Month: December 2007

Anita Rowland died yesterday.

I didn’t know Anita well; others knew her much better than did I. Our paths crossed a few times back in olden times, when Blogaria was a small neighborhood rather than an exploding metropolis, but not since then. No matter — our lives were knit together not just by any exchanges we may have had, but by our shared friendships with Shelley, Jeneane, and Frank (among others).

We’re lighting a digital candle for you, Anita, and for all who grieve you. Perhaps it will shed some light to others who miss you, to us in memory, to strangers who learn to know you retrospectively through the imprint you made on us. Perhaps to you, in some way we don’t yet understand. We’re lighting a candle, and we’re coming after you.

Well, the Diocese of San Joaquin has voted to disassociate itself from the Episcopal Church (and to associate itself with the Province of the Southern Cone), and some people are thrilled, and some people are furious, institutional authorities are figuring out whom to replace with whom on which charts of authority, very many people wonder what the Archbishop of Canterbury will do about the steaming mess freshly delivered to his doorstep, and lawyers are girding themselves to generate billions of billable hours.

Almost everyone who has spoken publicly on this development has deployed rhetoric that smacks of idolatrous fixation on Nikê, the goddess of Victory. Whatever may be dubious about somebody’s behavior, or language, or theology, or history, or legal reasoning, can be explained by the necessity of taking such-and-such a stand, now — or else what? Let them get away with that?

It is all well and good to stand up for gospel truth — God bless such testimony! — but so far as I can tell from reading the Bible, followers of Jesus are expected to work out their problems among themselves, and not wrangle or exercise coercive violence toward one another (or anyone). And if the Wrong Side were to get a temporal advantage that way, so much the worse for them; in all these things, we are more than conquerors, through him who loved us.

The conflict sets people into odd contortions. People who advocate strict adherence to exactly what Scripture teaches will readily fight in court to possess the real estate they claim, despite Paul’s explicit prohibition of such action. People who advocate the exercise of pastoral sensitivity in the interpretation of Scripture espouse uncompromising rigor in the interpretation of canons. People are devising mind-boggling amalgams of catholic and protestant premises that support their claim to whatever is in dispute. Each thinks their own rationalizations are just and true, whereas their adversary’s rationalizations only serve their whimsical convenience.

If our charity were not already exhausted, we might have reached a settlement that recognized the good will and theological integrity of our discussion partners (misguided though we know them to be). Lacking charity, it seems as though name-calling and legal maneuvering will constitute the principal means by which a number of church leaders endeavor to glorify the gospel. For some reason, that doesn’t sound like good news to me.

A week from tomorrow, I’ll haul the Outback down to coastal New Jersey to preach at the installation of Debra Bullock as vicar of St. Barnabas-by-the-Bay. This is a very good thing, in several ways — most importantly, she’s a very wonderful, conscientious disciple of Jesus, who cares a lot about important things; less importantly, I always relish the chance to preach, even if I’ve specifically asked the parish at which we worship on Sundays if they would please not invite me so to do; and last, I’ll have a chance to say hello to Bishop Councell, who used to be a Seabury trustee.

On the other hand, the readings are relatively familiar (dry bones, body parts need one another, and keep Jesus’ commandments), and I would rather avoid restating a predictable premise on predictable grounds (on one hand) or pulling out a old-time favorite (on the other). Right now, I’m thinking especially about the psalms, 133 and 134. Probably not that many people have heard a sermon on the text, “It is like fine oil upon the head / that runs down upon the beard, / Upon the beard of Aaron, /and runs down upon the collar of his robe.” That makes the option of preaching on the psalm pretty intriguing to me. . . .

