Month: July 2010

Today is St Swithin’s Day, commemorating the English saint-bishop, quite obscure in life but after his death famed as patron of Winchester cathedral and as a miracle-worker (and reference figure for a terrific song by Billy Bragg). Most of all, he became one of the best-known weather forecasters (along with hairy caterpillars and Punxsatawney Phil).
 
The lore says

St. Swithin’s day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St. Swithin’s day if thou be fair
For forty days ’twill rain nae mair.

I was wondering whether St Swithin (or “Swithun,” since, back in the tenth century, people weren’t fussy about spelling) restricted his weather forecast to England, or whether he reflected the tendency of expansionist English thinking and simply assumed that everything that applied to England applied also to other realms in the British Isles. Swithin’s own sphere of experience and interest seems to have focused solely on Winchester, but the concluding line of the quatrain sounds a lot like a Scottish pronunciation. Why should our weather be controlled by someone who may never have travelled north of the Thames?
 
In other words, it’s raining today in Scotland, and forty days is a long time.
 

I finished the first pass through the Epistle of James this afternoon — so if my editor demanded a draft on short notice, I could send in something that was uneven but not incomplete. This feels very good. I came home from work early and opened a novel, made a double portion of red curry (now I have some to put away), and as the evening settled the day’s gentle rain turned into a torrential downpour. I might be tempted to dash out to sit under an awning sipping a cup of decaf americano, but I don’t know what would be open, and I think I’ll just settle back here and read with the away-from-the-wind window wide open, swallowing fresh wet air, and soaking up the relaxation.
 
I will pick James up again on Monday, from the beginning (much of the formatting, alas, is from the pre-Unicode era), but the next few days are marked for very calm, leisurely contemplation of the five courses in which I’m teaching next year, the novels I have stacked up for Margaret’s eventual arrival, and permitting my mind to wander without the stern oversight of my work ethic.

I watched last night’s World Cup final with my colleague Rich King on an HDTV screen so big that it showed not only the complete pitch, but the stadium and parking lots on the sides. Closeups of the presenters’ faces were like watching dermatological microsurgery.
 
About the game itself: I was inclined to support the Netherlands, partly because of the somewhat jolly reputation the nation has, partly because I know Adriaan Tijsseling and had lunch with Adam Curry at BloggerCon I (before he and Dave Winer fell out), and partly because of that whole Armada thing. I have to agree, though, that too much of the Netherlands’ game involved brute force instead of elegant football. (I just can’t imagine what Van Marwijk is complaining about; it was only Webb’s sheer indulgent love of the World Cup final as event that kept de Jong from being red carded in the first half, and the late tackle by Van Bommel was questionable as well). I might have had a change of heart and cheered Spain to victory, but Arjen Robben was playing so admirably — keeping his own play relatively clean, and striving desperately to score — that I couldn’t abandon him. I’d deplore his having been interfered with on his second big scoring chance late in the second half, but by that point I couldn’t really blame Spain for playing the game on the terms Holland* had set. Anyway, well done to Spain, and a qualified well done to the Netherlands, and I’m supporting Scotland to win the World Cup next time.
 
Rich made a brilliant broccoli pesto for dinner, and as soon as I got home I looked for a recipe by which I could replicate his triumph. As it turns out, the BBC has a simple recipe that sounds quite do-able even for a culinary simpleton such as I. Rich’s recipe came via an intricate chain of transmission, and I’m sure it involves subtleties that the BBC omits, but I’m already imagining giving this a try in a few days.
 

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* Margaret and I chatted about the propriety of using “Holland” vs. “the Netherlands,” so I looked up the “terminology” page of the Wikipedia and learned that although it is inappropriate to use the regional name “Holland” for the whole nation, for team-sport purposes “Holland” is an acceptable designation. Plus, as I noted to Margaret, “Hup, Hup, Holland” is a more euphonious cheer than “Nup, Nup, the Netherlands.”

With the encouragement of my boss at St Mary’s, I’m passing around word that we’re looking for a Vice Provost for the cathedral. It’s not a training position, not a curacy, but a position for someone with experience. It would perhaps prepare you for subsequent service at a senior level, or provide a setting to ratchet down from a senior position which has become too onerous. I’m especially calling for the attention of my friends Stateside; St Mary’s is looking especially for help in consolidating the growth of the past few years and moving forward into the next phase of our congregational life.
 
