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November 30, 2006
Sweet Thirteen
Today is my unschooled daughter’s birthday; Pippa’s thirteen years old today, and getting more wonderful, more beautiful, every day. We’re going out to dinner in a few minutes with our friend Ellen, and I’ll have to work pretty hard not to spend the whole time beaming and boasting about her my daughter. [How cool is this? Pippa spotted my ambiguous pronoun: “Beaming about me or Ellen?”]
Meanwhile, Doc added a kind note about un- and home- schooling. I deeply admire the work that dedicated, under-appreciated schoolteachers do — nonetheless, Margaret and I anticipated that the best alternative for Nate and Si and Pippa was to learn at home on a student-led basis. So far, that judgment has been borne out.
On a different front, three fantastically kind friends have agreed to write last-moment recommendation letters for a big-deal grant to support my unpaid months at the Center of Theological Inquiry. Two other applications in the next few weeks, then waiting to hear. . . .
Posted by AKMA at 05:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 29, 2006
Prescription
Doc compares unschooling with Spot-On’s unpapering of the journalism business. . . .
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November 28, 2006
O Times!
Sunday’s New York Times featured an article on unschooling, the approach to home education that we’ve practiced for fifteen years. While I am not surprised that the newspaper sought out the ominous undercurrent of this subversive practice, I do marvel that a professional educator provides them with the sensational blare for their warning: “the folks who are engaging in these radical forms of school are doing so legally”! Oh, no!
The concluding paragraph of the article concedes that unschooled children don’t learn everything, that “there are definite gaps” in [one] unschooled student’s education. Are we then to understand that at PS 666, all students do indeed “know everything,” and find no “gaps” in institutionally-schooled children’s educations? If the school systems have improved that much since I graduated from high school, I’m at a loss to explain why I hear so much about our troubled school systems.
Here’s the real story: it’s possible for unschooled kids to emerge from their childhood poorly-prepared for further academic life, and it’s possible for institutionally-schooled kids to emerge from their childhood poorly-prepared for subsequent endeavors. On balance, does unschooling offer a better prospect than institutional schooling? Whom would we ask to discern?
[Disclosure: Our unschooled eldest son is beginning doctoral work at the University of Michigan with a Regents’ Fellowship. Our unschooled second son is a sophomore at Marlboro College, doing OK last I checked. Our unschooled daughter has not ventured into the world of quantified educational evaluation.]
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November 27, 2006
You Need to Learn
Stephen Downes takes a half hour out to list ten things that he thinks you need to learn. I think he’s hit the mark on almost every point; at the same time, I’m beginning to think that I can summarize my own perspective on “what you need to learn” in the three-word phrase, “knowing the difference.”
Simplifying to the extreme, most of what I deplore in academic and ecclesiastical life involves collaboration with the forces that promote indifference, and if we would recuperate from pernicious indifference, we need to pay close attention to differences, and to weigh them with critical diligence.
So — for instance — Downes correctly inveighs against undervaluing ourselves (point 9), but I’d want to insist on the caveat that we aren’t all “valuable” in all ways. As an athlete, I’m just flat-out dispensible, and if I want to insist that I have something to offer as a theoretician, as a preacher, as an interpreter of Scripture, as a Dad, and so on, I need to be willing to allow that as a point guard I mostly just occupy court space that others could put to more productive use. I may be intrinsically valuable as a human being (and even that claim deserves critical refinement), but that doesn’t make my judgments about twelve-tone music or my advice about political maneuvering “valuable.” We need to know the difference between self-respect that’s grounded in demonstrable qualities and self-esteem that’s inflated with delusion. Vilely destructive as is contemporary culture’s tendency to inflict insecurity wherever it can, we remedy that syndrome not by answering pejorative lies with affirmative lies — we remedy the culture of fearful self-doubt by observing actual strengths, acknowledging actual weaknesses, and operating in life on the basis of an honest (corrigible) version of our strengths and weaknesses.*
* I wouldn’t want to suggest that Downes argues in favor of vain self-aggrandizement. He regularly cites specific virtues and vices in the technologies, practices, and arguments that he describes; it would be out of character for him to stand up for groundless puffery. Here, I’m just arguing that generalized good feelings about oneself need a connection to people, capacities, characteristics, and so on. In the world into which Chris Locke gives us so frighteningly unsparing a view, “we are special, from head to toe.” Baloney. My toes are no big deal, and that’s maybe the least of my deficiencies.
Posted by AKMA at 08:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 26, 2006
Once and Future
Our friend from old days at Evening Prayer in Princeton, Curtis Hoberman, stopped by last night for a catch-up visit. We took him out to Cozy Noodle, pumped him for details of his visit to Washington to receive the Jefferson Award for Public Service, and learn what’s been happening in our former, and future, home town. Great dinner, good times, exciting prospects. . . .
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Peculiar Bug
My iPod is getting a little old (in digital terms — if it were a hammer, it would still be in its early years of usefulness), and the battery has lost a lot of its capacity, but I didn’t expect this:
Every now and then, the “shuffle” function will forget that it’s supposed to be shuffling by song, and will continue playing a particular performer’s songs until it runs out. You can fast-forward it through the supposedly-shuffled playlist, but if it falls into this while playing songs by a favorite performer, or an especially prolific act (such as the Magnetic Fields), it can take a great many button-pushes to get the shuffle function out of its rut.
Yes, I have checked, and the “shuffle” function is checked for “by song,” not by artist or album. Moreover, it doesn’t always get tracked for an artist even when I have multiple selections by that artist.
Worse things happen at sea, of course, but it’s an odd little nuisance of a bug.
Chris says:
Have you tried doing the "reset your iPod" thing from within iTunes? My first suspicion would be some sort of odd corruption in the firmware.
Posted by AKMA at 07:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 25, 2006
Kiss Me Quick
The anniversary of Kirsty MacColl’s sad death comes round in a couple of weeks; yesterday, walking down to Pippa’s Latin lesson, her prescient “Soho Square” came on my iPod.
