AKMA’s Random Thoughts

“Most of my music is probably, at this point, a lot of it is traced back to the gospel roots, you know. ‘Promised Land,’ ‘The Rising,’ I use a lot of gospel which is where a lot of rock music came from. The first front men were really the preachers. So I was drawn to music that addressed the spirit, probably because my own needed to be addressed!”
— NPR interview with Renée Montagne

After having somewhat gathered the forces of my concentration over the weekend, I had a very full day today tackling the backed-up papers that I’d been ignoring while I worked on my lecture from last week. Consequently, I don’t have anything particular left over to say here today.

I devoted a lot of my spare cycles to thinking about (a) clerical attire, when I wear it and why, in response to a question from Francis Watson, and (b) how I will have to think about my orders if any of a variety of foreseeable outcomes arises relative to the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, and the Roman Catholic Church. Short answer: I’m not inclined to try to subsist in a national Protestant church, which seems likely to portend headaches.

During Question Time at the end of my lecture, Tim Safford (whom I knew from old times in seminary) asked me what I meant by “emergent church” (did I mean, you know, emergent-church as in candles-and-coffee-shops, or something else)? I explained that I meant Emergent as in Emergent/emerging church, the kind of congregation I’ve learned about and talked about with friends from Reconciler and with Jordon (who preached his 500th sermon today) and with. . . um. . . that guy from Oklahoma. What’s his name?

Sorry, Kyle; I totally blanked on your name, at a moment I could have been shining the spotlight on you.

I thought I’d heard it all, about the new Pope — until I read Fr. David’s story.

What ever happened to hook shots? Did they change the rules, or the way games get called, in a way that made hook shots less legal? Did Kareem Abdul-Jabbar make the Skyhook so much his own, that lesser mortals don’t even try hook shots? Or are they still plentiful enough, and I happen not to have seen any this year?

It’s been a long, busy week. I finally finished up my Winslow Lecture, and delivered it to a very full house on Thursday. It went well — a number of people gave very kind feedback about it — and I’ll post a summary in the “Extended” window below (it’s probably too long to post the whole thing, but I’ve uploaded a pdf of the complete text of my lecture, with notes).

Trevor came out from Ohio to stay with us during the series, which was terrific; we don’t get to see enough of him, now that he’s far away. We got to see a little of Steve, less than we’d have liked, but it was complicated since Francis and Kevin were here on equal standing as lecturers, though not such long-term friends. It was excellent getting to talk at greater length with Kevin and Francis, and at lunch yesterday Kevin allowed that my more loosely-joined hermeneutics (more loose than his) make more sense to him when he sees the shape of community life here.

At dinner Thursday night, at Koi in Evanston (home of the “Mongolian Plates,” which the menu describes: “The major staple of this dish is its wok-seared characteristic”), we learned that not only did Francis not know about blogging and tofu, but he didn’t know what a dumpster was, either. Steve helpfully equated “dumpster” with a British “skip,” so that was easily solved. “And another thing word I didn’t recognize,” Francis added, “was — ‘mojo’?” That was a little harder for us to explain, especially with a degree of circumspection concomitant with Francis’s dignity and decorum. I suggested that he might have heard of Muddy Waters, and he, at the other end of the table, said, “Oh, it means ‘to muddy the waters’?” At that point, we were nearly helpless at the incongruity of the situation.

I’m very relieved to have finished this up, and a little embarrassed at how much less-well-developed my thoughts were in South Bend last week, compared to the way I ordered them in my formal lecture this week.
Continue reading “Catching Up”

Lecture done. Went OK. More tomorrow.

Theological humor from Adam family life:

Margaret: Si sounds like Barth!
Pippa: Simpson?

Today marks the first day of the lecture series in which I’m giving a presentation tomorrow afternoon. I’ve been pretty reticent online, because I’m busy and edgy; my co-lecturers know their stuff really well, and I want to maintain the high standard that they’ll surely be setting.

Or, as the case turns out to be, that they’ve already begun to set, since Steve Fowl gave his talk this evening. He provided a knock-your-socks-off exposition of the way Aquinas works with the literal sense so that it entails multiple divergent meanings — an argument that sets me up beautifully for my talk tomorrow. Of course, it also raises the expectations for me, but I’ll endeavor to live with that.

It turns out that another co-lecturer, Francis Watson, revealed to us at dinner that he had never heard of “blogging” before today, so he and Kevin Vanhoozer (fourth lecturer) probed me to find out more about what I actually blog about. I didn’t say “I blog about dinner companions who ask me what I blog about” lest life get too recursive, but I tried to explain what goes into the several minutes a day I spend typing into MarsEdit. Then too, he didn’t know what “tofu” was, so Steve and I had to try to explain that he had just eaten some of it for dinner. “No, honest, Francis, it was that white stuff.” Whatever else comes of this lecture series, we’ve expanded the cultural horizons of a theologian from Aberdeen.

Last word: Steve teaches at Loyola College in Maryland, where (of course) the theology department bears a vivid interest in who the new pope turned out to be. I get the sense from him that they receive the news of Benedict’s elevation with a degree of satisfaction. Though he be “more conservative” than they, he’s a theological intellectual, and after all doesn’t have that much further right to steer the magisterium.

I’ve heard, and Margaret has reported, a high degree of dismay that Cardinal Ratzinger was elected pope. For clarity’s sake, I should say that he was very far from being my favorite candidate, and the decision to elevate to the pontificate the cardinal who was Rome’s point man relative to the priest-pedophilia scandal in the U.S. strikes me as an indicator of the Vatican’s characteristic deafness on this issue.

On the other hand, I’m a little perplexed that anyone feels shocked at this turn of events. The Vatican is not a hotbed of liberalism, and the cardinals whom John Paul II appointed reflect his characteristic conservatism (if not his personal magnetism). If the world honored John Paul II with weeks of attention and veneration, in what respect do we anticipate that Benedict XVI — a personal friend and theological soul mate to John Paul II — will be any less praiseworthy? I’m with Hans Küng, who has as much reason as anyone to mistrust the new pontiff: “he compared it to an American presidential election and said people ‘should allow the pope 100 days to learn’.”

For all the intuitive appeal of working in Apple’s Pages application, I can’t believe that they didn’t supply a keyboard command for inserting a footnote. I can call the Colors menu with a keyboard shortcut, but to insert a footnote I have to reach for the mouse and pull down a menu item. Hmph!

I’ll admit that mine was an outsider candidacy from the start, but when Cardinal Ratzinger wasn’t elected on the first two ballots, my supporters in the conclave drew encouragement. Unfortunately, the idea of a non-Roman-Catholic, married pope was just too radical for the College of Cardinals. Since Ratzinger was already on the scene, and everyone knew him, and he was sort of next in the line of succession, the tiara went to him. Good thing I didn’t quit my day job.

To show my heart is in the right place, permit me to extend earnest gratulatory wishes to Benedict XVI. Let’s do lunch sometime!