AKMA’s Random Thoughts

In the midst of a succession of administrative meetings, Seabury’s Greek reading group devoted a mirth-filled session to reading Mark 13:14ff together. There are probably quarters where 90 minutes of parsing, translating, analyzing, and working through a two-thousand year old Greek text doesn’t sound like the high point in a busy day — but you wouldn’t have known it in office 24 (or, as Pippa puts it, “0024 — License to Teach”). Too bad Brooke couldn’t make it today. . . .

Friday at diocesan convention, I voted for the relatively few candidates who had bothered to run for diocesan office, and read the motions scheduled for debate on Saturday. As I looked around the conference area, I wondered whether all this was the best, most effective, holiest use to which we could put the countless person-hours that the convention required. I thought about how little I knew of the candidates for diocesan office; even if I were more of a social butterfly on the diocesan scene, I might well not have known half the candidates (several people were nominated from the floor). I can’t imagine that we’re ordering our ecclesiastical life in the wisest possible way, and that saddens me.

The elections proceed as though the identity, the faith and theological insight of the candidates make no difference. The business of the convention, which this year was mostly administrative minutiae, might equally probably have included a diocesan response to the Windsor Report or the general condition of the Episcopal Church. If we had such a motion, it would have been decided by the same indifferently-elected* delegates as disposes of the method of appointing campus ministries delegates to Diocesan Convention.

My experience in teaching Early Church History to first-year Episcopal seminarians suggests that convention delegates may not come to their responsibilities richly armed with an appreciation of the elements of Christian history or theology. We turn to their legislative wisdom on the sound premise that all are equally members of the Body of Christ; I wonder, though, whether that might not eclipse the equally true, and arguably more pertinent, point that

to each has been given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. There are varieties of gifts and services, but it is the same God who inspires them in all. Therefore, each working for a good purpose may have a different gift; but these are all the works of the same Spirit, who distributes different gifts to different people. . . .

If I saw more reason to be confident that parish and diocesan elections involved careful discernment of gifts, I would probably feel more sanguine about ecclesiastical politics. Under present circumstances, I find it difficult not to leave diocesan convention with more Dilbertian sense of resignation.

“Very well,” someone says, “What’s your better idea, big-mouth?” I don’t pretend that my gifts include planning for legislative processes, but I would think it mere common sense that the exercise of institutional authority in the church be reserved for people who have demonstrated at least a minimal fluency in the subjects about which they’re about to make decisions. “Participation in church governance” apart from theological, historical, or biblical literacy becomes a self-perpetuating qualification that sets a disquietingly low bar for wisdom** in ecclesiastical leadership.

* “Indifferently-elected” in the sense that the elections did not involve searching examination of the merits of the various nominees; they may have been nominated by direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit, for all I know, or by over-whelming majorities of the voters (the latter must be the case in the several elections where nominees ran unopposed). The new office-holders may be absolutely the best people for their jobs, but that ideal match arose out of some factor other than legislative deliberation and discernment.

**Note that I don’t rule out the possibility that someone without academic theological formation may be a commendable church leader with sound theological judgment. I doubt, however, that it makes sense to presume that anyone whom a parish elects as a convention delegate must thereby exemplify such laudable gifts. Indeed, I could (if I were in a nasty frame of mind) amass considerable empirical data that such saints constitute exceptions to the overwhelmingly dominant rule. To hark back to my customary comparison, I’d hesitate to consult a surgeon who was elected without careful attention to her medical training.

Well, Hat Tip #1 is “Don’t wear your hat around Pippa; she’s on a hat-pilfering kick, and may run off with it.”

But the hat tip I had in mind when I chose the entry’s title involved acknowledging Tom’s beautiful riposte to my musings about Bea and hermeneutics (I almost wrote “ruminations,” but given the topic of the entry and the etymology of the word, that seemed distasteful). I have to go to class this morning, and work on a sermon for midday — I wish I could read Tom’s essay aloud to the congregation instead.

Off to chapel, and class, and chapel, and then diocesan convention (wheee!). . . .

My morning started with an interview for the CDR Radio network, set up by the publicist at Fortress Press; I went ahead and talked through some of the implications of my work with interviewer Chad Bresson before I explored their website and learned that the radio channel’s sense of doctrine and mine diverge about as sharply as one could imagine. I’m almost glad I didn’t know at first. I’ll be intrigued to know how this develops; surely my work should be upsetting at least to some of their listeners, though I tried to hew to the most irenic possible presentation of my argument.

I then dashed to the meeting of Seabury’s self-study accreditation subcommittee, which went pretty much as I had anticipated: too much to do, too little time. Somewhat to my surprise, though, everyone present agreed that it would be worth trying to use a wiki for developing our shared documents between meetings. That seems eminently practical and sensible to me, so I hadn’t dared hope it would fly. Maybe it still won’t work out, but at least we got as far as implementing it.

Oh, and you won’t very often catch me siding with Starbuck’s about anything, much less Starbuck’s plus The Economist, and even less often agreeing with Starbuck’s and The Economist over against Oxfam. The other day, though, I came to this article (through Jordon’s contextless links) and I have to say, I think Oxfam is barking up the wrong tree. I’m not signing up to be a Starbuckisto, but of the alternatives sketched here I think the “appellation controlée” approach vastly more sensible than the “trademark a bean” approach.
Continue reading “Another Of Those Days”

I’m the chair of the subcommittee on Theological Curriculum and Degree Programs for Seabury’s decennial re-accrediation process. Right now, that means I’m trying to read the regulations, criteria, and standards without succumbing to a massive headache. I can’t express adequately how ill-suited I am to this task.