And we’ll dance around like we don’t care
And I’ll be much too old to cry
And you’ll kiss me quick in case I die before my birthday
Eric said:
'tis the season to start listening to "fairytale of new york" a lot ;)
Posted by AKMA at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)
November 24, 2006
Very Good and Write
And our bounden duty.
A couple of months ago, Micah emailed me the link to this page, which I promptly forgot about until a recent spasm of emailbox-cleaning. From my exalted position as Writing Director at Seabury (“no benefits, just more responsibilities”), I have several reactions to the article and its attendant comments. First, I approve — generally — of the list of desiderata for students assignments. I don’t want to think of them as “rights”; that terminology engenders too much murky thinking. They do, however, comprise a very good list of desirable features for writing assignments, and I try to observe many of them.
The comments note that teachers vary in the ways they apply their standards; one awkward element in the frustrating knot involves teachers who lack all but the basic (and in some cases, “even the basic”) skills for assessing written expression. I’ve encountered their writing in my role as editor; I can’t begin to imagine how these impaired writers evaluate students’ papers. When a student encounters varying evaluations from teachers with varying capacities, what sense can the student make of the divergent sets of comments? Why should the student not trust the more favorable, more charitable grades and comments?
And while I’m at it: Stephen Downes linked to a post on Creating Passionate Users, which argues that more sources should use more graphics to communicate more effectively. Amen, and Amen. But as with ill-composed writing, so with ill-composed graphical communication: just putting something out there doesn’t imply that it will contribute to getting a message across. Too often, people feel obligated to throw kitchen-sink graphic communication into presentations with no regard whatever to whether the images contribute to clear communication of particular ideas. Imagine if one did that with words! (Sadly, too many of us need not “imagine” such a circumstance, since we’ve seen and heard arguments that seem to have been composed with random words thrown in for seasoning.)
If what you write, or if the images you use for graphical communication, do not contribute to expressing clearly and precisely the message you’re hoping to convey — then don’t confuse and distract your readers with pointless, vague, superfluities.* Communicating is a difficult enough task without further complicating it with noise.
* I don’t mean you should never allow your reader to relax a bit, or never digress, or never entertain. We should, however, assess such indulgences with a pretty rigorous criterion of whether they contribute to communicating the greater message. (I’m looking at you, preachers who include irrelevant shaggy dog stories in your sermons.) Sometimes readers benefit from a light distraction, an opportunity to relax their concentrated attention. More often, distractions attenuate the focus of one’s rhetoric and diminish the effectiveness of the entire presentation — especially when the presenter hasn’t maintained a taut focus to begin with.
Big Shoulders comments:
AKMA,
I started to write a lengthy thought-piece on this entry but stopped when I realized that this would mess up some morning appointments I have to prepare for. <-- NB, I have never been comfortable with the elaborate and awkward-sounding construction required to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition.
Suffice it to say that I found your entry -- and its link to Inside Higher Education -- most useful to work I am doing right now. I assign writing to colleagues, freelancers and board members, and I do a fair amount of it myself. The finished products come back to me and I must then "edit" them, which in most cases means that I must rewrite them. Punctuation and grammar, while problematic, are standard fixes for any editor, but the level of rewrite required is astounding. The only assignments that roll in (a) on time, (b) written to specified length, and (c) highly readable are those that come from university professors and prep school graduates. It pains me to say this, but it's true.
Our print newsletter and annual report get the most attention because people keep them around. These require perfection, though it is seldom achieved. Website materials will also be around forever, but they are less findable than the newsletter sitting on top of the "to be read" pile. Nonetheless I try to make online writing, at a minimum, good enough. E-mails have their own weird space, and after years of being harshly judgmental of other people's bad spelling in e-mails, I gave up, particularly when I realized that my own messages had their share of boo-boos. It's a time thing. IMs and SMS: fugeddaboutit, as they are all about bare essentials and avoiding arthritis of the thumbs.
Luckily I love my job and I love doing the variety of things I do (which involve equal amounts of photography, design and editing/writing). But I do appreciate any and all efforts to boost the writing skills of people going out into the world. In reading your piece I realized how much of situation is under my control (as the "professor" of my workplace) and how much more I can do to shape the writers whose work will hopefully improve over time.
This is disjointed and not rewritten at all, and it's turned out to take up that extra time after all. But I did want to let you know how much I enjoyed your piece as well as the article to which it linked. <-- Just doesn't feel right, y'know?
Anyway ... thanks!
Oh, and I do miss the old language of The Book of Common Prayer, even though I am a flaming radical. "It is meet and right so to do. It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty to ..."
Posted by AKMA at 12:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 23, 2006
Thanksgiving
Over the weekend I confirmed to relevant authorities that I plan to accept the offer of membership at the Center of Theological Inquiry for the 2007-08 academic year. The financing remains to be worked out, but Margaret, Pippa, Bea and I will spend next year based in Princeton.
Over and above the honor of being chosen for this opportunity, we give thanks for being given another year to live and work in Princeton. Our five years there were exceptionally important to us; Pippa’s best friend still lives there, and we know and admire the choir director at Trinity Church — it’ll be a great choir for her. Margaret and I will be able to study at the Princeton Seminary Libraries, and at Firestone. Amazing.
Mom said:
Hooray! Congratulations! Love, Mom
Z said:
I think we all know you are really going back for the ultimate frisbee.
Thanks for "visiting". Greetings to your family.
- Z! Pirate
D said:
Princeton! That's great, just a short train trip from CCNH-we'll remember
that when we start working on the preaching schedule for '07-'08!
Hope thanksgiving there was happy and enjoyable...
D
Posted by AKMA at 04:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 22, 2006
Filling In The Blanks
I’m ba-a-a-a-ack.
What do theologians do when they go away to an academic conference?
