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March 31, 2007
Link Backlog
Phds.org’s rating system for doctoral programs isn’t quite the Philosophical Gourmet, but it’s more information than potential applicant might have had before. If soeone were to bootstrap a Theological Gourmet, though, I’d be behind it all the way.
Heather pointed to this essay which touches on “deafness as culture” issues that pertain to both Beautiful Theology and Seabury’s Gospel Mission course.
As so very often, Dorothea has a keen eye and clear talk about gender politics. This exemplifies what the leadership tries energetically to do in the We Know guild, in Warcraft. Many people, including some officers, resist Dorothea’s approach; as she says, the playing field tilts strongly toward discourse that treats women as the objects of particular, sexual, [I’m scrabbling for a word here, “diminutory” — small-making — not quite the same as “derogatory”] rhetoric. A number of us intervene in guild chat regularly to quash anti-gay and misogynistic talk, but the effect tends more to be “keeping the problem from overflowing,” not yet to the point of “engendering a healthy communicative ecology.” And that’s not just “a healthy communicative ecology for women and lesbigay guildies” — it’s unhealthy for straight men to operate in a discursive world that derogates everyone else. Thank you, Dorothea.
Tax Day. Will I be able to complete our taxes in one convulsive day of computer activity?
Mark Goodacre (whose work on Q scholarship I hyped in New Testament Intro last week) speaks up on behalf of Wikipedia in his blog today; I think he’s quite right. Wikipedia isn’t perfect; nothing is; it’s useful; my bigger problem with students, research, and the Net involves students who won’t look at any sources that aren’t online (looking around in a library is too inconvenient).
Federal and NC taxes complete and filed for AKMA and Margaret; Illinois taxes must be mailed in, but they're complete also.
Josiah’s taxes completed and filed.
Posted by AKMA at 08:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 30, 2007
Shortest Distance
In an online interaction today, somebody thanked me for picking up a cue she offered; I had responded to her straight line with exactly the [witty, clever] a propos punch line she had hoped for.
That brought to my consciousness that over the years, I had imbibed the idea that passing up a straight line was about as deplorable a gaffe as one could imagine. The social act of extending a straight line to someone involves offering them the opportunity to deliver the funny part of repartee, without any obvious credit going to the straight man. We do it, though, for the love of a punch line, for the satisfaction of comedy well crafted, of participating in funnier conversation than would be possible if each of us were out only for his or her own glory. It’s a funny kind of solidarity, but I cherish it.
Posted by AKMA at 06:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 29, 2007
What I Didn't Say
A number of people offered appreciative notice of my observations on the death threats against Kathy Sierra, what they were and weren’t; that’s a relief, since I have no interest in blaming victims, and the whole dreadful situation has made most of the people it has touched into victims of one sort or another (and I don’t want to get into establishing a scale of suffering, either; the fallout affected different people to different degrees in different ways, and few of us, if any, know enough about more than one or two of the people involved to say anything responsible about who suffered more than whom).
Among people who noticed what I wrote, some have scolded me for not issuing a public denunciation of — well, different people want me to denounce different specifics, or generalities, but some folks wanted me on the record against X, Y, or Z.
That irks me for a variety of reasons. First, I am not sure how someone could read what I wrote without recognizing that I explicitly, firmly, denounced death threats, ominous sexual aggression against women, and I directed pretty stern words calling into question the actions (direct and indirect) of some of my friends. Second, it presumes that whatever I have to say relative to my friends and their actions has to be said for the entire cosmos to read — and that contradicts both my sense of pastoral ministry and my common sense of what friendship means.
To give you an idea of how clearly the pertinent people understand my perspective on things like “outrageous” japery, I not only wasn’t invited to participate in the sites in question, I didn’t even know they existed till well after they were established and I happened to follow some links.
Third, and this gets back to a point I made back in the earlier post, some of the criticism implies a much fuller knowledge of “what actually happened” and “what AKMA’s involved in” than I see any warrant for. It’s OK if people don’t trust me not to snicker behind my hand; it would disappoint me, but presumably I haven’t earned their trust, and whimpering won’t enhance my standing with such a person. That’s different, though, from saying that “AKMA should do this thing I stipulate about that.” Feel free to criticize me (for reasons you enumerate), but please don’t tell me what I have to do. It’s at least possible you don’t know everything about what I’m up to, or why.
I venture the next point hesitantly, because I don’t want to take anything away from the points Dave Winer gets right in supporting people with whom he has long-standing feuds. But in his posting today, Dave said, “I've asked other people who do, like David Weinberger and AKMA how they can support that -- I asked when I was a target of their attacks. All I got was silence.” I need to note, perhaps defensively, that in my case that’s flat out untrue. Dave asked me, at BloggerCon I, how I could remain friends with people who attack other friends of mine. Now Dave may not have been satisfied with what I said, but we conducted the conversation in front of a roomful of people, including Dan Bricklin, David Weinberger, Ross Rader, Joey DeVilla, Boris (don’t remember Boris’s last name), I think Halley (I’m not invited to see her blog any more, but I assume it’s still there) Suitt was there for that session, Enoch Choi, a bunch of other people who might have been there but my memory may be blurring them with others (I’ll happily add or subtract names as others correct me), and the prodigious Heath Row who transcribed it (Thank you, David, for saving the link for me). And besides, what person who knows me can imagine that when someone asks me a complicated question, I’d be silent?
