A wonderful, very full day! I started early, catching the first train to Clarkston, where I dropped in as substitute celebrant for a clergy colleague. The congregation and I know one another well by now, so we greeted one another warmly. The sermon went well — I brought one out from files, dusted it off…
All posts in April 2012
Stirling With Nick
One of our godchildren, Nick, has come north to visit us in the chosen land of Scotland, from his dreary grind of going on sight-seeing tours, seeing theatrical productions, and discussing Romantic poetry in London. No wonder he fled to Glasgow! Since we felt obliged to show Nick some of the best Scotland has to…
Ecology & Sensibility
All is well in Glasgow, apart from the marking Margaret has to do and an annoying cold (or allergy) that jumped on me last weekend and, not taking the hint, has lingered through the week. We’ve had a truly remarkable run of weather recently. Remarkable, that is, for its unvarying typicality. Starting I-don’t-remember-how-many-days-ago, the high…
Spring Cleaning
If I take time to write a thoughtful, weighty blog post, I’ll lose momentum and won’t finish my chores.
Gibs auf
It was very early in the morning, the streets were clean and empty, and I was going to the rail station. As I compared the clock on the tower with my watch, I saw that it was already much later than I had thought; I had to really hurry up — the shock of this…
What Makes It Good: The Beat
As Mattie Z. said in the comments to my previous post, ‘rock is all about the beat’. Can’t argue with that — both the authority of one of my oldest longest vintage music-arguing-friends and the compulsion of the beat brook no contradiction. Instead of arguing aye or nay, let’s make some distinctions. First, there’s…
Seeing Byres Road Twice
A couple of months ago, Margaret and I went to the monthly antiques fair (as we always do). I think I may have just dropped off some pens for repair by Peter Crook, but I didn’t buy anything. Margaret scored [this part deleted, ’cos it would reveal something that will be a gift for someone]…
What Is ‘Evidence’?
One of the great problems in learning exegesis is that ‘evidence’ is not what you think it might be.† Or — to be more precise — most students don’t apply themselves to learning how to formulate a convincing exegetical argument; while student papers show many sorts of weakness,* I find the leading exegetical problem to…
What Makes It Good
About a year ago, maybe more, our friend Rich pressed me to articulate the grounds for my music snobbery. ‘If,’ he reasoned, ‘you are going to sneer at my taste, you at least owe me an account of why your taste is better.’ [Editorial note for the sake of Truth: Rich did not say that,…
On Death, Part 3
To summarise the New Testament understanding of death, then: Death constitutes both an inevitable element of temporal life (life according to the flesh), and a representative figure for all the characteristics of temporal, physical life. Thus Death bears a defining connections to sin, not necessarily because sin causes death, but because both sin and death…
Short Status
It’s not that I have nothing to say, but that — between writing-for-publication, doing things, and resting, I haven’t squeezed any blogging in. The Doctrine Committee meets tomorrow afternoon, though, so after I have a talk with a radio person about technology and religion, I should really finish up the ‘On Death’ series. But really,…
When Criticism Isn’t Critical
I don’t remember where I left off in the “How To Do Exegesis” series, but this afternoon I’m provoked to write about a phenomenon that puzzles me as a scholar, frustrates me as a colleague, and depresses me as a teacher. This is the phenomenon of which I’m thinking: Sometimes a reputable scholar responds to…