My response to Dale Martin’s Sex and the Single Savior follows in the extended link at the bottom of this post. The session was delightful; it began with Daniel Boyarin looking up and down the dais at Amy Hollywood, Stephen Moore, Dale Martin, Serene Jones, Jon Berquist, and me — and saying, “I love being on a panels like this. It’s like Cheers.” He also got off the zinger of the evening when Serene suggested that Dale wrote with a disingenuous irony comparable to that of the Bush regime: “The only difference between George W. Bush and Dale Martin is that Dale is actually from Texas.” Dale shocked a number of audience members (and some panelists) by asserting his unwavering commitment to doctrinal orthodoxy.
Yesterday was devoted mostly to mop-up shopping (I bought my copy of Robert Jewett’s monumental Romans commentary, to packing and to travel, though I ran into B.J. and Rodney at the departure gate at National Airport and pitched to them an idea for a book series. On the book production front, both Faithful Interpretation and Reading Scripture With the Church sold out at their respective display booths, and Faithful Interpretation received a favorable short notice in the Christian Century.
or
I Did Not Have Sex With That Man
On the other hand, this book is only about sex as a presenting symptom of deeper and more far-reaching problems of biblical interpretation. If someone were to stand up this evening and denounce Martin for speculating about Jesus’s sexuality, or for challenging the practice of marriage, or for submitting that the historical Jesus probably forbade his married disciples to divorce, such a denunciator would have missed the most instructive reading of the book. Sex and the Single Savior is no more about sex than Genesis 1-3 is “about sex” or the Epistle to the Romans is “about sex”; that is to say, readings that identify “sex” as the most important topic of these texts strike me, and the readers I most respect, as unsatisfactorily superficial and forced. Rather, I suggest that Sex and the Single Savior (and Genesis 1-3 and Romans) treats of sex in the context of much broader, richer human efforts to recognize, embody, and make known God’s way.
Yet that broader context itself concerns sex, inasmuch as the word “sex” provides an apposite example of textual opacity — that is, of the reader’s inescapable agency in construing meaning from contextual markers. Martin discusses this phenomenon as “the myth of textual agency,” the mistaken supposition that texts may speak or compel or require. This [mostly consistent] emphasis delighted me inasmuch as I’ve fought the same struggle from a different angle, arguing against “the myth of subsistent meaning,” the literalized metaphor by whose terms “meaning” constitutes a quality immanent in texts, an invisible but nonetheless subsistent characteristic of texts. To the contrary, as Martin emphasizes at several inflection points in his argument, texts don’t do things. People do things with texts, or in conjunction with texts, or on the basis of texts, but the text remains inactive.
In the sense, then, that it’s hard to get “texts,” it likewise is hard to get “sex,” however much the existence of a class of professionals proposes to resolve that problem with oversimplified provision of meaning. There’s no single thing that simply is “sex.” The “sex” about which we speak can’t satisfactorily be demarcated by restriction to particular maneuvers with particular body parts. Our meeting place — I dare not, under the circumstances, say “our congress” even though “congress” doesn’t really mean “sex,” although recent revelations about Congress might incline us to make a stronger connection between them — our meeting place in Washington, D.C., might remind us of President Clinton’s notorious equivocations about what constitutes sex, or it might remind us further of the confrontation between Anita Hill and the Senate Judiciary Committee over how we specify “sexual harassment.” English-speakers use the word “sex” in a vast range of contexts for a vast range of activities. If I were to join 1 Peter in urging you to greet one another with a kiss of love, would I intend something sexual by it? Look around; you can see some people here whose kisses you might welcome, and others whose kisses you might regard as intrusively, unwelcomely sexual at such a time. And the cultured despisers of the early church showed no hesitancy in spotting the sexual overtones to our exhortation to love one another, to kiss our sisters and brothers, bathing one another, anointing one another. Indeed, to the extent that while reading this book we’re tempted at times to rush in with defensive assurances that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, to the extent that sometimes a kiss on the lips is just a greeting, to the extent that sometimes the command to penetrate with a finger is just a tactile aid to belief — to that extent, Martin’s book concerns “sex” on every page, even where it’s not apparently about sex. The interlocking spheres of culture, language, practice, marketplace, church, academy, articulate “sex” differently at different times, depending who’s involved, how old they are, how well we know them, and whether they support the legislative aims with which we sympathize. We need not sing along with Tom Lehrer that “when correctly viewed / everything is lewd” to acknowledge, grudgingly, that we can communicate sexuality by a flicker of the eyes, by a tone of voice, by the offer to light a cigarette. “Sex” is not a single thing.
On the other hand, even though sex is not a single thing, “singles” are not asexual. The zones where sex and singleness overlap, or might overlap, provide another theme for Martin’s argument. That possible overlap does not require supposing that a single savior (whom we do not, after all, know singly, but multiply — by faith, not by sight) was, in the terms of contemporary jurisprudence, “sexually active,” as though single people were only latently sexual. Perhaps all the more, the single savior disrupts the stability of systems we devise to constrain sexual expression. A single person might be anything! The single person may be gay, or straight, or bi, or uncertain, or unlucky, or deliberately celibate (for any variety of more or less intelligible reasons) or simply repulsive. Her sexuality, or his, is unmarked by public signs of approbation or disapprobation, so that authority figures rush in to provide the categories that shore up the disturbed stability, and to try to impress them upon underdetermined singles.
Thus the non-single sexuality of singles activates the full force of besetting cultural anxieties about identity, holiness, and rectitude: ours, and Jesus’s. A vast proportion of the participants in our culture respond to questions about sexuality with overdetermined dis-ease, with a distinctive combination of voyeurism and aversion (a combination that supplies the material for 87% of the products our broadcast, film, journalistic, and audio media). The Jesus whom so many love so intensely (not in that way), and whom they imagine so vividly (again, not that way), must for our sakes articulate, and instantiate, the characteristics that will clarify for us some reliable touchstones, foundation, on which we can safely build the edifices of our selves. As Martin points out, in the absence of “textual agency” we can’t determine the precise characteristics that make for safe sex, safe singleness, safe coupling, and their abject opposites, without the intervention of interpretive imagination.
