Month: December 2006

The Christian Century has dipped an editorial toe into the waters of blogging — and it looks interesting. I’ll keep an eye on them to see what happens when a classical-media theological enterprise drinks the digital Kool-Aid.

It will disappear shortly, but I want someplace on the Web to record the delightful header for this auction at eBay:

1910’S HOLY CARD JOAN OF ARC: GO, LADY OF GOD, GO!

Rah, rah! Sis-boom-bah! Go, Lady of God, Go!

I’m reading through composition paragraphs from students, and ruminating about what they indicate. This year’s final composition assignment asked students to compare their writing process at the beginning of the term with their writing process at the end of the term; I was inviting students to say, in effect, “This was a total waste of time” or “This helped,” and they did. The exercise also provided a medium for checking their writing skills — they knew I expected them to compose an orderly paragraph with smooth transitions, carefully chosen words, active verbs, and minimal Blank Space.

The papers didn’t surprise me much; most students expressed strong resistance to the premise that they should be devoting class time to improving their writing (some of the better writers suggested that it was a waste of their time, some of the weaker writers suggested that it made them frustrated and ruined their love of writing). Some resisted at first, but reluctantly acknowledged that they could see the benefits of observing their written work for the key characteristics that our class emphasized.

As I read over the papers, I note first of all that they show much more attention to the characteristics I highlighted in class; to that extent, the time spent on writing proved worthwhile, right from the start. I do wish, though, that students felt the improvement as a gain, rather than an unwelcome intrusion. I wonder why students resist devoting time to enhancing a fundamental skill that they’ll use through their careers in ministry. Somewhere along the line, some students of all skill levels got the message that they did not need to improve in a particular area, even though they had to be aware that there was plenty of room for improvement. When I introduce several ways of distinguishing ordinary writing from better writing, students seem to resent the knowledge of how their writing could move toward greater clarity, precision, and persuasiveness.

(For the record, I do not impose inflexible ukases; though I discourage passive constructions, I describe particular circumstances that make passives more appropriate, and I always stress that sometimes excellent writers depart from the patterns that generally characterize the best composition. For someone to mount a coherent case against my approach to writing, they would have to assert that writers ought to use words without regard to readers’ expectations about what those words mean; that abrupt transitions and discontinuous structure improve a composition; that unannounced digressions and extraneous information contribute to essays’ quality; that essays should be written with maximal recourse to passive constructions, and that the verb “is” should be preferred to more specific, more active verbs. Again, I give explicit reasons for choosing words carefully, structuring prose smoothly, eschewing BS, and preferring active, vivid constructions — I didn’t cook up a series of edicts disconnected from practical reality, but I demonstrate ways that practical reality shows the better way of constructing an essay with the characteristics I propose.)

A colleague’s research into effective ministry has observed that one prevalent model of ministry upholds a beloved, “pastoral,” “spiritual,” but generally quite ineffective pastoral leader as a norm, even though observers acknowledge that the congregation down the road has shown unusual growth and vitality during the tenure of a leader whose ministry shows very different characteristics. The knockout slide in their presentation lists the ascribed characteristics of clergy who have (in a discrete process) have been identified as “struggling”: they are sensitive, kind, intelligent, demoralized, vague, boring, and ambiguous, where as the “effective” clergy are clear, consistent, quick, collaborative, confident, decisiove, innovative, energetic, “planful” (ugh), and accommodating (PowerPoint presentation by Dreibelbis and Gortner, linked on the page above). Now, there’s plenty of room for debating particulars of the researchers’ study — but I wondered this morning whether I might be running into some students whose ideal of writing bears comparison to the ideal of ministry that the research depicts: they imagine writing to involve sensitivity and kindness, for example, more than clarity and energy.