I will add as a strictly personal note that it might be easiest for a single person. Margaret and I have had a degree of vexation with visas, ourselves. But you know I love Glasgow, and the congregation is at a very promising juncture of its corporate life. Wonderful, strong music program; liturgically deliberate but not very high church; good overlap with University community, though there’s probably work to be done enhancing that connection; my non-stipendiary colleagues are tremendous to work with; and I have very high regard for the Provost, who is a strong presence in the Scottish Episcopal Church, a lively intellect, and an accomplished preacher and congregational leader. He and I take different views on a number of topics — in some cases, very different views — and we can hold those divergent views with respect and clarity (I don’t try to undermine him, he doesn’t try to override me). That’s an important indicator, I think; too many clergy respond insecurely to difference, and they redouble (overt or covert) hostility to anyone who doesn’t sign on their dotted lines, and that can be a perilous, frustrating position for a member of staff. I haven’t seen that in Kelvin, and I appreciate that immensely. So that’s my non-stipendiary-clergy-team view of the position; I don’t have any role in the search process, so there may be aspects of the position that I’m entirely wrong about. Send a query (to the cathedral), or write to Kelvin, or just apply and see what happens.
 
I preached this morning, too, which went moderately well. “Moderately,” because it became clear during my reading of the gospel that my microphone wasn’t on (and it’s important that we all be miked). As I processed to the pulpit, I fiddled with all the buttons and connections, and everything seemed to be in order. I extricated the main power pack, the on-off switch, and the mic itself from multiple layers of clothing and vestments, and our MC dashed off to grab a spare, which I manipulated into place (sort of) while standing at the ready to being the sermon.
 
Once I got going, the sermon part was fine (apart from occasional unanticipated squawks from the back-up mic, which gave me a start). Since we at St Mary’s are moving ahead into a new phase, for which our Vice Provost will play an essential role, and because congregational growth (change!) usually occasions stress and disruption, I preached o the Colossians text — hoping that by working together and thinking theologically together, we can keep our bearings through any storms that may come our way.
 
Continue reading “Church News”

Many people will know the tremendous George Carlin routine about the differences between baseball and football, based on the US usage of the word “football.” Over at a sabermetrically-oriented baseball site, Alex Remington compares baseball with (world) football relative to the claim that both sports are “boring.” As a lifelong baseball fan and a new recruit to being a football fan, I read the article with an eagerness born of my fascination with both sports, neither of which seems boring to me (in fact, I’m much more likely to be bored by the things that promoters do to “enhance” a sporting event: the sausage races, over-amplified music, ceaseless contests and advertisements, and so on). But Remington makes a delightfully apt comparison between World Cup football and the NCAA’s annual tournament: “World Cup has an added dimension beyond regular soccer: it’s a single-elimination tournament with excitement fueled by nationalism. It’s like March Madness, if the universities had armies and navies.”
 

Ruth Gledhill tweets that the leak about Jeffrey John has scuttled his nomination to serve as Bishop of Southwark (CNC = “Crown Nominations Commission”; “lost his rag” = “became enraged”). Take that for what it’s worth, but it renders the painfully long discussion from the other day moot, insofar as it applies to Dr. John.

The BBC, on the languages of Scotland.

Let’s assume for a minute that I finish my last lectionary-help essay, and am therefore entirely caught up on my obligated writing (apart from book contracts, but that’s a whole different wok of vegetables). One of my next projects involves tracking down some problematic premises about interpretation that seem plausible, even obvious, at the outset, but that lead to dire confusions further down the line. One of these premises involves thinking about communication on the model of code, so that my asking my office-neighbour Doug how his weekend went should be understood as an exercise usefully comparable to my sending Boris Badenov* a telegram that says, “VBRIN ZP NBOIOR KLDDA VRONIAK.”
 
I won’t go into the details of my argument here and now (I’ll surely blog some of it out anon, as I have done in the past), but I need to leave a mark here pointing to Barry J. Blake’s Secret Language: Codes, Tricks, Spies, Thieves, and Witchcraft, which Scott McLemee mentions in this morning’s Inside Higher Education. I doubt it’ll be the most important conversation partner of my essay(s), but it will surely inform and strengthen what I have to say (especially since it’s written by a linguistics scholar).
 