If such is the case of a reader with their text, of a single with their sex, panicked disciples might recoil out of the fear that anything goes, that nothing is true, that we may as well indulge in Oedipodean intercourse and Thyestean feasts. Martin has no use for such futile thinking, the senseless fears that arise in darkened minds; in an exquisite coup de grace, Martin rebuffs his suspicious interlocutors by invoking his spiritual continuity with Augustine of Hippo. Martin’s Augustinian hermeneutic makes room for difference by situating all our interpretive discourses relative to the wideness of God’s mercy: elastic, bounded, but not rigid, and always oriented toward a divine harmony which we have not yet attained.
All that being granted, it’s not an official academic response unless I give you at least a wee bit of a hard time (“minus 50 DKP,” as my gamer friends would say), and the terrain onto which I want to draw you out concerns your hesitancy about “community.” I fully grant you the caution you bring to bear against glib, cozy, insular uses of the concept of “community.” Yes, “community” provides no gilt-edged guaranteed protection against abusive, pernicious interpretations. Still, I’m curious to hear more from you about the production of meaning apart from textual agency — as I think we share some [Wittgensteinian] premises about the positive role communities play in constituting, supporting, nurturing the imagination with which we conceive meaning. I ask this not as a rebuke, but with the expectation that your response will be as satisfying, indeed as brilliant, as your arguments throughout Sex and the Single Savior.
Greetings from Holy Innocents, and happy Thanksgiving!
Just checking in with you to let you know that the blog for Holy Innocents has been re-done to reflect recent changes, and is now accepting comments and trackbacks. We were getting a huge amount of truly nasty porn spam, and so comments had to be completely turned off for the better part of 2 years.
I know that you've been struggling with spam in your comments: the solution was to walk away from the older version of MT we were running, and give Wordpress a whirl, which my husband had been urging me to try. It was wonderful to see it blow away thousands of comments from the old installation, and make the new comments completely safe and ready to use. The URL for the blog is now
http://www.holy-innocents.org/blog/
In other news: we're closing the Holy Innocents building and merging with another nearby Episcopal parish, St Nicholas. I'm keeping the blog running as a community building tool, and eventually a completely new website will be built, and the blog will be a part of that. It's a difficult time, but we're trying to put our best face forward. Our vicar is now Fr. Stephen Martz, sharing costs with St Nicholas, as Fr. Ted reluctantly had to accept a position with a bit more job security than we could offer. Both missions will be in the same building together starting in January; our final service in our building will be a Festival Eucharist to celebrate feast of the Holy Innocents, transferred to December 31. Big party afterwards.
I hope that you'll drop by the blog sometime and see what's going on, and please feel welcome to drop by in person anytime.
--
ginny
Posted by AKMA at 10:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 21, 2006
A Higher Plane
Headed to the airport, on our way home. Will check in later.
Posted by AKMA at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2006
All But The Shopping
The annual meeting is pretty much complete, except for the Tuesday-morning "it's on sale, it's such a bargain, I really ought to read it" impulse purchases at the book display. My response to Dale's paper went well, but it's on my computer, not Margaret's (which I'm using to compose this, since our hotel makes you pay for wireless per CPU); I'll blog it as soon as I can get a signal.
Margaret's response yesterday went very well (the scholar who invited her was delighted), and we've been to numerous wonderful parties. Sadly, my metabolism is not what it once was (I almost titled this post, "Too old to SBL, to young to die") -- my feet are swollen and weary, my digestive system rebelled against me this afternoon, and staying awake at parties gets harder every year. Still, the joy of seeing Margaret incresingly at home in her own professional milieu at the meeting strengthened my weak hands and made firm ny feeble knees.
Posted by AKMA at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2006
Somewhere Else
Greetings from the heterotopia. Last night I greeted Adam and Sarah in the hotel; I saw Chris Spinks and Tyler WIlliams; the session I chaired this morning on Walter Moberly's book Prophecy and Discernment went well, and Jason showed up for it; Margaret and I had a pleasant visit toward midday, where we ran into Derek and his wife; this afternoon I was among the author-guests who skulked around the Baker-Brazos book display to promote their fall line to biblical-theological fashions ("Now, coming down the ramp, is AKMA, showing a spin on the Birmingham School's analysis of signifying practices -- trendy and oh-so-comfortable on the Day of Judgment. Next, see. . . ."). Tonight, dinner with alums of the Wabash Center Greek Teachers colloquium, then the receptions for Princeton Seminary and for Duke.
Feet sore, legs weary, thumb sensitive -- but a good conference, no matter what.
Posted by AKMA at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2006
Postcard from Washington
Having a lovely time. Weather fine. Books selling well (Reading Scripture better than Faithful Interpretation, evidently — bet it’s the value of having multiple authors = multiple reading constituencies). Margaret and I reconnecting with one another and our extended academic families. Limited web access. Diana Butler Bass sends her regards to Seabury bloggers.
Having a preference experience.
More when I can.
Posted by AKMA at 12:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 16, 2006
Hooks
Very little time today, as I have to finish up my SBL response to Dale Martin’s new book Sex and the Single Savior; it’s a collection of essays, hence a shade miscellaneous, making it hard to compose a through-coherent response. I think I’ve found an approach that sets me up to say most of what I want to say. My biggest challenge right now involves choosing between two titles for my response: “This Sex Which Is Not Single” or “I Did Not Have Sex With That Man”?
Because I’m squeezing too many activities into today — packing, haircut, drafting response, teaching, time with Pippa before the weekend, looking into sources for grant support for my zingy research gig — I shan’t blog much more, though I’ll try to paste in my response if I finalize it tonight.
