theological Outlines. Here are Chapter Ten (“The Trinity”), Chapter Eleven (“The Divine Economies”), Chapter Twelve (“Creation”), Chapter Thirteen (“Angelology”), and Chapter Fourteen (“Man” — hey, it’s from the nineteenth century). The wonderful folks at Christ Church, New Haven have lent us their copy of Volume Three, so that should be arriving in the mail soon. We’ll start posting the chapters from Volume Three as soon as we can.

Si is leaving for college in about ten days. Between Laura and Marlboro, his consciousness has already, to a great extent, left. He’s a fantastic guy, and I’ll miss him a lot, but it’ll be something of a relief when his brain and his body are more nearly in the same place.

Jane, this was a picture I didn’t need to see — esepcially with the annotation that you “didn’t hit much.” On the other hand, I’m glad to be on your good side.

Speaking of Edward Tufte and his antipathy to PowerPoint, here’s today’s Foxtrot comic.

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August 11, 2005

E.T. Was Here

Trevor and I spent the day at an Edward Tufte seminar course, which was worth it even if only