So, on friendship: I construe friendship as involving me in other people’s lives on terms that neither of us gets to determine on our own. Friendship involves yielding some degree of one’s self-determination, in the name of participating in a shared life that exceeds the sum of its individual parts. Sometimes friendships lessen us, sometimes friendships ennoble us; often they alternate between those; sometimes we’re graced with friendships that overwhelmingly bless us with stronger, lovelier, more generous relationships. When my friendships involve me in conflicts among different friends, friends who fall out with one another, I try to deal with those conflicts on the basis of what has been strong and true in each of the divergent relationships; I refuse to be jobbed into picking one side over against another. As a result, some interlocutors have grounds to regard me as morally compromised, and to make such accusations public. I don’t like that, it’s not what I work toward in friendship, but it’s out of my control. I don’t get to determine what others will do any more than they get to determine what I’ll do. But it’s not my way to write people off, nor to require them to engage the world on my terms, nor to stifle my understanding of what’s good, and admirable, and morally binding, just to please my friends. If they don’t like who I am and what I stand for, then they probably don’t want to be friends of mine. And if they can take having a friend with my characteristics, OK.
(By the way — I don’t by any means always live up to the identity I sketch above, but it’s the point of reference toward which I’m aiming.)
Posted by AKMA at 12:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A Different Honor
The other day after work, I ran to Jewel to pick up some supplies, and one of the grocery-cart guys hailed me, “Hello, Rabbi!” (He was probably misled by my black wool hat.) This was a new one for me, and we were passing each other so we didn’t really have time for a discussion of the differences between a Hasid and an Anglo-Catholic. I said, “Hi, thanks!” If I’ve given offense by not disclaiming strongly enough, I herewith apologize.
Last year, Sarah’s mom reported to me that Sarah had asked her, “Is Father Adam Amish?” since, after all, she usually sees me dressed in black and white.
So I guess I’m a one-man interfaith, ecumenical movement — and the joke’s on me, because I’m one of the least likely theologians for that identity.
Tripp said:
You see, AKMA, God is calling you into ecumenical work in the broadest sense. The Spirit has spoken! Wait no longer, my brother!
Rachel said:
Dear AKMA,
Were I able to comment on posts at your blog, I would have left the following note on your recent post about being mistaken for a Hasid:
we didn’t really have time for a discussion of the differences between a Hasid and an Anglo-Catholic
Probably true. But should you wish to discuss those differences -- and, naturally, also similarities -- here on your blog, count me in!
(er -- I suppose that offer would have more oomph if I were actually able to comment. :-)
Blessings,
Rachel
Posted by AKMA at 11:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 28, 2007
Midday Homily
What with classes and papers and painstaking endeavors to say something true in the fog of rhetorical war, I had a difficult time squeezing out a sermon for today’s service. Though I am ordinarily quite susceptible to distraction, the past couple of days rendered me entirely distracted – especially because I felt as though the homily involved my saying some relatively Big Important things about myself and my faith, which I would rather. . . hey, look at today’s Dilbert!
I noticed after I sat down that the sermon placed “me” at its epicenter rather more firmly than I approve. On the whole, “my stuff” shouldn’t be the subject of a sermon, since a sermon should point to Scripture, not to the preacher. I’ve stuck with some qualifying expressions, though, because I think that in this case, I wouldn’t have been able to talk about “people’s faith” in the abstract; the rhetoric works, or doesn’t, to the extent that it invokes a concrete person with actual concerns and commitments. While I may well be self-deceived at this point, it seemed (intuitively, in prospect; deliberately, in retrospect) that the sermon required a specific subject, and that I couldn’t project it onto anybody else.
So, apart from some critical reflection on first person homilizing, and a relative lack of time to get well enough acquainted with the words I’d chosen that I could handle pacing and emphasis as well as I’d have wished, it went OK.
Dan 3:14-20, 24-28/Canticle 13/John 8:31-42
March 28, 2007
+
If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.
In the name of God Almighty, the Holy Trinity on high — Amen.
I am not willing to believe. The faith we gather here to learn, of which indeed I am a profess-or, entails daunting unlikelihoods; and although our lesson from Daniel tells us how God rescued Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the fiery furnace, I remember that two weeks ago Dean Hall reminded us that when the horn, the pipe, the lyre, and all the rest of the orchestra of coercion sounded, Oscar Romero was shot at his altar, and the morning news told how from Zimbabwe about Gift Tandare being murdered for refusing to bow down to temporal powers. This gospel lays claim to our lives and spirits with a comprehensiveness that balks my will. And those of you who have studied Augustine with me certainly recall that I sympathize with that saint’s argument against Pelagianism. The caliber of my will does not suffice to bring me by my own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God. That’s a taller order than I can manage.
I am not willing to die. Though I would like to think that when the King called for the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and the entire musical ensemble (a passage I will remember my whole life, because it appears in one of the portions of the Old Testament written in Aramaic, which I had to learn to pass my doctoral exams), when the King strikes up the liturgical band, I would not bow down statue – even if it meant being thrown into the fiery furnace. But my will is weak; I have grown attached to the creatures of this world. My family; my vocation; the taste of the peanut sauce on the Rama Tofu at Cozy Noodle; the privilege of working among you, of your trust that I’ll help prepare you to serve God’s people, the honor of the church’s trust that I won’t break any bruised reeds or quench any dimly burning wicks. The intense satisfaction of striving among you, and sharing in your progress in the gospel – along with peanut sauce and other such carnal joys – appalls my will, and binds me to these temporal things, the things that are passing away.
