Author: AKMA

Sermon coming up next Wednesday — the readings will be Acts 20:28-38 and John 17:11b-19. For now, I don’t have the vaguest idea what I’ll say, but I’ve opened a file within which to include my half-baked notions.

I’m a Firefox advocate, no question — but my browser regularly hangs with a even few tabs open. I suspect a glitch with Java or pop-ups or something, but so far I’m just force-quitting and restarting it.

The Times says that Abu Faraj al-Libbi is not such a high-ranking Dread Terrorist after all, but U. S. news sources haven’t affirmed or repudiated (or, so far as I’ve yet been able to determine, even picked up) the story. What’s with this?

Toronto: This afternoon, it was announced that an anonymous donor has established the Cluetrain Foundation to provide opportunities for reflection, research, analysis, writing, podcasting, travel, teaching, and productive goofing-off. The first recipient of a Cluetrain Grant is Michael O’Connor Clarke, better known in some quarters as “Ruari’s dad” (no disrespect to Charlie and Lily, and of course not to Leona).

Future grants may include research grants into eugenics and marketing, swinoculture and hamster husbandry, journalism and Joyce, photography and open-source blogging software, satire and philanthropy, librarianship and RPG, talking bears and lobsters, rhetoric and intellectual property and visual communication, and perhaps even technology and theological hermeneutics (among others).

In the meantime, the Foundation will gladly put inquirers into contact with grant-holder[s], particularly if said inquirer has an attractive job offer. Or would like to donate to the Worthy Blogger Support Fund of the Cluetrain Foundation.

In response to Dr. Holly’s query, I’ve been mulling over my sense that there’s an effective formal distinction to be drawn between the Church of England’s separation from the Church of Rome at the English Reformation (on one hand) and the Episcopal Church’s hypothetical removal from the Anglican Communion.

Could this make a difference? The separation at the Reformation took place in an essentially Erastian environment, where the transition from Roman Catholicism to Anglicanism involved the [mandatory] change of allegiance from one source of governance to another, but with the infrastructure largely intact (except, of course, the monasteries) — such that an English believer who did not want to be an Anglican had few options for articulating that resistance. Emigration and treason were the main alternatives. One could presumably be an Anglican with catholic allegiance, within a largely reformed church, as there was no other above-the-table alternative expression of the Church in England. The continuing identification of citizenship with a positive relation to Anglicanism well into the nineteenth century constitutes an environment that obliges the church to incorporate a broad range of dissent within its self-definition.

That’s part of my puzzlement about the current retrospective “This is true Anglicanism” impulse in some quarters. I had always thought that true Anglicanism bore with the potty vicar who was sure that Jesus was really an astral traveller, or that theological doctrine was a pointless appendix to the finer points of fox-hunting. Such people come, they occupy seats of greater or lesser prominence and authority, then they retire or die, and the church itself doesn’t change much. The point isn’t that we don’t care about error or try to correct error, but that the Truth is stronger, lasts longer, and eventually renders error moot. Truth counteracts error from within the church. (And that also provides us with the opportunity for learning the ways in the church may need correction — from within.)

In a world wherein the difference between being an Episcopalian (U.S.-style) and being an alphabet-soup Anglican-Communion recognized Anglican, a catholic-minded person can remain in fellowship with the trans-national church she or he recognizes by driving a little further to the congregation of choice. One is almost obliged to exercise private judgment (horrors, John Henry!) in ascertaining to which body one might belong.

That’s my present best shot at articulating the difference I sense — but I’m venturing this as a trial balloon, not as a forceful claim about the nature of Truth and catholicity.

For those keeping track of the location of various delegates from the Adam family, Margaret returned from Durham this morning, and is resting up from her year of academic exertion. We’re intensely pleased that she’s home with her family, and we’ll be doing everything we can to recharge her for another go-round with academia in the fall.

Pippa and I will exhibit an image each at Seabury’s Community Art Exhibit from today to early June. Pippa’s hanging a painting entitled ’The Purple Dress,” and I one of my photographic representations of problems in hermeneutics. I’ll post her painting to flickr once she clears it — but she’s stern about my releasing any of her work before she decides it’s appropriate.

I followed a link from the Tofu Hut to a page that points to dozens of online music videos, and nostalgia impelled me to click on a couple, then to wonder about several others (such as, for instance, the u2 “Gloria” video). Why is it so hard to find these online, and why are so many of them low-res, or pixellated-streamed, tiny frames?

These are promotional devices — commercials — and there’s an eager audience for them. Why do the record companies make it hard for me to amplify my desire to buy their products?

After I wished for the t-shirt, how could I not order a print of Paul Beard’s “Your Failed Business Model” design? Yes, now the shirt is all red, with the printing in yellow: perfect!

(Again, props to meg for having said it first, so far as I know.)

So I went to Amazon to test the new concordance feature about which David blogged (to no avail, alas) (I mean, “I went to Amazon to no avail,” not “he blogged about it to no avail”), when I noticed that not only were the regular books I’ve written available from Amazon, but also the reviews and articles I published in Interpretation.

I’m proud of “Walk This Way”; I think it segues nicely into the lecture I gave a couple of weeks ago, and someday maybe they’ll mate and give birth to a book. But $6 is a little much even for a very good article by itself. I’d understand if you held out for the complete issue of Interpretation for just a little more. But the mini-reviews for $6? That’s just absurd. My review of Lohse’s Theological Ethics of the New Testament is just 300 words or so. Email me, and I’ll send you the Word file for a buck.

It’s cool that Interpretation has ventured into electronic distribution. I just wish they’d done it a little more generously.

It’s Kombinat’s fault.

All I can say is, we’re vegetarians here — we’re in solidarity with you, sisters and brudders.

In musing about the possible outcomes of impending decisions in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, it occurred to me that I might appeal to a diocesan bishop I’ve met, whose public theological statements match mine almost exactly. Maybe he’d admit me to his diocese.

He’s the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I’m not one of the iPod Conspiracy Theorists who’s convinced that Steve Jobs invested extra developer work-hours to make the “shuffle” playlist favor certain songs rather than others; “random” (or “pseudo-random,” to be precise) makes the most sense to me. That doesn’t prevent my taking delight in the juxtapositions that the iPod can produce, powered by impartial algorithms.

For instance, my iPod just played El-P (feat. Cage)’s “Oxycontin Part 2,” then followed it with the Temptations singing “Cloud Nine.” Apple can’t teach it to do that!