Posted by AKMA at 10:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 15, 2006
Two Good
I spent this afternoon with Juliet Dodds’s doctoral seminar on hermeneutics at Garrett, across the vast expanse of Sheridan Road. They had read two of my recent essays on hermeneutics (“Poaching on Zion” and “:This Is Not a Bible”) along with essays by a couple of less-distinguished French guys you never heard of. I showed them the presentation on Visual Hermeneutics, since it had gone over so well at McCormick earlier this fall, and then we launched into a vigorous discussion of meaning, textuality, communication, the Bible, history, and other topics. It was a blast — they were good readers of the essays, not uncritical but neither were they simply gainsaying (or affirming) my arguments. They were the sort of readers who convey to you that they paid attention and have worked with your premises carefully enough to advance the discussion (which is most of what I really want from writing anyway). The thought that a generation of students at McCormick and Garrett — and maybe other places as well! — may regard my essays as a constituent element in their hermeneutical outlook excites me no end.
As I was walking home from Garrett, I opened a letter that I knew to contain a polite rejection notice from a research institute to which I’d applied for my next year’s sabbatical residency. As a rejection letter, it was pretty confusing; it discusses the physical facilities at the research center, among other things. It took me some puzzling and staring to figure out that the reason it was so confusing was that it wasn’t a rejection letter at all, but an acceptance — so if I find funding, I can look forward to spending next year in a very propitious, rather prestigious theological study center!
Juliet says:
Congrats on the acceptance. Thanks again for coming over to lecture. The students had a good time, Henry had a good time, I had a good time, and a good time was had by all.
Juliet
Tripp adds:
AKMA, that is very Good News. May God help you find the dough to enjoy your time away. Fabulous.
David says:
Mazel tov! It couldn't have happened to a more propitious and rather
prestigious theologian!
-- David W.
Posted by AKMA at 06:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 14, 2006
The Office
I know many people who are worried that Rowan WIlliams has gone off his theological chump. Since he had written firmly and eloquently on behalf of the full participation of gay and lesbian persons in the leadership of the Body of Christ before his elevation to the archepiscopate of Canterbury, but now advances a different perspective on licit and illicit relationships, some of my friends take him as a callow vacillator who abandoned principle in order to advance to the most prestigious job in Anglican Christianity (short of being by God’s grace Monarch of England). I’m reluctant to think him so base a careerist; contrariwise, I have several times wondered whether he might not construe his new role much as did Thomas a Becket — as an office to which, by accepting, he agrees to subordinate his own interests and convictions. (“Oh God, I hope not!” sighed one interlocutor.)
I wish the Most Reverend Dr. Williams, with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, were deploying his considerable theological wisdom and rhetorical skills to direct the Anglican Communion in a direction different from its present course. But if he’s getting up morning by morning to ask himself how the Archbishop of Canterbury must rightly serve God and the Anglican Communion — rather than what he, Rowan Williams, could do to effect ends that he knew were right — I think I’m pretty sympathetic with him. I believe in “the office” as an expression of vocation distinct from the full expression of personal convictions. “The office” exemplifies a social identity in which we participate, the exercise of which we affect (obviously), but which we do not possess, to manipulate as an instrument for our purposes.
(Parenthetically, I don’t suppose that everyone who disagrees with me or Rowan Williams therefore must think of offices solely as nexuses of power that avail to satisfy self-interested policy goals. There’s shades of difference, by all means.)
Now, as a follow-up reflections: I doubt that demystifying and disenchanting “the office” effect the same gesture. On my hunch, “the office” provides something of a bulwark against the bare-knuckled brawl of power and will; it can surely be used in manipulative ways, but that’s the gesture of someone who already disbelieves in the distinct responsibilities of “the office.” And I wonder whether, if we leave behind an ideology of office, we don’t swing the door open to the puerile sorts of egalitarianism (because each of us presumably has some positive qualities, because we stand equal before the throne of God, therefore everyone’s opinion and standing should be treated equally in all circumstances”). But maybe this just catches me on a grouchy day.
Court says:
Wait, wait! I'm confused. If the office is independent in identity of the office holder then what difference does it make who is elected to the office? If Rowan Williams, a proponent of women clerics and gay and lesbian rights, is elected to the office of ABC, an office traditionally not supportive of women and gay and lesbians, and he supplants his views and beliefs to espouse the office's views and beliefs then why don't we just elect a monkey to that office? It would be much cheaper, I think. I thought the idea of us being independently thinking and discerning individuals, capable of bringing something new to an office, was one idea behind humanity. That we could use our unique relationship with the divine to discern God's call for us, and possibly, for the church. Isn't that why we spend so much time trying to discern God's plan, praying for the Holy Spirit's guidance in our proceedings, so that God's will can be done here on earth, perhaps even through the office of the ABC?
Perhaps, and most probably, I misunderstood your post, but it seems like the office should not have its own independent identity capable of being impressed upon all who hold said office. Rowan Williams may have supplanted his beliefs for the sake of unity or peace (such as they are), but I hope that it is not that the office rules the man.
Sincerely,
Your confused seminarian friend,
Court.
Christopher said:
Because your relationship is considered licit, Williams does not affect you in the same way it affects gay people, so it is frankly easy for you to be kind in the direction he has taken, but that direction may in fact do quite a lot of harm, and I trust the Church too is under God's judgment, and finding unity by treating some fellows poorly will in fact have an opposite effect pouring only more wrath upon the earth, if you will. As is often the case, while I appreciate your thoughtfulness, your words tend to come across whenever dealing with institutional matters and gays as those of a privileged man in which moderation works pretty comfortably; they look just like we all do, not as objective or more reasoned, but as confirming one's own temperament and instincts through reasonable discourse, the reason arising after the emotional/temperamental choice has been clear. Because of the harmful affects, quite bodily in fact, that my partner and I have faced from liberal and moderate heterosexual supporters in the Church, I'm suspicious of this type of "reasonableness" and reminded of Dr. King's chastizing of the same. As is so often the case, we gay folks have to often pastor ourselves given the present discourse and rhetoric of the Communion not simply from Williams, but from moderates and centrists whose care for the institution is such that they are willing to have us talked about as inferior, second-class, singled out for challenge, and so forth as the very necessary part of the Good News.