Pippa and I strolled down the the dining hall at Princeton Seminary as is our habit on Fridays, and as we were finishing up our meals, we heard an announcement from the podium at the front of the hall. It turns out that — unbeknownst to us — today was Burt Reynolds Day at PTS, which means that today the seminary held its annual Best Mustache Contest (a spectacle that will live in my memory as comparable only to the year I was in St Jean-de-Luz for the Fête de Thon and the coronation of the Tuna Queen). The panel of three judges awarded prizes in the categories of “Best Effort,” “Newcomer,” “Most Creative,” and overall “Best Mustache” to contestants and their named mustaches (names such as “The Big Red Wave,” “The Finish Line,” “Fred Sanford,” “Dirty Jersey,” and (our favorite) “The Feminine Mystique” — a contestant in the “Best Effort” category who, sadly, did not win).
 
Pippa wondered how I would have done if they’d run that contest back when I taught here. She decided that my PTS-era ponytail would have helped “The Porcupine” make a strong showing, anyway.

From Deirdre Good’s blog, a facsimile edition of The Holkham Bible.

It seems as though Pippa’s feeling somewhat better after her nasty bout of hives.

The sky is clear, a lovely blue.

I had a clarifying idea this morning. It would be better if it were about Matthew’s Gospel, the ostensible topic of the book I’m supposed to be working on, but it was such a lovely idea that I’m cherishing the moment anyway.

It’s St. Nicholas Day, which means that twenty-one years ago tonight I was ordained to the priesthood.

Kazpah organized a “Strange Beverage Taste-Off” at Google (otherwise known as “the company that badly needs a theologian-chaplain”) and posted the results.

An Advent Calendar of the wrapping-paper from oranges.

I’ve added the whole series of performance video clips from the Desperate Measures show last Friday. In case anyone prefers not to navigate over to YouTube to select performance clips one by one, I’ll paste in the embedded frames in the extended part of this post. I have a fair amount to learn about video editing, but at least now I know more about what I don’t yet know.

For viewers unacquainted with my family, Josiah is the tall young man in the black suit with an orange shirt.
Continue reading “The Whole Schmeer”

So evidently there was a rumor going around that AT&T would offer a special data-only plan so that hearing-impaired iPhone owners could use their phones for data only. This makes sense, it’s a reasonable accommodation, all to the good. But the rumor was only that — no such plan exists, which is a shame. But, they’re working on it, which is good.

Take a step back, though, and what I see is that there exists a huge demand for a data-only service — demand so intense that AT&T anticipates fending off potential customers by requiring medical certification — that AT&T has already decided to thwart. Got that? Eager would-be customers for a service AT&T already plans to offer, whom AT&T has decided it will not serve. Perhaps Mordac, denier of information services, has been promoted to AT&T’s marketing department.

I suspect that this approach is just what Google has in view (according to Harold Feld’s analysis) — the kind of dog-in-the-manger corporate strategy that thinks it can determine what customers should be allowed to want. Time to circumvent the whole dunderheaded system.

Micah called my attention to this story on AppleInsider, which notes that the Apple-NBC feud has culminated in the iTunes Music and Video Temporary Licensing Outlet dropping all NBC-produced programming. Good luck to NBC, trying to make money by requiring users to run Internet Explorer, download the NBC proprietary media player, and maintain the latest .Net framework (as a result of which, they can watch their purchases for 48 hours before they’re automatically deleted, and they can’t watch them on any handheld device apart from the CPU to which the file was originally downloaded). And you get to pay extra for all that grooviness!

But the money line comes from NBC’s Jeff Zucker: “We know that Apple has destroyed the music business — in terms of pricing — and if we don’t take control, they’ll do the same thing on the video side.” Yup, “pricing” — that’s what defines music and video.

Michael asked, the other day, what I thought about the Amazon Kindle — I promise I’ll get back to that, but first go to Michael’s place and download his album, happy xmas, x is here. ’Tis the season.

Josiah elicited permission from all the members of his troupe, so I have begun uploading selections from the November 30 concert by Marlboro College’s Desperate Measures. The title sequence for the first clip — “I Can See Clearly Now,” fortuitously — is protracted to cover the joggling that ensued when a late-arriving audience member plopped down precisely in front of my carefully-rigged camera.