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* OK, I suppose that at some point in my life I should confess my ardent childhood crush on Natasha. Six-year-old me could not imagine glamour more intense than she embodied. Forgive me, Father, for fifty years ago I lusted after a cartoon character (inasmuch as a six-year-old “lusts” in a culpable sense, and inasmuch as one could commit an illicit act with a cartoon character).

A long time ago in a galaxy now lost unto us, the Fontifier offered the web the opportunity to make anybody’s handwriting into a font (it looks as though they’re charing $9 for it now). This morning, Leigh linked to a site where Pilot (the pen people) will make a web font out of your handwriting, so that they’ll allow you to email messages sent in your “handwriting” (I don’t yet see a way to download and keep your writing).
 
In my case, both the old and the new made something of a dog’s breakfast from my writing. The software had a hard time with my swashes and elevation of glyphs with descenders. But the really impossible element was letterspacing; my flowing hand was broken up into discrete units (understandable) and set far apart from the other glyphs, so any trace of continuity evaporated.
 
I’ll try again, probably, using a block-letter approach. Others who have less flowing handwriting will probably do very well. At the moment, though, my Pilot handwriting-type is not only not ready for prime time, it’s not ready for 4:30 AM with overfull ashtrays and empty bottles, spilled wine, and the beginnings of a hangover.
 

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The electrician told me to be home from 800 to 1300. He has 22 minutes to go, but so far there’s been no sign of him; some things are the same in the US and the UK. What you hear is the sound of my teeth gnashing.

Let’s start by underscoring something: the paradigmatic transgression of the Law of the God of Israel is idolatry. It’s no coincidence that Judaic moral reflection pays relatively little attention to Adam and Eve, and much more to the sin of the Golden Calf and the apostasy of Baal Peor. In the legal portions of the Torah, God sets out numerous specific commands, ordinances, and statutes; but over and over again God cautions the people against idolatry. Not only is idolatry a sin itself, but it entangles the idolater in various other sorts of misbehaviour. Idolatry is both an arch-sin, and a cause of further specific sins. So God warns the people against it, commands them not to do it, explains that they’ll slide into all sorts of wickedness if they relax their exclusion of idolatry the tiniest bit, and generally does everything divinely possible to fend off the perils of idol-worship.
 
It’s very, very, very bad.
 
This morning in church we read the marvellous story about Naaman, the general in the army of Aram, who suffered from leprosy until Elisha sent him to wash in the Jordan. A great many sermons will have touched on the hospitality of Elisha, in curing a foreigner (and the leader of their army at that), and on Naaman’s scorn for the Jordan, about Naaman’s conersion to worship of the God of Israel, or on the ways that leprosy prefigures X or Y or Z (I’m usually very dubious about “yesterday’s leprosy is like today’s [name an affliction]” sermons; they usually seem imprecisely attuned to leprosy in antiquity, and they have been known to give pain to contemporaries with the affliction-du-jour. But I digress). Kelvin preached a fine sermon this morning about rivers and baptism and otters. But what struck me this morning while I heard the lessons was the extraordinary gesture at the end of this part of the story. Naaman asked Elisha, “But may the Lord pardon your servant on one count: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow down in the house of Rimmon, when I do bow down in the house of Rimmon, may the Lord pardon your servant on this one count.” And Elisha said, “Go in peace.”
 
Naaman asks Elisha for a free pass for condoning and participating in idolatrous worship. Now, Naaman makes it clear his heart wouldn’t be in it; he imports two muleloads of the soil of Israel so that he can pray to Israel’s God on, as it were, a plot of Israel’s land in absentia. One might think that if there’s anyone, anywhere, who had to be guarded against involvement with idolatry, it would be the recent convert Naaman (“how soon these newbies forget their obligations!”) — but Elisha seems to say, “That’s all right. Go ahead.” Go ahead and do the single most offensive thing possible in the eyes of God. No biggie.
 
I suspect that part of the reason I was moved almost to tears this morning was that it has been reported in the press that Jeffrey John, the Dean of St Alban’s, will be short-listed to become the new Bishop of Southwark. This would be a pretty dull bit of news relative to a well-known, intelligent, pastorally-acute, effective clergyman, were it not for the fact that the Rev. Dr. John is gay and in a committed civil partnership. (There’s a lot more as well, including an agonising drama over Dr. John’s previous nomination to be Bishop of Reading, which nomination his close friend the Archbishop of Canterbury apparently required him to refuse; and there’s the additional six years of sturm und drang in the battered Anglican Communion. And the recent consecration of the Rt Rev Mary Glasspool as Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles. Et cetera.)
 