In these respects, I remain a slave to sin. My willful inclination to limit believing to the conditions I set, and to treat my being alive as the normal condition of the universe, obstruct my growth toward God.
Of course, what I will isn’t the issue, because death is not waiting around for me to volunteer. Indeed, if God made sporadic exceptions for deserving candidates, I’d still be last in line for the exemption clause. Even if sanctity insulated us from mortality, I can’t bluff you all into thinking holiness is my strong suit; how much less could I fake out the God who will judge heaven and earth in wisdom and truth? The examples of Romero and Tandare suggests that far from keeping death at bay, the way of the cross draws us closer to death. I have already been afforded fifty years, much more than many holier sisters and brothers of ours, more than I can fairly ask. My willingness isn’t at issue; I will die.
And whatever may be the condition of my will, I continue in Jesus’ word. I participate in the sacramental life of the church, in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, and in the prayers. I cling to the hope attested by the saints, embodied in Christ, made real afresh in love and patience and grace in our midst. The life of the Body of Christ surrounds and envelopes me; the Body is greater than I am and prevails over my lack of resolve. My willingness isn’t at issue.
I believe.
That is the truth; by that truth, my will is made free.
Posted by AKMA at 01:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 27, 2007
Rare Appearance
Pippa returned to her pastels over the weekend, and she offered me the self-portrait that resulted:
Posted by AKMA at 06:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Anonymity, Interpellation, Truth, Ignorance, and the Stakes
I’m glad I waited a while to post about Kathy Sierra’s unfortunate situation; a vast sea of people expressed their solidarity with Kathy, Shelley sized up the situation with the wisdom and perspective that typify her, and Frank, Jeneane, and Chris have responded, and Allan seems to have closed up shop. The mysterious “Joe” has left comments here and there. I had glanced at the two sites in question, what, about a week ago, saw nothing interesting and several things that irked me, and moved on. I didn’t notice any death threats, or any close approximations thereof, but I wasn’t looking for them.
To begin with the obvious, no one should have to cope with death threats , whether private ones in anonymous emails (about the height of creepiness) or public — and, granted the popular culture’s predilection for highlighting (and selling) the exhilarating voyeurism of women-in-jeopardy, I see ample reason for people to exercise special care to steer clear of sending messages that intensify any woman’s already-heightened sense of being the object of someone’s pathology. It’s wrong, and it’s dumb. It’s not near the fine line between stupid and clever. It crossed that line, stomped on it, scuffed it out, and kept going (and not in the “clever” direction).
After one establishes that nobody ought to threaten people’s lives, a premise I whole-heartedly endorse, people seem to have run in a great many other directions with this incident. Some commenters have interposed themselves among Kathy’s very many admirers to say, in essence, “If you don’t like it, don’t go on the internet.” I suppose that might work for some people — “If you don’t want us to brutalize you, don’t come to our neighborhood, or if you come, make sure you’ve got us out-gunned” — but it falls considerably short of the kind of ideal community life, short even of “minimally functional community life” in my book. Kathy shouldn’t have to choose between writing a blog with death threats and vanishing from Blogaria.
Some of Kathy’s defenders seemed a little hysterical, though. A great many people asserted their certainty that they knew what kind of person would participate in the MeanKids and BobsYerUncle sites, and why. That sort of presumption pushes my buttons, and not simply because I know the people Kathy named in connection with her death threats; I persistently push my students to articulate “How would you know that? What evidence do you have for that claims?” because I observe so many people taking precipitous action on the basis of conclusions to which they’ve jumped far in advance of any evidence. I see it in students’ and scholars’ biblical interpretation, where readers just know what must have happened; I see it in church conflict, where people just know what others really mean, and why they profess the claims they do; I see it in politics, where prominent figures commit vast resources and numerous human lives to projects on the basis of unsubstantiated intuitions. What I don’t see is any sign that this presumed knowledge makes the world a better place.
So in response to very real pathological threats (explicit in the emails), Kathy sensibly explained in a very public way (a) why she wasn’t going to Etech and (b) whom she held responsible. I take it that this is one of the positive uses of the Net: to make a visible, public record of the situation, so that any possible assailant would know that Kathy and Bert, law enforcement authorities, and pretty much the whole Net-reading world, knew about what was going on. Lots of light on the obscure goings-on.
That transition from anonymous threats in email to calling-out specific people (who — so far as I know — have no direct connection with the murderous threat) changes the picture. Granted, without question, that Kathy shouldn’t have to put up with death threats, I’m uneasy about her targeting others for whom there isn’t a demonstrable connection to the specific death threats. There’s a difference between tasteless, hurtful tripe (on one hand) and credible death threats (on the other); although the two may be congruent, I need to know more about the connection before I assent to connecting these particular dots.
In this way, anonymity cuts more directions than one: It enables a mysterious assailant to terrify Kathy, but it also provides the grounds for Kathy suggesting that Frank, Chris, Jeneane, and Allan are complicit with a would-be murderer. That’s a pretty serious allegation; she has interpellated them as co-conspirators. That wouldn’t fit with what I otherwise know of them, but more important, I don’t see evidence for that charge. Again, crudity that’s congruent with death threats may be worth condemning, but it’s not the same as participating in those threats. And since very few people on the Net are as anonymous as they think they are, we can expect that there is light to be shed on precisely who was threatening Kathy.
