AKMA’s Random Thoughts

The plan was for me to rush home after church, take an immediate nap, and get some work done this afternoon. I had gotten very little sleep — the sermon didn’t want to come together, it had been a very difficult week of homiletical wrestling. The sermon turned out all right (posted below the fold), but it wasn’t done till low-digit hours of morning that I hardly ever witness.

So after two services and a long Adult Ed classes, I was ready indeed for a nap, but I took a quick look at my online neighborhood where I noticed Shelley’s stark alert that Katrina — which had looked like a garden-variety Bad Hurricane when I had last checked Saturday night — had turned into The Worst Hurricane Ever, at least as far as New Orleans was concerned. My nap time disappeared into an afternoon spent catching up on the scale of Katrina, the vulnerability of New Orleans, and the magnitude of the possible catastrophe.

The dioceses of Louisiana and Mississippi have sent a lot of seminarians to Seabury over the last few years — people I’ve worked with, people I love, people who’ve gone back to a region they love to serve God and their neighbors. Mary, Richard, Jeff, Dave, A.J., Annie, Bill and Susan — and Andrew’s and Laura’s families — I don’t even know what to hope for, but I’m thinking of you all, and will want to know that you’re well and safe, as soon as I can.
Continue reading “Change in Plans”

David Isenberg points to a constructive response to the Robertson inanity, and the idea comes from Hugo Chávez himself (I’m not talking about the “rather mad dogs with rabies” part of the remark, for which I can offer no intelligible explanation. I thought “mad dogs” were by definition rabid; and what’s with the qualifier “rather”? Unless that’s in for the Guardian’s English readership. Rather!) .

Chávez has been using Venezuela’s oil resources as a policy tool, enlisting doctors from Cuba in exchange for discount oil and offering oil to Jamaica at a cut rate. “We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor communities in the United States,” he says.

So far as I can imagine, there’s no way to swing that. “Poor communities” in the U.S. still obtain oil from the transnational corporations that import, refine, and distribute petrochemicals. A tanker of Venezuelan crude might make a nice present, but it wouldn’t provide any very direct benefit to, say, East St. Louis or Camden. Still, it’s more edifying to hear Chávez talk about helping the needy than to hear Pat Robertson bumble through his attempted justifications of his oafish bullying. “I spoke in frustration that we should accommodate the man who thinks the US is out to kill him” — so (if Robertson is being honest) he thought that the way to respond to someone who (groundlessly?) feared U.S. assassination squads is to. . . kill him? Open your mouth, Mr. Robertson, and insert entire leg.

Twenty-four shopping days till Ecumenical* Talk Like a Pirate Day! Time to snag that missing glass eye, Jolly Roger, and piratical attire. (Tidewater Tripp tipped me off to this venue.)

* Well, just trying to cast this momentous event in a more a theological vein. . . .

As I work toward completing the starter set of 48 Early Church Theology Cards, I’ll post the links here. Right now, I’ve uploaded a design for the backs of the cards, and two sets of eight theologians. I think they’re pretty snazzy; Ryan and I had an impromptu game with the first set of eight to test-drive the game, and things worked pretty well (once he stopped cheating). Anyway, I’ll add links to this post rather than scattering them throughout my blog, and eventually we’ll have them linked from the main Disseminary blog, which is coming together bit by bit.

• PDF – Backs of Cards
• PDF – First Eight Theologians
• PDF – Second Eight Theologians
• PDF – Third Eight Theologians
• PDF – Fourth Eight Theologians
• PDF – Fifth Eight Theologians
• PDF – Sixth Eight Theologians
• JPG – Backs of Cards
• JPG – First Eight Theologians
• JPG – Second Eight Theologians
• JPG – Third Eight Theologians
• JPG – Fourth Eight Theologians
• JPG – Fifth Eight Theologians
• JPG – Sixth Eight Theologians

Preparations: First, determine how the variable categories will be directed: the “Date of Death” category may favor earlier or later saints, and the “Orders of Ministry” may favor Patriarchs (magisterial rules) or the Baptized (kingdom rules). Then deal the cards.

The divisions of Ministry are: Apostate, Baptized, Monastic, Deacon, Presbyter, Bishop, Patriarch. (“Apostate” always loses, whether by Magisterial or Kingdom rules.)

The divisions of Asceticism are: Virgin, Celibate, Chaste, Penitent, Unchaste. (The distinction between Chaste and Celibate is elusive and sometimes arbitrary. Virgins are always women; Celibates are men whose theology or practice foregrounded their sexual purity.)

The divisions of Orthodoxy are: Heresiarch, Heretic, Heterodox, Ambiguous, Orthodox, Theologian, and Doctor.