Williams is still first and foremost called to be a pastor. I would not go to this man ever for pastoral care given his recent comments and his willingness to bring all to the table except the people he talks about. The so-called listening process at this point really comes across as a way to pretend that the Communion somehow is dealing with us as fellows in Christ--it is not, and we need to quit the lie. I've seen too many times the harm comments like Williams' do to folks in the gay communities to simply say well he's playing out an office now. He has a responsibility to bring his distinctiveness and learning to that office, challenge others for the sake of the Gospel, and to pastor impartially irrespective of persons. Williams has not done so, and has rather at every turn blamed gays for the present problems of the Communion, even singling out Robinsons by name as "the gay bishop" in one of his too many addresses about us. He is not impartial, nor neutral, but has actively decided and his decision is often to the detriment of gay people. As a gay man, he has rather presented a heterosexual malspel, remained unwilling to name those who persecute us in the name of Anglicanism while naming quite critically directly those who would make way for us, TEC and ACinC, and so from here he ha flogged God's queer sheep and I am reminded of Ezekiel 34 in Williams ongoing subtle blaming the victim rhetoric and not so subtle challenges to gay people that he has not laid the same emphasis on straight people. My remarks can be found here:
http://regula.blogspot.com/2006/09/conversion-and-conversation.html
http://regula.blogspot.com/2006/09/rather-siblings-heterosexual-mans.html
Offices can allow one to not have to face how one does harm to others by pointing toward just following orders or the needs of institutions or how the office must be lived out regardless of one's personal thoughts on the matter. Williams has done harm, and I would challenge him that he too has need in conversion of his attitudes, behaviors, emotions, habits, and outlooks on and at gay Christians. A worry about a puerile egalitarianism is no excuse for not examining how our offices and those who fill htem carry with them less than pastoral possibilities, and in the present climate Williams has no business pastoring gay Christians as far as I can tell, and I doubt I'm alone in that assessment. And I wonder if his apologists or those who would reinforce the office above all else have any business doing so either.
Christopher, your points are well taken; I acknowledge my privilege (and Williams’s), and I do not by any means claim to be objective, and to the extent that I’m comfortable at others’ cost, that’s a grave problem. That being said, I’m not sure that your strong criticisms preclude attention to “office.” As you say, “A worry about a puerile egalitarianism is no excuse for not examining how our offices and those who fill htem carry with them less than pastoral possibilities” — and you justly call attention to a way that Williams’ response to his situation constitutes a failure to exercise his office. Thanks for reminding me.
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November 13, 2006
XAPA
In the midst of a succession of administrative meetings, Seabury’s Greek reading group devoted a mirth-filled session to reading Mark 13:14ff together. There are probably quarters where 90 minutes of parsing, translating, analyzing, and working through a two-thousand year old Greek text doesn’t sound like the high point in a busy day — but you wouldn't have known it in office 24 (or, as Pippa puts it, “0024 — License to Teach”). Too bad Brooke couldn’t make it today. . . .
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November 12, 2006
EccLegislatical
Friday at diocesan convention, I voted for the relatively few candidates who had bothered to run for diocesan office, and read the motions scheduled for debate on Saturday. As I looked around the conference area, I wondered whether all this was the best, most effective, holiest use to which we could put the countless person-hours that the convention required. I thought about how little I knew of the candidates for diocesan office; even if I were more of a social butterfly on the diocesan scene, I might well not have known half the candidates (several people were nominated from the floor). I can’t imagine that we’re ordering our ecclesiastical life in the wisest possible way, and that saddens me.
The elections proceed as though the identity, the faith and theological insight of the candidates make no difference. The business of the convention, which this year was mostly administrative minutiae, might equally probably have included a diocesan response to the Windsor Report or the general condition of the Episcopal Church. If we had such a motion, it would have been decided by the same indifferently-elected* delegates as disposes of the method of appointing campus ministries delegates to Diocesan Convention.
My experience in teaching Early Church History to first-year Episcopal seminarians suggests that convention delegates may not come to their responsibilities richly armed with an appreciation of the elements of Christian history or theology. We turn to their legislative wisdom on the sound premise that all are equally members of the Body of Christ; I wonder, though, whether that might not eclipse the equally true, and arguably more pertinent, point that
to each has been given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. There are varieties of gifts and services, but it is the same God who inspires them in all. Therefore, each working for a good purpose may have a different gift; but these are all the works of the same Spirit, who distributes different gifts to different people. . . .If I saw more reason to be confident that parish and diocesan elections involved careful discernment of gifts, I would probably feel more sanguine about ecclesiastical politics. Under present circumstances, I find it difficult not to leave diocesan convention with more Dilbertian sense of resignation.
“Very well,” someone says, “What’s your better idea, big-mouth?” I don’t pretend that my gifts include planning for legislative processes, but I would think it mere common sense that the exercise of institutional authority in the church be reserved for people who have demonstrated at least a minimal fluency in the subjects about which they’re about to make decisions. “Participation in church governance” apart from theological, historical, or biblical literacy becomes a self-perpetuating qualification that sets a disquietingly low bar for wisdom** in ecclesiastical leadership.
* “Indifferently-elected” in the sense that the elections did not involve searching examination of the merits of the various nominees; they may have been nominated by direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit, for all I know, or by over-whelming majorities of the voters (the latter must be the case in the several elections where nominees ran unopposed). The new office-holders may be absolutely the best people for their jobs, but that ideal match arose out of some factor other than legislative deliberation and discernment.