Compare [reports about] the sites in question with other websites, those that cultivate calumnious derogation of political figures, or that use tropes of sexual violence to the purpose of satire. I can propose distinctions that would categorize some as vile and dangerous, others as puerile and hurtful, others as scathing but just; so can you, and our assessments are virtually guaranteed to differ. In such perilous circumstances, distinctions and the reasoning that grounds them make all the difference in the world. Accusations that efface distinctions spread the damage around, but they don’t remedy anything, and often enough they take a bad scene and make it a lot worse.
All these dimensions show, yet again, that whatever else is true, there’s no magic barrier that separates the Net from Real Life. Whether in flesh or in pixels, we’re continuously taking part in a venture with the highest stakes, in a medium with an exceptionally long memory and no guarantees of anonymity. What we do, we do in public even if we hold a domino in front of our features — the slandering, threatening, stalking, bullying and other gestures we make online had better be gestures whose consequences we stand by.
Posted by AKMA at 01:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 26, 2007
Two Points
First, Margaret pointed me to these photos of a recently-discovered owl species (“Strange Owl” — I love it! Xenoglaux, literally “strange owl” in Greek); with our public affinity for matters glauxological, and my family’s history of involvement with owls, I couldn’t omit mention of it here.
Second, I’m preaching Wednesday at Seabury’s chapel service; the texts are Daniel 3:14-28 (omitting 21-23), Canticle 13 from the BCP, and John 8:31-42. I belabor the topic of John and Judaism enough outside of chapel that I think I’ll concentrate my attention on John 8:32 (“You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free”), but I’m not sure yet.
Posted by AKMA at 04:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 25, 2007
Why We Have Children
Pippa decided that this morning, we would take advantage of the fine weather and bicycle to church. Yesterday she pumped up the tires and made sure we had enough locks and helmets; this morning, we rolled down to St. Luke’s in the early morning fog, in time for her to rehearse with the choir and for me to sip coffee and read, and to discover how many joints and muscles were not accustomed to the posture and exercise of biking.
Then, after church, the weather was significantly clearer, which made the ambient temperature a great deal warmer.
Si’s bicycle had a flat tire, we discovered early on, so he drove; I asked him to take my blazer and briefcase for the ride back home. I’ll get fitter every week, but this could be a lo-o-o-o-ong summer.
Posted by AKMA at 12:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 24, 2007
Just Saying
I think it’s a major flaw in the system, that you can’t enjoy the benefits of fresh-brewed coffee while you’re still lying snug, warm, and cozy in bed.
Trish says:
You need someone to bring it to you. It can happen!
[Unfortunately, I do not live with any other coffee drinkers, still less with any who are inclined to bring me coffee in bed. Plus, there’s the issue of drinking while your head is resting on a pillow. . . .]
Posted by AKMA at 08:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 22, 2007
It's The Polity
For a long time, Episcopal Church “conservatives” have argued that the conflict we now face goes back a lot further than the debate over sexuality — and I think the recent meeting of the House of Bishops supports that point, though in ways that ought to be uncomfortable for pretty much everyone.
“Conservatives” (whom I’ll hereafter call “reasserters,” in keeping with efforts to avoid characterizations that jeopardize the clarity and charity of the arguments) point to a long series of decisions in which the Episcopal Church has addressed itself to modernity by (adapting Alasdair MacIntyre’s words) giving skeptics less and less in which to disbelieve. The Bishop Pike trial in 1966 stands as a useful emblem of this — without detailed summary and evaluation, I’ll stipulate that his brother bishops’ decision that repudiating the Trinity did not disqualify Pike from the exercise of the office of bishop signals an ecclesiastical willingness to allow a breadth of theological conviction that seriously compromises the grounds on which the church might arrive at coherent conclusions on any theological point — except, of course, the formal criterion of whether the conclusion was reached by appropriate process.
(Much as I admire Pike’s vigorous support for the civil rights movement, for women and lesbians and gays in the church, his deliberate immersion in the culture of the day, I must distinguish those qualities from what Grace Cathedral diplomatically describes as his “attention-seeking personality” and his patently heterodox theology. One of Pike’s malignant bequests to the church is the sense that “liberal” policies carry an inevitable link to anti-traditional theology, a bequest that funds the popularity of each generation’s sensational disbelievers among responsible “liberals,” whom I’ll hereafter refer to as “reappraisers” for the reasons given above.)
Returning to the thread of my harangue, and speeding past many intriguing scenic overlooks on my way to our topic for the day: It begins to sound as though the Windsor Report meant to convey to the Episcopal Church the message that whatever the standing of our policy on human sexuality, our decision-making process and our governance had fallen out of whack.
This is concordant with some of what the reappraisers have been saying: It doesn’t matter if all the motions, bills, and votes were above-board if they entail contradicting essential elements of Christian faith and life (and no, we may not go back and vote on what constitutes an essential element; our idolatry of voting contributes to these problems).
On the other hand, if the Episcopal Church’s polity is so problematic, why did the rest of the Anglican Communion choose this particular moment to call it to our attention? It does no good to say, “Well, we meant to” or “We tried, but you weren’t listening”; if it’s the polity itself at fault, that polity has been pretty much in place for an awfully long time. It doesn’t work right to chastise us for defective polity only when we make decisions that others don’t like. If our compromised polity justifies cutting us off, then our polity has been cut-off-able for decades at least, and I’m suspicious of lofty statements that call us down just now.