The divisions of Martyrdom are: Megamartyr (a martyr under extraordinary circumstances), Martyr, Confessor, Exile, Simplex (for those who just plain died).

The Play: Shuffle and deal the cards.

A turn consists of each player looking at the top card of their deck. The first player chooses one of the categories: Date of Death, Order, Asceticism, Orthodoxy, or Martyrdom. Players then compare the characteristics of the two cards in the category that the chooser indicated, and the player whose card is higher takes both cards and becomes the next chooser.

If the chooser’s card surpasses the responder’s card, the chooser gets both cards, puts them on the bottom of their deck, and and keeps the prerogative to choose the category when the next cards are drawn.

If the responder’s card is equal or higher when then cards are compared, the responder gets both cards, puts them at the bottom of their deck, and earns the prerogative to choose the category when the next cards are drawn.

[Later: Special Rules/specialcards to come. . . .]

When one player has all the cards, the game is over.

(Now I just have to come up with a sermon for Sunday.)

I was going to hold out against incorporating legendary saints in the Church History Card Game, but the weight of the present list tips so heavily to men that we may need to draw on the (copious) ranks of the virgin martyrs to attain even the semblance of equity. I can rationalize it by pointing out that many of these figures are well-known, and it will help my students to know more about their stories and to know whether this or that martyr has a basis in fact.

Derek (congratulations on your impending paternity, Derek, and you’re sadly right about church hiring) proposed the following candidates:

St Prisce, St Agnes, St Anastasia, St Brigida, St Agatha, St Pudentiana/Potentiana, St Felicula, St Praxedis, St Susanna, St Sabina, St Eufemia, Sts Lucia and Eufemia, and Geminianus, St Cecilia, St Catherine, St Lucia

We might add to this list St Barbara and St Margaret of Antioch (two of the Fourteen Holy Helpers). I suppose that I’d favor these two, plus Catherine (shudder) and Agnes, who has a decent chance of having been an actual person. Depending on how many cards we already have, we could add — hmmm — Cecilia? Lucy? And maybe Cosmas and Damian?

[Later: As I mock-up cards (curses on Freehand, not fully compatible with OS X 10.4!), I have to come to a resolution about the terminology of non-ordained characters, of characters who die of natural or non-theological causes, of people who die out of communion with the church — maybe some others, too. Suggestions welcome.)

Has anybody else noted the point of contact between Harry Potter and Reformation anti-Catholic polemics? That is, evangelical/Protestant advocates accused Catholic clergy of being Totenfresserei, “Eaters of the dead” (because they took offerings for saying masses for the souls of the deceased) — not precisely “Death-eaters,” but close enough to make a theologian wonder whether J. K. Rowling (from famously Reformed Scotland) has composed Harry Potter with a very subtle anti-Catholic subtext.

Not that that would stop me from itching to get hold of volume seven.

The other night I succumbed to Si’s in-absentia blandishments and watched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I knew it was going to be stupid, but I was willing to believe him when he assured me that it was stupid and fun. Alas, I just didn’t enjoy it that much. The whole production seemed to shoot for “so bad it’s good,” and it overshot its target — it’s so bad that it missed its chance to be good, and ends up just really, really bad. I’m always willing to cut Keanu Reeves a break (among the various actors of the “make a quizzical expression and that makes it really profound” stripe, I prefer him), and I appreciate pop-cultural gestures toward acknowledging the value in academic knowledge, and I’m not an entirely humorless old grouch, but Bill and Ted just made me wonder how long the movie would drag on. Best parts: Clarence Clemons, Fee Waybill, and Martha Davis as the three governing people in the future, and the scene(s) where Bill and Ted meet themselves traveling through time. The rest? As Pippa frequently says, “I want my two hours back!”

The other thing I didn’t want to know came to my attention in the course of my research for the Theology Cards project. I was looking into the numerous examples of virgin-martyrs in early church history, most of whom turn out to be legendary. I wanted to pin down just which ones were more likely fictive, and which had a plausible claim to factuality. As I scanned down the list I came to St. Catherine of Alexandria, a wildly popular saint whose stature seems to serve as a displaced compensation for Christian complicity in the lynching of Hypatia. The Wikipedia confirmed my recollection that “Historians believe that Catherine probably did not exist.” It also, however, provided the answer to a question that had troubled me since I was a youth. though I knew that Catherine had been tortured on “the wheel,” and that the wheel was variously associated with spikes and with “breaking,” I could never figure out what wheels had to do with torture (and iconographic treatments of Catherine were of little help). I’ve asked medievalist friends and ancient historians, but no one I asked has ever had a clear idea how this torture worked. Now I know, and it took my an hour or so of queasiness to pull myself together again.