Some proponents of Dr. John’s consecration will point out that his relationship is strictly celibate; hence, although he loves another man, their love is no more transgressive than Diego Maradona’s affection for whichever of his players he’s closest to at the moment — or David’s legendary love for Jonathan. I have heard tell that some people disbelieve him, though that smacks of the worst sort of bigotry; gay folks can be celibate just as much as anybody else, and Christianity has known and approved (cautiously) celibate heterosexual marriages. Some have alleged his past sexual activity permanently disqualifies him from church office. In all of this, I feel acute pain for his enduring the grim experience of dozens, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people making loud pronouncements about the extent and moral ramifications of his sex life.
 
I bring this all up this morning because I have heard no allegation against Dr. John’s serving as a bishop except those related to his sexuality. In every other respect, everybody who has mentioned him has cited no defect to his qualifications for this ministry. Many of us discern no impediment at all to lesbian and gay clergy serving as bishops, so that’s no problem for us. And among those who do object on the grounds of commandments against sexual activity, Dr. John’s public avowal of celibacy (much more about his sex life than I want to know) should settle the matter; the relevant prohibitions forbid sexual activity, not affection. Yet even if simply loving someone of the same sex spiritually as opposed to physically were forbidden, which it is not and which possibility I advance despite my unyielding confidence that it cannot intelligibly be, even so — cannot Dr. John be shown as much grace by his opponents as Elisha showed Naaman?
 

I’ll be teaching New Testament Ethics this coming year, and I was expecting to draw on one of the standard monographs on the topic to contextualise our studies — sort of “where we got the idea that ‘biblical ethics’ or ‘New Testament ethics’ made sense as a distinct category.” I was surprised to see that the vast preponderance of books about NT ethics in the University library (a) spend almost no time exploring what they mean by “ethics” or “NT ethics” in the first place, and (b) devote most of their argument to a book-by-book analysis of “the ethics of Matthew” or “the ethics of Jude” or whatever.
 
Now, I plan in the end to lead the course in a very different direction (no shock there for anyone who’s acquainted with the kinds of thing I say about hermeneutics and theological interpretation). I would quite like, however, to have a bit of orientation for the students so that they have a sense of the alternatives. Ideally, they would have a very even-handed sense of the alternatives. As a bonus, it would help if the work in question helped students distinguish such terms as deonotological, consequentialist, apodictic, casuistic, and so on.
 
Now, I haven’t looked through my office, just the library. And I didn’t consult any of the heavy reference tomes — so there may well be an overview article in, say, the Dictionary of Theological Interpretation or similar source. I was just struck by the consistency of the sources that I did encounter. Any suggestions of useful sources welcome.
 

“I came here to drink milk and kick ass — and I just finished my milk.”

I do welcome comments, so I will remember to ask cooking questions more often.
 

Last fall, I cooked for myself by relying heavily on supplemented ramen; then, having been convinced that ramen was too salty for my well-being, I’ve tried to branch out and develop ramen alternatives. I’ve gotten to the point of having several reliable, convenient, simple, convenient, simple recipes for pseudo-ramen mains.
 
My principal “carrier” ingredients have been rice, rice noodles, and thin egg noodles; this part is great, easy, and perfectly satisfactory. The solid ingredients are under control, too: peppers, onions, edamame, frozen mixed veggies for added variety. I’ll probably pick up some courgettes too, but I don’t want to buy more fresh veggies than I can prepare and eat within a reasonable interval. And Quorn provides satisfactory pseudo-meat.
 
The remaining area for refinement involves low-salt, vegetarian-friendly, gluten-free, flavourful, savory sauces. I’ve found a veggie-friendly barbecue sauce, which I use with noodles, veggies, and mince for Alternative A. Our family has an old favorite (known simply as “The Mixture”) of rice and vegetables without specific extra seasoning for Alternative B. I’d like to be able to pull a curry paste off the shelf and mix it with, say, tomato sauce or coconut milk for a curry version of my basic repertoire, but off-the-shelf curry pastes tend to incorporate fish paste or shrimp paste. And many teriyaki or sweet-and-sour sauces are too salty, or not-gluten-free, which complicates things further. If I can find a fish-free curry paste or learn to whip up a reliable curry sauce quickly, and if I can find or develop a low-salt teriyaki alternative, I’ll be well satisfied. But I’m still working on these.