What might be wrong with our polity? It looks to me as though the Episcopal Church (on both “sides”) tends to regard bishops as though they were state governors — “our elected officials.” That neglects the two aspects of a bishop’s vocation that look most important to me: the bishop’s role as a teacher, and the bishop’s role as the point where the local church (the diocese) interacts with the church catholic. On that basis, churches in Iran really do have a stake in whom the Diocese of Chicago elects as bishop; a bishop who can’t function as a liaison (either because the world refuses them, or their home diocese does) can’t fulfill a constitutive aspect of the bishop’s role. The Episcopal Church tacitly recognizes this through its assent process, and (ironically) just exercised the prerogative to not accept a bishop’s election on the grounds that not enough dioceses felt they could rely on that candidate to remain within the Episcopal Church.* Though we do not ask every diocese around the globe to consent to each episcopal election, the principle is the same: A bishop belongs both to the diocese and to the church catholic, and both need to accept the bishop in order to maintain sound polity.
So when the House of Bishops asserts that “the meaning of the Preamble to the Constitution of The Episcopal Church is determined solely by the General Convention of The Episcopal Church,” or that we have no intention of leaving the Anglican Communion but that our polity does not permit arrangements such as the Primates requested, they’re begging the question. It’s the polity itself that has come into focus as the problem. The Primates want a polity in which our bishops stand more fully accountable to the world church, because (on this interpretation) that’s part of their job description; and the Episcopal Church says, “You can’t exclude us because that’s not the way we do things.” The US position looks an awful lot like an assimilation of ecclesiastical roles to local civic models: the U.S. bishops should lobby on behalf of the citizens they represent to bring home favorable policies (and if the governors of Utah and Mississippi, even the President of the U.S., don’t like the governor of Iowa, it’s tough luck because the Iowans voted for her). That’s not my understanding of how the members of the Body of Christ work together to build up and strengthen the whole.
As usual, I’m not fully convinced by either side of the argument. On formal polity questions, I’m more sympathetic with the Primates; I believe in bishops and their important role as teachers and mediators between local and global churches. On particular theological conclusions, I’m more sympathetic with the U.S. church, though I arrive at that sympathy by a reasoning that more closely resembles the reasoning of the Primates. I continue to support the full inclusion of my neighbors in the leadership and sacramental life of a catholic communion. How that plays out, I can’t imagine right now. I’m not, however, overjoyed at the U.S. bishops’ bold firmness; I’m saddened at the mutual misunderstanding that our present situation bespeaks, and frustrated by partisan rhetoric all around.
* Much more to say about the Lawrence non-election, but I hope that South Carolina will renominate and re-elect him, and that the Standing Committees that had muffed their consents will execute them correctly. Maybe a few of the dioceses that had refused consent before will even make a consistent, sensible decision to reverse their previous refusal.
Posted by AKMA at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 21, 2007
Danny the Second
Many of my wonderful online friends — Micah, Holly, Johanna, e — helpfully pointed me to one or another candidate for the version of Danny Duck that Margaret and I shared with our progeny. Alas, most of them are simply trading on the goodwill associated with the Danny Duck name, and are not the echt Danny (the books, not my wonderful friends). Our Danny is not “the” Duck, nor doth he “take a dive.” It’s not Danny’s Duck. He’s not the star of a book that floats in the shape of a duck, though it may have been a plasticky bath book, I don’t recall exactly. I reproduced its contents verbatim; that’s the one we’re looking for. “Imitations Disappoint,” as the Sapolio ad says.
Posted by AKMA at 08:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 20, 2007
Huzzah!
Jennifer’s essay on Origen and apocatastasis was honored as the best student essay on theology by the Union Seminary Quarterly Review (it’s not online, for reasons I can’t fathom).
What makes this all the more exciting is that John Anthony McGuckin, one of the world’s foremost Origen scholars teaches at Union, so he presumably approves of her essay — high approbation, indeed!
Posted by AKMA at 03:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
From The Past
Margaret and I have increasing numbers of younger friends with small children. Because we care about good parenting, we want to share with our friends some of the benefit of our experience (this trick works especially well on people who actually know our children). In order to complete the prank, though, we need the help of someone who can lay his or her hands on copies of infant books — the kind that kids can’t themselves read, but they love hearing read to them over and over again. And again. “Again, Mommy! Read me, Daddy!”
So we’d be profoundly thankful to someone who can fix us up with that modern classic, Danny Duck. I cite from memory (Nate will correct me if I make a mistake):
Danny Duck loves the water
He belongs to the farmer’s daughter
In the barn he makes his home
But the farmyard’s where he likes to roam
The young farm dog who loves to play
Often chases him away
But out here in the summer sun
All the animals enjoy the fun!
The joy of having that seared in my memory I must share with my colleagues. Please tip em off if you know where I can get a copy or eight.
Posted by AKMA at 09:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 19, 2007
Next. . . .
Over the weekend (at Margaret’s place in Durham) I finished the series of posts on Magritte’s “Words and Images” over at the Beautiful Theology site. We’ll talk about Magritte in the seminar Thursday, then (probably) move on to Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. I summed up my response to the essay here.
Posted by AKMA at 04:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 18, 2007
Museum Afterthought
I forgot to upload this photo, taken when Pippa was ready to move on from the museum and had plopped down on one of the benches in the atrium.