Just musing.
Continue reading “Musing”

Maybe if I make a list of things I need to do during the break, it’ll help motivate me to get going. So:

• Housecleaning, of course
• Mark Church History papers and assign grades
• Mark Gospel Mission papers and send comments to colleague
• Prepare and preach sermon for Gaudete Sunday
• Referee article for CBQ
• Clear backed-up email
• Write 500-word definition of “postmodern biblical criticism” (ha!)
• Review Richard Hays book
• Review Wayne Meeks book
• Review Jason Byassee book
• Review Stan Hauerwas book
• Finalize preparations for New Testament II course

And, of course, holiday shopping, card mailing, bill paying, fun with Pippa, and having a nice, restful break between terms, since the stretch from January to June might otherwise break my spirit.

OK, enough blogging. Time to start on my list.

The sermon should come together, I think, without onerous strain. I have some pretty clear ideas: I want to incorporate Candide, John the Baptist’s preaching, and the liturgical-scriptural emphasis on rejoicing. On, now, to papers and homiletical prep.

As part of Pippa’s and my home renovation project (more accurately described as “winter cleaning,” or “end-of-term housekeeping”) I broke down and junked two old printers that had let us down in the past year. I had been keeping them around the house on the superstitious premise that if you don’t throw them out right away, it attenuates the guilt of participating in the gross waste of resources that the contemporary printer industry entails.

Which led me to think: isn’t there an opportunity for a company to manufacture printers specifically designed to be reparable, reuseable, and refillable — precisely the attributes that the present instant-obsolescence printer industry resists? Can’t someone on the LazyWeb develop a standard chipset and reservoir design that do a good-enough job for most family and small-office purposes, that can be repaired and refilled rather than replaced? I’d love to buy such a thing, and I’ll bet it would represent a significant savings for most office purposes; maybe someone like the Blackspot Shoe people could make a go of it.

For Mac OS X users, two seasonal presents from the freeware world: Art of Illusion, a 3D rendering editor with impressively sophisticated features; and a new version of VLC Media Player, for playing those files that QuickTime doesn’t recognize. Oh, and a week or so ago, the Participatory Media Foundation released their most recent version of Democracy Player.

And you don’t have to wait two weeks to download them.

(I have not yet tried any of these out, though I’ve never had problems with earlier versions of Democracy player or VLC. Any pernicious consequences for your system are between you and the coders.)

Our family only uses organic free range vegetable broth.

I dislike Scott Simon, and I have very narrowly constricted respect for Sylvester Stallone, but this morning their interview provided a moment that made me laugh aloud.

Simon asked Stallone if there was one more Rocky movie i him, a movie in which Rocky actually (finally) adjusts to civilian life, learns to love running a restaurant, comes to terms with age and mortality. Stallone answers that No, moviegoers want to see Rocky box — Rocky 5 was a flop because Rocky was only coaching in that movie, when the fans want to see him in the ring.

At this point, the two start brainstorming, as though they were pitching a concept to studio eexecs.

“He could fight older guys!”
“In a retirement home!”
“He could beat up grandpas!”

Thanks, guys.

Yesterday was filled with preparing and administering the final exam in Church History, and caring for the sweetest invalid in town. Pippa has a cold, so I’m coddling her as best I can. She’s been on a movie spree, and has otherwise been relaxing abed and on the couch; we’re hoping she’ll be up for the activities she has scheduled for the weekend (choir rehearsal, Nutcracker, and Lessons and Carols).

Among the movies she’s watched is an Agatha Christie “Tommy and Tuppence” feature that incorporates the line that constitutes the motto of my scholarship:

You go on muttering bits of the Bible in your bedroom for years, and then suddenly you go right over the line and become violent!

Got me dead to rights; watch out world, ’cause any day now I may snap.

The exam seems to have gone well; an unprecedented proportion of the class complimented me on the exam, and several even said it was “fun.” This unnerves me a bit, since the exam was less easy than it has been in years past, but evidently in this last year that I will ever teach Early Church History, I hit a golden mean of challenging and encouraging them. I’ll miss having an excuse for hanging out with the quite extraordinary array of characters in the early church, but this way I’ll have more time to concentrate on the New Testament and hermeneutics.