**Note that I don’t rule out the possibility that someone without academic theological formation may be a commendable church leader with sound theological judgment. I doubt, however, that it makes sense to presume that anyone whom a parish elects as a convention delegate must thereby exemplify such laudable gifts. Indeed, I could (if I were in a nasty frame of mind) amass considerable empirical data that such saints constitute exceptions to the overwhelmingly dominant rule. To hark back to my customary comparison, I’d hesitate to consult a surgeon who was elected without careful attention to her medical training.
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November 11, 2006
Preaching Under Pressure
I was short on time this week; it felt terrible, wrasselling with sermon ideas among the various other obligations of the week, sensing that whatever idea I had needed more breathing room. In the end, I squoze out a homily, but it would have benefited from more time spent burnishing the details. I handwrote the last few sentences in the minutes before teh sermon, and in the version I post in today’s extended section I’ve spruced them up a little. I haven’t dug in and reworked the whole thing as much as it needs, I’d say, but I’m taking it easy this weekend.
November 10, 2006
Leo of Rome
2 Timothy 1:6-14;Psalm 77:11-15; Matthew 5:13-19
Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me,
in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost — Amen.
It’s sad. I’ve been asked to review a book, another book, that loudly proclaims the church’s need of a New Reformation — presumably with the author as the new Martin Luther. That should tip any reader off; I can’t count the number of times I’ve read about one or another New Reformation that the church had to undertake. They’re mostly forgotten, now, except in their authors’ press releases, lost in the remainder bins that belie such portentous titles as Why Christianity Must Change or Die.
I’m saddened that people so strongly committed to the gospel should promote so shallow a vision of how that gospel comes to expression. Of course our faith needs to change; even those of you who’ve only spent a few weeks here in Gospel Mission, in Liturgy 1 and Early Church History, should have noticed by now that Christianity is always changing. Sometimes we do better, sometimes not as well, sometimes we try to not change a thing, in an effort to “guard the good treasure entrusted to you” — but even our impulse to protect ourselves from change alters our relation to the culture never stops changing around us. In other words, we aren’t “beset by change,” as the hymn would have it, but neither are we necessarily blessed with change. Change is non-optional. We can’t afford to waste time asking whether Christianity should change; our mission challenges us to consider how we should change, when to change, what we may change.
How, then? Evidently not by throwing away all that’s gone before. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law.” We inherit the church’s Scriptures, the testimony of the saints, the wisdom of the theologians as a treasure, but we aren’t called to bury that treasure away, as the slave in the parable of the talents does. And we certainly don’t squander that treasure on a Las Vegas weekend (knowing that “the treasure you take to Vegas, stays in Vegas”).
Rather, as the epistle advises, we “hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” — we observe the pattern of sound teaching in faith and love — and remember as we venture our well-intentioned innovations, and as we endure other people’s innovations, that in this morning’s gospel lesson Jesus indicates that although not a letter or a stroke of a letter will pass from the Law, yet he does not consign those who relax one of the least of these commandments to the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth — but still allots them a place in the kingdom of heaven.
Amen
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November 10, 2006
Hat Tip
Well, Hat Tip #1 is “Don’t wear your hat around Pippa; she’s on a hat-pilfering kick, and may run off with it.”
But the hat tip I had in mind when I chose the entry’s title involved acknowledging Tom’s beautiful riposte to my musings about Bea and hermeneutics (I almost wrote “ruminations,” but given the topic of the entry and the etymology of the word, that seemed distasteful). I have to go to class this morning, and work on a sermon for midday — I wish I could read Tom’s essay aloud to the congregation instead.
Off to chapel, and class, and chapel, and then diocesan convention (wheee!). . . .
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November 09, 2006
Another Of Those Days
My morning started with an interview for the CDR Radio network, set up by the publicist at Fortress Press; I went ahead and talked through some of the implications of my work with interviewer Chad Bresson before I explored their website and learned that the radio channel’s sense of doctrine and mine diverge about as sharply as one could imagine. I’m almost glad I didn’t know at first. I’ll be intrigued to know how this develops; surely my work should be upsetting at least to some of their listeners, though I tried to hew to the most irenic possible presentation of my argument.
I then dashed to the meeting of Seabury’s self-study accreditation subcommittee, which went pretty much as I had anticipated: too much to do, too little time. Somewhat to my surprise, though, everyone present agreed that it would be worth trying to use a wiki for developing our shared documents between meetings. That seems eminently practical and sensible to me, so I hadn’t dared hope it would fly. Maybe it still won’t work out, but at least we got as far as implementing it.
Oh, and you won’t very often catch me siding with Starbuck’s about anything, much less Starbuck’s plus The Economist, and even less often agreeing with Starbuck’s and The Economist over against Oxfam. The other day, though, I came to this article (through Jordon’s contextless links) and I have to say, I think Oxfam is barking up the wrong tree. I’m not signing up to be a Starbuckisto, but of the alternatives sketched here I think the “appellation controlée” approach vastly more sensible than the “trademark a bean” approach.
Trevor says:
it's much easier to set up a writeboard for this kind of
collaboration than a full fledged wiki
www.writeboard.com
some of us do this a bluffton sometimes.
Trevor
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November 08, 2006
Accreditation Blues
I’m the chair of the subcommittee on Theological Curriculum and Degree Programs for Seabury’s decennial re-accrediation process. Right now, that means I’m trying to read the regulations, criteria, and standards without succumbing to a massive headache. I can’t express adequately how ill-suited I am to this task.
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November 07, 2006
Excremental Semiotics
No, I’m not referring to the kind of theory that exasperates plain, sensible readers.
Most days, I walk Beatrice first thing, before I head off for morning chapel. We follow a very predictable path, which (I find) helps prompt her to accomplish the purpose for the promenade. When the time arrives for her to produce the material component of our morning exercise, she slows down and begins sniffing a particular patch of earth with even greater intensity than is usual for her. She circles several times, and frequently adjusts her position several times; I gather that the precise location of her deposit makes a big difference to her (it doesn’t seem to matter that I will, in a matter of seconds, scoop that ephemeral monument up in a plastic bag). Within the highly limited sense in which one can discuss any matter of cognition with regard to a dog who has fluff for brains, the location of her morning donation seems meaningful.