No, I’m not referring to the kind of theory that exasperates plain, sensible readers.

Most days, I walk Beatrice first thing, before I head off for morning chapel. We follow a very predictable path, which (I find) helps prompt her to accomplish the purpose for the promenade. When the time arrives for her to produce the material component of our morning exercise, she slows down and begins sniffing a particular patch of earth with even greater intensity than is usual for her. She circles several times, and frequently adjusts her position several times; I gather that the precise location of her deposit makes a big difference to her (it doesn’t seem to matter that I will, in a matter of seconds, scoop that ephemeral monument up in a plastic bag). Within the highly limited sense in which one can discuss any matter of cognition with regard to a dog who has fluff for brains, the location of her morning donation seems meaningful.

Now, if that premise be in any sense true, this seems to present a case in which the meaning truly is in the text. Her text constitutes as it were a natural sign of Bea’s existence and digestive activity (“Natural signs are those which, apart from any intention or desire of using them as signs, do yet lead to the knowledge of something else, as, for example, smoke when it indicates fire”; On Christian Doctrine II.i.2).

The reason I first started thinking about this topic involves the odd disjunction between the amount of effort that Bea devotes to the endeavor of finding exactly the right spot for her product, and the margin of error between her final sniffs and the ultimate location of her text. She made me think of the ardent but incompetent poet who agonizes over each syllable, but whose weak grasp of the language dooms the poem itself to failure.

On the other hand, the “meaning” in this interaction isn’t an ingredient of the text. Other dogs may infer Bea’s identity and salient characteristics on the basis of the textual deposit, but those remain inferences — not the extraction of a meaning-constituent within the text she leaves. An Animal Enforcement officer might construe her text as a “dog nuisance” punishable to the full extent of the law, but not based on any ingredient therein. To the extent that Bea has done something expressive, something meaningful, the expression and meaning depend on a system of instinctual (?) expectations and conventional interactions. Even considering this quite material example, I don’t see how we can ascribe intrinsic “meaning” to the text.
Continue reading “Excremental Semiotics”

For those who pay attention to such things, I’m preaching Friday at our midday mass commemorating Leo the Great. (On the topic of Leo being “the Great,” Dylan has an entry wishing that she had a jazzy nickname such as “The Edge,” to which I appended a comment about the good ol’ days when theologians got topical nicknames; I left out my favorite example, Peter Comestor, whose nickname means “the Eater” [of books, or of knowledge].)

The readings are 2 Timothy 1:6-14 (“Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me”), Psalm 77:11-15 (“I will remember the works of the LORD, and call to mind your wonders of old time.”), and Matthew 5:13-19 (“let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven”). I don’t know where I’m going with all this; it’s tough for me to resist Matthew’s “whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew’s Jesus insists that “not a jot or a tittle will pass away from the Law” — but he concedes that those who “break one of the least of these commandments, and teach others to do the same” will still be gathered into the Kingdom of Heaven.

David Weinberger frequently tells his audiences about the generosity built into the structure of the Web, whereby the Web is constituted by links that point away from my page and toward others’. That generosity sometimes (often?) also comes to expression in the content of the pages that point hither and yon, as in the recent discussions among Tom and the Tutor and Frank and David and their commenters about Faithful Interpretation.

David goes above and beyond, though, by having produced a podcast through the Berkman Center. Our interview wound on about twice as long as we had planned; in retrospect there are some things I wish I had added, or clarified, and at least one rebuttal I wish I’d pressed — but those are future entries, whereas right now I need to thank David for the time he put into his response, and to the podcast, right at a time when his own book is taking its final shape.
Continue reading “The Generous Web”

Mary Hess pointed me to Scott McLeod’s reflections on computer gaming and education (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). The series opens up a vast terrain for reflection and imagination (critical as well as ebulliently enthusiastic), but I affirm without qualification that if the right educators and the right game designers put their heads together, you could generate some explosive change in pedagogy at every level of education.

It’s a good thing I didn’t volunteer for NaBloPoMo, because I’d have fallen off that wagon on Day Three (thanks for the link, ahem, Jeneane — those gadgety Nab thingies look interesting, but we don’t have enough change in the couch cushions).

It’s because Margaret is home for the weekend, and not just any weekend but her birthday weekend (would you believe she’s already 36?), and I’ve been preoccupied by the most wonderful, amazing, tremendous, sweet spouse I could have dreamed of. Given the choice of thinking complicated thoughts about semiotics for my weblog and gazing into her eyes. . . well, I’ll blog later.
Continue reading “The Life Ate My Blog”

How strong would a Gore-Obama ticket be for the Democrats in 2008? Obama isn’t seasoned enough to win right away, I think, but he’ll strengthen any ticket on which he appears. Gore won in 2000 before the Bush legacy was as manifestly catastrophic as it is now. He’s used the interim to shore up his image; unlike Kerry, he doesn’t have “loser” plastered all over him, and he shows a genuine sense of chastened humor about the whole debacle. If he ran on the platform of “This time, let me help you out of this mess,” with the charismatic Obama as his running-mate (Obama for President then in 2012 or 2016), wouldn’t that look like a shoo-in for the Democrats? I don’t quite understand why they’re bothering with flirtations from Evan Bayh, Hilary Clinton, or back-from-the-dead John Kerry (thanks for the link, Kevin! I voted for the boys).