Imposing

The ESPN video clip from Greg Oden’s first game shows a player who’s already frighteningly good, in just his first college game. I’m all for staying in college four years, but if there’s a college player who looks like he’ll be ready for pro ball soon, it’s got to be Oden. In the meantime, Ohio…

Accent

A recent post involving Scots accents on Language Log reminded me of my delight at the way a Glaswegian information-booth staffer pronounced my children’s names. She asked who they were, and I pointed to each, saying, “Nate, Si, and Pippa.” She smiled and commented that they were lovely names, repeating (as it sounded to me),…

What She Said

“Quoted,” as they say, “for truth”: Online friends versus real friends. Online life versus real life. All these briar-fences and hedges we construct when we speak so that we don’t admit the possibility that people we meet online are, you know, people, meaning as much to us as people we meet elsewhere. Dorothea, rock on…

Not All Greatest

NPR recently featured an audio montage of clips from what TV Land is promoting as “the 100 Greatest TV Quotes and Catchphrases.” Two comments: One, the list looks to me as though it’s predictably biased toward recent candidates. Two, I wonder whether there’s much point in applying the label “greatest” after the top fifty or…

Jordon Says

Well, Jordon says “It’s ‘Jordon’ with an ‘o’ ” but he quotes Darryl who quotes Pastor Rod who asserts — correctly, to my mind — that pastors need to be theologians. When people meet to discuss the future of theological education, they almost invariably devise plans that emphasize more and more topics from outside the…

Without End

Today’s World AIDS Day, and our guest preacher, alumnus Chris Griffin, saw me after the service and alluded to a sermon I had preached on the occasion, that was on the web. I remembered it, in a general way, but in an idle moment tonight I went back to reread it. It was pretty much…

Friday

In case you hadn’t noticed, today is Friday. I successfully ushered my grant application through the ether to its destination, enjoyed a provocative lecture on storefront churches and their role in academic accounts of American theology (they’re mostly absent, an absence that silently indicts the insularity of the institutionally-established ecclesiastical establishment). I participated in a…