Posted by AKMA at 07:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 17, 2007
Long Day in Durham
Margaret, Pip and I kept busy today, wandering around the Duke campus and Margaret’s neighborhood in Durham. I have about enough energy to blog some highlights, accompanied by appropriate photos.
First, after we woke up and had a breakfast, we went to the Nasher Museum at Duke. It’s new even to Margaret; it was under construction the last time Pippa and I were here. Only one gallery was open, but even that was a treat. In the permanent collection I found a painting of The Feast of Herod, which I photographed for my New Testament II class (which spent a good class session probing that pericope in Mark).
Toward the center of the room that includes the painting, the museum displays a statue of St. Matthew that delights me. I’m not quite sure why; I suspect that this one strikes me for its lack of axegrinding. This Matthew doesn’t seem to me to typify anything.:
After the Nasher, we wandered in to the Bryan Center for lunch. I browsed the Gothic Bookstore, where I noted with disappointment that they weren’t displaying any of Mark Goodacre’s books. I mean, he’s only been working there a year and a half! Maybe they all sold out.
After the Bryan Center, we wandered back to East Campus via the Gardens, where Pippa perked up for the duck pond. We were pleased to see a Hooded Merganser, a Muscovy Duck, and a couple more whose names I’ve forgotten (and I’m too sleepy to look them up at the moment).
Then a lovely dinner with Sarah and Clay and their impressively wonderful son Luke, home to Margaret’s apartment for a movie, and so to bed. It’ll be hard to leave tomorrow, even granted the vexingly Chicago-ic weather of the past few days.
Posted by AKMA at 09:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Baudrillard Bigger Than Matrix
Encountered via links that began from Scott McLemee’s appreciation of Jean Baudrillard at Inside Higher Education: various other helpful online sources for learning more about an intellectual who had a lot more going on than just urging John Anderson to take the red pill.
Douglas Kellner’s overview in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP seems not to have a separate entry for Bataille, interesting. . .)
Pertinent recent entries from CTheory.
And the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies..
Posted by AKMA at 07:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 16, 2007
In A Word
My column in the Christian Century is out in print (I guess they run their website on a week’s delay). Since others have been disappointed that I voice support for the Archbishop of Canterbury, I’ve been fretting over whether my explicit asseveration that my theology has not changed, and that I’m not backing away from my support for the full inclusion of LGBT Anglicans in our sacramental ministry, contradicts my inclination to think that Rowan Williams has more on his mind than just a fancy mitre.
My best shot at a short version of my rationale is this: Anyone can buy a Book of Common Prayer, call him- or herself a priest or a bishop, and claim to share in the Anglican tradition. The claim would be true enough, in some ways (depending on what they did with the BCP and the title) — but for such a claim to carry the kind of public integrity that communicates the fullness of sacral veracity, such a person would need to be in explicit, demonstrable communion with the See of Canterbury.
Now, in real life, there’s a great distance between the extremes of transparent, total collegial communion and utter renunciation. People adhere to various between-points for various reasons (or sentiments), with various degrees of coherence. But exactly because I believe in the soundness of incorporating women and men into the sacramental life of the Anglican Communion, I am reluctant to place “ordination” or “blessing” above the catholic communion of which I speak. Or, in a word, I don’t want for my sisters and brothers a downsized, localized simulation of putative claims to the episcopate or marriage; I support their active participation in a communion that embraces the whole world.
Ralph says:
Last weekend I visited family in Tucson, and attended the episcopal service at St. Michaels & All Angels. This parish enjoys a very "high church" service, with lots of incense, intoning lessons, gospels, & prayers, a semi-pro choir, large sanctuary contingent, etc. The priest told me they have the highest service in the city, if not the state, and because of this they attract a lot of traditional Episcopalians/Anglicans from other churches in Tucson. However, this high church traditionalism is offset by their strong social liberalism -- welcoming gays in particular & expressing support for Bishops Schori and Robinson. Many of the visitors find this disquieting or even offensive, but they still come for the incense & the music. It occured to me that this might represent a conciliation strategy for the Anglican Communion.
Best regards,
Ralph Hitchens
From the murky shadows of my remote past, Dennis said:
This is your first board speaking! I was indulging my vanity and my curiosity--in other words, Googling my own name--and I came across your blog. To be honest, I hadn't thought of you in thirty years, although I often quote witty things you said. Hope all is well with you. My blog is at http://home.mindspring.com/~twofisch/thebearandcat2/.
Dennis Fischman
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March 15, 2007
Slacktivist on Charity
No, not “give to those who ask from you” — though he’s in favor of that, too — but the refusal to ascribe one’s opponents’ disagreements to motives less worthy than one’s own. Fred is talking about disagreements over the Iran Conquest, but you could say the same about the Anglican Impasse (as the Century subtitles my column there). Moreover, his essay on “I”-statements helpfully brings to the foreground the irrefutability of such discourse, hence its fundamental divorce from arguments about reality.
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March 14, 2007
If The Lagoon Was Whisky
Pippa and I have been watching with fascinated delight the antics of a solitary diving duck among the innumerable dabbling mallards on Northwestern University’s campus lagoon. We haven’t agreed, however, on the precise identification of our unknown subject.
The European Red-Crested Pochard bears a certain resemblance to our suspect, but since ours lacks the red bill, and since Evanston is not in Europe, we’re disposed to rule that one out. It could be a Redhead, though ours lacks the distinct black chest-grey torso coloration.Its golden eye might make you think it was a Goldeneye, but Goldeneyes seem to bear the characteristic white patch on their upper neck — but the immature Goldeneye, or perhaps a female, could resemble the perpetrator we’ve apprehended.