But now, classes are over, I have but a few exams and papers to mark, and the holidays lie ahead with prospects of a houseful of children and their dates/partners/intendeds/whatevers. And getting Pippa well, preparing a sermon for the 17th, and cleaning house.

Yesterday, Margaret took her last class in her doctoral program (well, OK, it was a meeting with her independent study professor — but it was course credit, she turned in her assignment, and she’s done). She has only two steps, now, to completing her work. They’re big steps — exams and dissertation — but there’re still only two plateaus (plateaux?) before she’s through.

And today makes the twentieth year since I was ordained a priest. That sounds like a long time; it feels as though it’s passed in the blink of an eye. Frustrating as many aspects of church life are at the moment (and just now, seminary life too), I see more clearly every day that this vocation fits me. As I’ve said before, so I repeat now: thank you. It’ a humbling honor to be a priest among you.
Continue reading “Milestones”

My neighbor’s weird about his kidneys. He always palpates them, observes how they’re functioning.

I think he’s too renal attentive.

As soon as The End was published, Pippa and I hastened to town to obtain a copy. She read it immediately and pronounced herself satisfied. I delayed, partly as I’m even busier this year than usual (I know, I know, that is usual) and partly because I wasn’t sure Daniel Handler could make the last volume in the series succeed. He had taken the first twelve volumes to the brink — perhaps past the brink — of repetitive plot devices and rhetorical gestures. If he lived up to the grim promises from the first twelve books, the thirteenth would be an arduously bleak exercise in defying the conventions of children’s literature, and if he reneged on his promises, he’d falsify the premises he had constructed so carefully.

When, after a couple of days, I did read The End, Handler proved his mettle. The last book in the Baudelaire triskaidekalogy attains a diverse array of impressive achievements, not least of which is Handler’s perceptive critique of Ishmael’s passive-aggressive paternalism in the name of the Baudelaires’ mutuality. The book offers neither a glibly happy resolution of the series of unfortunate events, nor facile answers to the series’s difficult questions, nor the cataclysm of the main characters’ demise. Instead, Handler gives a fair treatment of how the world goes: hearts break, dear ones die, the best among us bear the wound of sin, and life goes on. I wouldn’t have guessed that Handler would make so impressive a summing-up, and I commend him highly.

I was moved to remember The End because a friend of a friend died recently. As I was meditating about this death and the dreadful loss it entails, I looked again at the last chapter of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. This chapter recounts Harry’s presence and feelings at Dumbledore’s funeral so convincingly that my assessment of Rowling as a novelist clicks upward a notch just recollecting it. Harry’s by turns distracted, subject to inappropriate mirth, profoundly grief-stricken, and filled with adolescent bravado, all in a narration that underscores the realism of Dumbledore’s death. (This chapter alone militates against my accepting the ingenious exegesis that Dumbledore is just mostly dead.) Rowling may manage to pull off a Dumbledorian resuscitation without vitating the grandeur of the funeral (at which even merfolk cried) — but that unlikely hypothetical feat aside, these two books teach well the sober lesson that our lives fall subject to forces outside our control, and at our best we can but give gifts, share gifts, with those we love. We share the gifts that have been given us first: love, and trust, and wisdom, and determination in the face of entropy, a few knick-knacks of joy and ingenuity, a song and a poem and a dance. We catch these from our predecessors and pass them to another generation, to our children and our students, and by our transmitting these gifts we testify to a light that darkness cannot comprehend. We cannot defeat death or decay, but we have the opportunity to live victoriously, nobly, under circumstances we cannot control.

In whatever name moves you to resist evil, to flourish free from fear, to beam with the joy that heals, to pledge solidarity with your sisters and brothers, to love: in that name, live, world without end.