I’ll upload more later, but you can follow links to the YouTube pages for succeeding songs: “Torn,” “King of Spain,” Save Tonight,” and “Zombie Jamboree” (so far). Share and enjoy!

Take a look, if you’re so inclined, at Working Preacher — a site chock full of helpful materials for preachers, all offered free and without intrusive digital restrictions. The site is underwritten by Luther Seminary’s Center for Biblical Preaching, for which all the sermon helps and essays and commentaries serve both as support material and extremely valuable public relations.

I’m not sure who masterminded this move; a number of people at Luther are extremely technologically savvy (of course, Mary is my hero in this respect, but I don’t mean to neglect numerous colleagues, students, and friends of all sorts who work at Luther these days), and several years ago I harangued several participants in this project about a Luther adopting this same approach for a different resource. Cheers to Luther and the Center, though, for making a profoundly clueful, web-aware move.

When they scrawled on the walls of the London Underground, “Clapton Is God,” little did anyone imagine. . . .

But Krista discovered the occluded connection that unites me with the tremendous blues guitarist who has made a second career of mongering sentimental schlock. Doesn’t matter to me; Layla and Other Love Songs needs no supplement.

I’d make a big point about being here to stay, except Margaret is flying down to Durham to check in with her committee and to support her friend Sarah through the last stage of her prelims. Pippa and I, anyway, are here for a reasonable chunk of time.

On our drive to Vermont on Friday, we passed a sign that caught Margaret’s and my attention — something about a gluten-free bakery. Since Margaret hasn’t eaten any gluten (willingly) for twenty years or so, patiently watching as her family wolfed down pasta, pastry, sandwiches, and sundry other goodies, we observed that a stop on the way back would be well-deserved. So on yesterday’s return trip, we pulled in at Sherry Lynn’s Gluten-Free Bakery, which is actually not so much only a bakery as an honest-to-goodness restaurant.

We entered and looked warily around, at which the proprietor came up and greeted us warmly. “How much of this is gluten-free?” Margaret asked cautiously. “Everything is gluten-free,” he said firmly; “Which one is the celiac?” We indicated Margaret. He reached into a display case and grabbed a pastry. “Try this. It’s an apple cider fritter.” Margaret beamed; it was delicious, and the texture was just right — not all crumbly, as are the products of so many gluten-free recipes.

The food was terrific, but what was greatest of all was Margaret’s exhilaration at being able to order any [vegetarian] thing she saw. She wept — honest. We brought home some baked goods, and wondered how many more times we could rationalize driving all the way to Vermont.

Desperate Measures rock Vermont

Si estimated that forty people or so would come to the concert last night — that’s already more than ten percent of the student body of Marlboro — but when the Desperate Measures strode confidently onstage to begin their concert, almost every seat in the auditorium was filled, making the attendance somewhere around 110. With an eager audience crowded into the venue, the stakes were high, but the local heroes did not disappoint. Bouncing through a program of a capella standards and fresh arrangements, the Measures delighted the house from beginning to (all-too-soon) end.

Dropping the artificial journalistic tone, now, we were thrilled and proud and excited by the evening in tons of ways. First, of course, we were very impressed that Si pulled this group together, devised some of the arrangements himself, rehearsed the group, and brought off a very creditable show. His talent and initiative shone, and that felt great. Second, we were touched at how visibly and unaffectedly proud he was of us; he acknowledged our family several times during the performance, and the group sang “Happy Birthday” to Pippa in the middle of their set.

The performance itself was excellent; I have it on somewhat wobbly video, which I’ll post to YouTube once Si gets approval from the rest of the group. After the show, and the enthusiastically-demanded encore, we provided doughnuts and cider for the forty people we had expected to show up — quickly gobbled up by the hundred! The audience included the President of Marlboro, who took time to have a wonderful talk with us, praising Josiah to the skies and tuning in attentively to Margaret’s and my academic pursuits.

It was a very, very special evening for Margaret and me as parents, for Pip as a sister, and for Josiah as a performer, an organizer, a student, and especially as a cherished son and brother.