I noticed recently that I’ve gotten more sensitive to cruelty in my advancing years. Margaret and I went to see Mr and Mrs Smith, and we both appreciated many aspects of the movie (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, the tension in their relationship, Vince Vaughn), but Margaret was troubled by the plot holes. The plot caverns, to be more precise. I, in turn, was almost sleepless over the way the movie could invite us to delight in a couple’s love to such an extent that we were expected simply to disregard the staggering quantity of people whom they killed.

That experience catalyzed my latent horror at the ways our culture deals with denies mortality. (I may have disabled my capacity to enjoy the spy/thriller movies that our family has long enjoyed.) But reading about Catherine, watching the Smiths in action, I couldn’t help thinking about the U.S. government’s determination to sacrifice lives and torture captives in order to buy a respite (ephemeral at best, illusory at worst) from fears that its own belligerence reifies and magnifies.

Jennifer called my attention to the latest manifestation of Pat Robertson’s wisdom: “You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if [Hugo Chavez] thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war … and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.” This, as Michael Crowley notes over at Talking Points Memo, comes from the same man who suggested that activist judges (the ones who aren’t conservative activists) endanger the U.S. more than Al Qaeda does: “Over 100 years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that’s held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings.”

Mmmmm hmmmm.

We’re going ahead with the first edition of Volume Three of Hall’s Theological Outlines; better a complete version of an older edition than no third volume at all. Chapter Twenty-One of Volume Two is up (“Mysteries of Christ’s Exaltation”). And we’re firming up the list of cards for the “Top Trumps” version of the Theology Game, over in the comments of yesterday’s post.

I had a great email conversation with David Moore from the Participatory Culture Foundation; we’re looking into a way of setting up a Disseminary channel on DTV — audio only, for now — and Trevor’s pounding out the pixels on the site redesign. Are those pixels, or is it plaster dust?

Sermon: One of the readings is the beginning of Romans 12, and it’s hard for me to resist preaching on the verses, “ I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect.” That fits harmonizes with the part of the Gospel that includes Jesus’ rebuke of Peter, “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” On the other hand, when I start deciding ahead of time what point I want to make, I usually get blocked; I have to just let go, let the readings slop around in my mind for a few days, and wait for the hook to coalesce. We’ll see what happens.

I’m not referring to Travolta’s Scientology or Gibsonian sedevacantism, but to the kind of theological thinking that adopts Hollywood’s standards of unambiguous right and wrong, with “right” gloriously triumphant and “wrong” stamped out in disgrace. Way, way too much of contemporary theological arguments operate at the level of sophistication one expects from a grade-B action drama, where the flawed protagonist is forgiven every lapse because he is the Good Guy, and this protagonist kills the despicable antagonist because he or she is the irredeemable Bad Guy. [Later: And all problems are resolved within a manageable duration of time: “OK, it’s been two hours; let’s wrap this up!”]

Contemporary polemics to the contrary notwithstanding, that approach oversimplifies doctrinal discernment to the point of falsification. Arius was not an evil conspirator, gleefully leading duped souls to perdition; he and his supporters were wrong, but not maleficent, as careful studies by a number of scholars (including ++Rowan Williams) shows. Whoever is right and whoever is wrong about the various topics that inflame our tempers, the problems won’t be settled by repeating “But we’re right, and we know it!” or by mockery or by counting votes. Anyone involved in the discussions might be wrong: I, you, your hero, my hero, anyone. When we presume to suppose that we can’t possibly have misread the signs of the times, or when we refuse to stipulate criteria by which our position could be discerned erroneous, or when we exacerbate division by amplifying the volume and intensity of theological debate at the expense of the truth, we’re propagandizing for ourselves, not glorifying God.

If we’re part of a school for sinners, there’s an unaccountable quantity of stones flying around here.

Theological Outlines, Chapter Twenty (“Mysteries of Christ’s Earthly Life”) is now, up, and in the comments thread on the “Top Trumps” entry, we’re making progress toward a basic version of the Theology Card Game of which Derek proposes a more elaborate version. And Trevor’s hard at work on the snazzy redesign of the site.

Mustn’t forget that I’m preaching Sunday.

[little note here from trevor: if anyone has a ready solution to the display problem on ie in both mac and windows platforms of the current version of the redesign I’d be happy to learn]

From today’s New York Times article on “Intelligent Design”:

“All ideas go through three stages — first they’re ignored, then they’re attacked, then they’re accepted,” said Jay W. Richards, a philosopher and the institute’s vice president.

Note that: evidently “all ideas” will eventually be accepted, regardless of their soundness. Intelligent design has a future after all.

I tried to figure out a charitable reconstruction of this philosopher’s glib blunder, but the best I could come up with is something like, “All good ideas are ignored, then attacked, before they’re accepted.” It doesn’t have a catchy ring to it — but then, it’s not out-and-out false, either.