Mark’s mom says:
Maybe one of the Goldeneyes - common or Barrow's - a female or immature adult?
Fr. Jeff says:
Greetings dear brother:
I hope all is well. I tried to comment on your blog, but even after I signed up it would not allow me to comment. [My comment function is temporarily turned off, as a brute-force spam prevention technique.] As one who enjoys fowl, and as an avid Duck hunter and watcher, I would say that the duck pictured is a female Common Goldeneye. I sent your link to a couple of my friends (one of whom is a wildlife biologist, and another who is the president of a local Ducks Unlimited chapter) and there seemed to be consensus. However, is the duck in question is immature (doubtful given the time of year), it could be misleading. . . .
He then followed up:
Dear Brother:
I misspoke I think. In my previous email, I commented that the bird in question was a Common Goldeneye...when I meant to say Barrow's Goldeneye... (one other mark is the mottling of the feathers). If I did indeed misinform you, I apologize.
God bless.
Jeff
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March 13, 2007
Mail Clog
My Apple Mail application no longer searches its database for strings I type into the search window. Like a digital Wally, it simply disregard the search strings I enter, or returns a desultory two or three recent messages. I don’t have time, at the moment, to search Apple’s site for answers, but if you’re waiting for email from me — this probably isn’t why I haven’t answered, but it’s a good enough excuse for today.
[Later: Kevin pointed to this nifty command-line trick for speeding Mail up; I had seen it and forgotten about it when the report flashed into view ten days ago. Unfortunately for me, my problem is not that the search is too slow, but that it refuses to search thoroughly altogether. If I search all mailboxes for a relatively simple string — say, “the” — it will find many of the most recent messages, but only sporadic instances of the search term as the pool gets older and older. If I'm looking for a term that appears only in old messages, it’s likely not to show up at all.]
Posted by AKMA at 09:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 12, 2007
42
I was going to blog about David Weinberger’s newsletter reflections on “meaning,” but today;s beginning to look a little crowded, and elsewhere I wrote a long response to someone who was asking about The Law of Attraction and The Secret. I’m reposting it here (slightly edited) in public, with the proviso that this response is directed toward a group of people some of whom expressed vigorous admiration and some vehement rejection of the phenomenon — and I’m trying to stake out a position that’s pastorally gentle while remaining critical of the bogus side. My less restrained friends Chris and the Tutor would probably couch their assessment with more scathing prose, and I yield to them on composing such.
At the outset, I’ll stipulate that one’s attitude makes a big difference in one’s life — and not exclusively “positive attitude = better.” In the aggregate, people tend to respond more warmly to people with positive attitudes; that amplifies certain possibilities and certain opportunities an increment, and of course if you have a positive attitude, that increment is going to seem bigger. There’s a circularity to that, but it’s not simply chasing your tail.
Depressed people, though, are likely to see the world as it is more honestly. Suffering and unfairness that positive attitude-holders may shut out from their awareness, unwilling to weigh down their consciousness with misfortune, stand out and claim the attention of someone affected by depression. It’s not the world’s cheeriest upside, but it’s true, and I know people who would rather stick with their depression and see misery in sharp focus, than to accept therapeutic intervention that would make them “cheerier” at the cost of what they take to be their vivid realism.
With regard to the specific premises advanced in this movie and book: I have not read the book, nor did I watch more than the first few minutes of the Google video. There may be mind-blowing pearls of hidden wisdom that I did not encounter in my inadequate sample size.
That being said, it looks to me as though the author and filmmaker are trading on an ambiguity in the word “secret.” If I say, “The secret to getting to Carnegie Hall is practice,” everyone knows (a) that it’s not a secret (b) that the force of the word “secret” is more like “fulcrum” or “method” or “answer.” In one sense, then, I take it that the claims I hear in this short film segment are uncontroversial, if hyperbolically overstated: a positive attitude is likely to impress others positively and amplify their esteem for you, etc. How much of a difference this makes, who knows? It’s not a revolutionary difference in the aggregate, but particular people may find extreme success this way, and their endorsement tends to drown out many other people’s disillusionment. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t helpful for person A; it just means that we shouldn’t be surprised if person L is more like people B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, and K for whom this approach didn’t work.
The other aspect of “The Secret” is more problematic. For ages and ages and ages — perhaps it’s innate, I decline to speculate about that — people have wanted to know the secret. The popularity of ⟨/gag⟩ The da Vinci Code and the persistence of esoteric traditions provides sufficient testimony that many people are predisposed to think that there’s some sort of Hidden Answer that is open to The Right People, but that mere ordinary humans don’t have access to. The opening sequence of the movie trades on this use of the word “secret,” but think for a moment: if Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Emerson are the sources for this “secret,” just how “hidden” can it be? People have been reading Plato for, what, 2300 years? Do you have to go to your neighborhood metaphysical bookstore to get a copy of Macbeth? And among the few people who actually read Newton instead of learning his formulae, do we have reason to suppose that they discover a concealed message about prosperity and well-being? As for Ralph Waldo Emerson — to whom I’m distantly related — he blends a reasonable emphasis on human capacities and self-discovery (which I dissent from, but recognize as intellectually reputable) with a self-congratulatory neo-Gnosticism to which I strongly object.