Now, if that premise be in any sense true, this seems to present a case in which the meaning truly is in the text. Her text constitutes as it were a natural sign of Bea’s existence and digestive activity (“Natural signs are those which, apart from any intention or desire of using them as signs, do yet lead to the knowledge of something else, as, for example, smoke when it indicates fire”; On Christian Doctrine II.i.2).
The reason I first started thinking about this topic involves the odd disjunction between the amount of effort that Bea devotes to the endeavor of finding exactly the right spot for her product, and the margin of error between her final sniffs and the ultimate location of her text. She made me think of the ardent but incompetent poet who agonizes over each syllable, but whose weak grasp of the language dooms the poem itself to failure.
On the other hand, the “meaning” in this interaction isn’t an ingredient of the text. Other dogs may infer Bea’s identity and salient characteristics on the basis of the textual deposit, but those remain inferences — not the extraction of a meaning-constituent within the text she leaves. An Animal Enforcement officer might construe her text as a “dog nuisance” punishable to the full extent of the law, but not based on any ingredient therein. To the extent that Bea has done something expressive, something meaningful, the expression and meaning depend on a system of instinctual (?) expectations and conventional interactions. Even considering this quite material example, I don’t see how we can ascribe intrinsic “meaning” to the text.
Micah said,
This post should really be a podcast. Seriously. "The material component of our morning exercise," should be heard in your own dulcet tones.
----------
What Jerome is ignorant of, no man has ever known. -- St. Augustine
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November 06, 2006
Great!
For those who pay attention to such things, I’m preaching Friday at our midday mass commemorating Leo the Great. (On the topic of Leo being “the Great,” Dylan has an entry wishing that she had a jazzy nickname such as “The Edge,” to which I appended a comment about the good ol’ days when theologians got topical nicknames; I left out my favorite example, Peter Comestor, whose nickname means “the Eater” [of books, or of knowledge].)
The readings are 2 Timothy 1:6-14 (“Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me”), Psalm 77:11-15 (“I will remember the works of the LORD, and call to mind your wonders of old time.”), and Matthew 5:13-19 (“let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven”). I don’t know where I’m going with all this; it’s tough for me to resist Matthew’s “whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew’s Jesus insists that “not a jot or a tittle will pass away from the Law” — but he concedes that those who “break one of the least of these commandments, and teach others to do the same” will still be gathered into the Kingdom of Heaven.
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November 05, 2006
The Generous Web
David Weinberger frequently tells his audiences about the generosity built into the structure of the Web, whereby the Web is constituted by links that point away from my page and toward others’. That generosity sometimes (often?) also comes to expression in the content of the pages that point hither and yon, as in the recent discussions among Tom and the Tutor and Frank and David and their commenters about Faithful Interpretation.
David goes above and beyond, though, by having produced a podcast through the Berkman Center. Our interview wound on about twice as long as we had planned; in retrospect there are some things I wish I had added, or clarified, and at least one rebuttal I wish I’d pressed — but those are future entries, whereas right now I need to thank David for the time he put into his response, and to the podcast, right at a time when his own book is taking its final shape.
Claude says:
I'm not a religious person, but when I translated books by Harold Bloom and George Steiner, I often got stuck when they quoted the Bible in English and Italian translations said widely different things because I don't know Hebrew. Giacoma Limentani, a Jewish Bible scholar, helped me, and beyond what I should write in Italian, opened for me the fascinating world of an interpretation tradition where even the tiniest detail matters, can be a means to getting nearer to an understanding of the whole. So the first time I saw Wikipedia, I thought that the great rabbis of Pirke Abbot would have loved a wiki - well, Diderot too, of course. But this is why I would like so much to listen to your interview.
[Claude noted that the interview had been bumped offline — David Weinberger has generously restored it now. Thanks, Claude! Thanks, David!]
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Dynamite
Mary Hess pointed me to Scott McLeod’s reflections on computer gaming and education (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). The series opens up a vast terrain for reflection and imagination (critical as well as ebulliently enthusiastic), but I affirm without qualification that if the right educators and the right game designers put their heads together, you could generate some explosive change in pedagogy at every level of education.
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November 04, 2006
The Life Ate My Blog
It’s a good thing I didn’t volunteer for NaBloPoMo, because I’d have fallen off that wagon on Day Three (thanks for the link, ahem, Jeneane — those gadgety Nab thingies look interesting, but we don’t have enough change in the couch cushions).
It’s because Margaret is home for the weekend, and not just any weekend but her birthday weekend (would you believe she’s already 36?), and I’ve been preoccupied by the most wonderful, amazing, tremendous, sweet spouse I could have dreamed of. Given the choice of thinking complicated thoughts about semiotics for my weblog and gazing into her eyes. . . well, I’ll blog later.
Jane says,
Happy birthday, Margaret!
(^_^)
Love,
Jane
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November 02, 2006
Handicapping
How strong would a Gore-Obama ticket be for the Democrats in 2008? Obama isn’t seasoned enough to win right away, I think, but he’ll strengthen any ticket on which he appears. Gore won in 2000 before the Bush legacy was as manifestly catastrophic as it is now. He’s used the interim to shore up his image; unlike Kerry, he doesn’t have “loser” plastered all over him, and he shows a genuine sense of chastened humor about the whole debacle. If he ran on the platform of “This time, let me help you out of this mess,” with the charismatic Obama as his running-mate (Obama for President then in 2012 or 2016), wouldn’t that look like a shoo-in for the Democrats? I don’t quite understand why they’re bothering with flirtations from Evan Bayh, Hilary Clinton, or back-from-the-dead John Kerry (thanks for the link, Kevin! I voted for the boys).
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