But, it makes some people feel good to think that they’re in on the Sooper Sekrit (best-selling, unsubstantiated by experimental verification) answer to the universe — far more than actually benefit from the sound application of positive thinking (itself a limited, not universal, good thing). On the whole, this is not my cup of tea, even though I tend markedly to “think positively” more than most people. For me, that means mostly just thinking the best of people, so as to give them room to be better than they might be if I approach them with suspicion; trying to emphasize my own strengths and my capacities to deal with stress, frustration, and misfortune, rather than wallowing in the self-pity and complaining to which I might otherwise be inclined (and I’m far from perfect on that score); and concentrating my energies and attention where there’s greatest likelihood of some positive response.
Oooops, I guess it’s not secret any more. Well, if I disappear from the face of the earth, you'll know that the vast international conspiracy to suppress the truth has gotten to me. Of course, then they’ll probably delete this post, too, just as they so successfully suppressed The da Vinci Code and the Law of Attraction book and movie. If “lack of public attention” is one’s criterion for “secret wisdom,” then my books are exponentially more reliable than either TdVC or Law of Attraction.
Alan said:
Hey, AKMA --
I hope you know this wonderful passage from Eco's Foucault's Pendulum:
A plot, if there is to be one, must be a secret. A secret that, if only we knew it, would dispel our frustration, lead us to salvation; or else the knowing of it in itself would be salvation. Does such a luminous secret exist?
Yes, provided it is never known. Known, it will only disappoint us. Hadn't Aglie spoken of the yearning of mystery that stirred the age of the Antonines? Yet someone had just arrived and declared himself the Son of God, the Son of God made flesh, to redeem the sins of the world. Was that a run-of-the-mill mystery? And he promised salvation to all: you only had to love your neighbor. Was that a trivial secret? And he bequeathed the idea that whoever uttered the right words at the right time could turn a chunk of bread and a half-glass of wine into the body and blood of the Son of God, and be nourished by it. Was that a paltry riddle? And then he led the Church fathers to ponder and proclaim that God was one and Triune and that the Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, but that the Son did not proceed from the Father and the Spirit. Was that some easy formula for hylics? And yet they, who now had salvation within their grasp — do-it-yourself salvation — turned deaf ears. Is that all there is to it? How trite. And they kept scouring the Mediterranean in their boats, looking for a lost knowledge, of which those thirty-denarii dogmas were but the superficial veil, the parable for the poor in spirit, the allusive hieroglyph, the wink of the eye at the pneumatics. The mystery of the Trinity? Too simple: there had to be more to it.
Cheers,
AJ
Posted by AKMA at 10:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 10, 2007
Closure
Yesterday was the last day of Epiphany Term classes (I’m sticking with the archaic ecclesiastical terminology, since next year we’ll probably just call them “Fall Semester” and “Spring Semester” like every other educational institution). This week I finished a book review, an article, and a sermon; I have one book review to go, and I’ll be caught up to my usual degree of behindness. I have two stacks of papers to grade.
But Pippa has decided it’s time to begin spring cleaning, and she’s right. We spent a couple of hours this morning in the “study” clearing out bags worth of debris. We aim to clear out that room, and then move on to our next victim. The whole place has to be whipped into shape before we leave for Princeton in the summer. In the meantime,though, if you want to see some embarrassing childhood pictures of Nate, Si, and Pippa — or embarrassing early-adulthood pictures of Margaret and me — I know right where to find them.
Posted by AKMA at 12:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 09, 2007
Positive Outcomes of Vanity
I’ve been checking over at the Christian Century website more regularly these days, as they asked me for a column responding to the recent meeting of Primates and the Communiqué that the meeting promulgated. Those visits stem partly from vanity, but also partly from a degree of worry about how the column will be received (on which more later).
Because I was paying attention, though, I caught two columns that impressed me very favorably. James Alison’s piece on drowning in theology aptly communicates the joy of coming to understand what you thought you already knew — and that understanding disclosing vast frontiers of yet-undiscovered brilliance and depth and wisdom.
Over on the Century’s blog, Lillian Daniel meditates about why pastors write badly (focusing her attention on the newsletter). She proposes a very charitable analysis, suggesting on one hand that we “pour our creativity into that weekly sermon, and sometimes at the end of all that, the well has run dry.” She does not suggest, as she might, that a sizable proportion of the pastors about whom she’s thinking just don’t understand writing (or any form of communication) that well, and that those who might have obliged them to write better either never really tried, or gave up in baffled desperation. Whatever the factors, she gently urges that church leaders remember how great a proportion of their work involves writing, how high the stakes are.
Posted by AKMA at 08:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Fear Factor
I’ve recently heard an unfortunate number of people explain conflicts in which they’re involved by ascribing “fear” to the people with whom they disagree. That’s so very problematic. . . .
I don’t doubt that people rationalize public positions that they arrive at by way of private, perhaps unconscious fear. I take that as a given.
Nonetheless, that principle applies across the board; it can’t be reduced to “People like me are rational, people like them are fearful.” That’s why it’s a toxic tactic in public argument. It either trades on the presumed immunity of Side A to fear (“I’m a bold exponent of the truth! You, on the other hand, are an intellectual coward”), or undermines everyone’s arguments (“Golly, one of us might be afraid and justifying our strident polemic out of a kind of insecurity and projection”). Accusations of fearfulness amount to a more sophisticated, condescending version of name-calling, but (as wi