Remember the argument we had back on the “Sometimes stories lie” thread? Another one has kicked up following the announcement of the Failed Intellectuals Society. This may be ours thing, Lars, though we may have to fail at a greater manitude than we have to qualify for the FIS. They may consider us wannabes, only psuedo-intellectual failures.
N.T. Wright Profiled in Atlanta
Michelle of Life Under the Sun points out a feature article on theologian N.T. Wright in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Here’s a bit from the article:
While Christian conservatives in the United States are often defined by two issues —- abortion and homosexuality —- Wright demonstrates that they can broaden their agenda to include social justice issues.
His theology is difficult to define at first glance.
He’s argued forcefully for the role of women as leaders in the church but believes homosexuality is a sin.
He believes in the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Jesus but not the infallibility of the Bible.
He describes the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States as “unmitigated evil” but opposes the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Wright says his beliefs may seem odd and contradictory in the United States but not his country. He says plenty of conservative Christians in his homeland, for example, are as passionate about relieving Third World debt as they are about defending traditional Christian doctrine.
P.D. James' Opening Sentences
Speaking of P.D. James, I love some of her opening sentences.
The Children of Men: “Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty five years, two months and twelve days.”
Death In Holy Orders: “It was Father Martin’s idea that I should write an account of how I found the body.”
A Certain Justice: “Murderers do not usually give their victims notice. This is one death which, however terrible that last second of appalled realization, comes mercifully unburdened with anticipatory terror.”
Original Sin: “For a temporary shorthand typist to be present at the discovery of a corpse on the first day of a new assignment, if not unique, is sufficently rare to prevent its being regarded as an occupational hazard.”
Mars Hill Audio Podcast
I guess I missed the announcement this summer, because I just learned about Mars Hill Audio’s podcast, Audition. Ken Myers’ most recent recording is dedicated to P.D. James’s ideas on fiction and mystery and her sci-fi novel, The Children of Men. I believe I have heard most of this recording in early editions of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, and here you can listen to it for free.
The previous podcast has many literary subjects too. Taking from the description post, this recording discusses:
- “how W. H. Auden’s conversion to Christianity affected his poetry”
- “J. R. R. Tolkien’s view of language, and the dangers of a society that debases language”
- “how Flannery O’Connor’s fiction reveals her incarnational view of life”
- “how myth differs from the modern novel, and what is lost when the gods disappear from our stories”
- “how C. S. Lewis was more open-minded than his Victorian atheistic teachers, and how that open-mindedness left room for Lewis to become a Christian”
Wonderful stuff.
Stumbled Upon
Worship Well: “dedicated to a life of daily worship. Sometimes that worship comes in a formal setting, sometimes it whispers over your shoulder, and sometimes it hits you with an anvil, road-runner style. We pray these entries make you think, make you pause, and make you worship the One. Worship well.”
Romper Room wonks
Tonight I cooked one of my brother Baal’s purple potatoes for supper. Did you know there are such things as purple potatoes?
It tasted like a potato. No surprises there, thank goodness. But a purple potato is deeply disturbing on a fundamental level. It’s purple inside and out, with thin of sheath of white between the “meat” and the skin. It looks like some kind of unnatural hybrid of potato and beet, and you can’t help thinking that it’s going to taste like something approved by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Visual cues mean a lot to most of us, and by that standard, I just don’t… (ready for this?) dig purple potatoes.
But it was interesting. Definitely interesting. Maybe three-year-olds will like them, if you tell them they’re dinosaur livers.
Rodham Devon, it was cold today. Cold out of a clear cerulean sky, so that if you kept your window shades open you got a nice solar rebate on your fuel oil bill. But the ambient temperatures more than adjusted for that. On a day like today, there’s nothing between us and the interstellar wastes except a little rind of planetary atmosphere. The sunlight drops in and bounces right back where it came from. Minnesota. A nice place to visit, but even sunlight doesn’t want to spend time here in the winter.
Lots of talk about the Iran Study Group report today. From what I hear and read on the web, it seems pretty much like what everybody expected.
I keep flashing back to my childhood. Elementary school. Green chalkboards and linoleum. A “cool” teacher telling the class, “Today we’re going to have a discussion on current events.”
And he would ask our opinions on how we thought various issues in the news ought to be handled.
The answers were always the same.
In domestic affairs, the answer always was, “The government should make a law…”
In international affairs, the answer always was, “We should sit down with other countries and talk about it.”
“That’s very good. Very thoughtful,” the teacher would say.
(Thomas the weird kid, of course, would say something like, “I think we ought to drop an atom bomb on ‘em.” But the teacher would tell him sternly that if he had nothing appropriate to offer, he should just be quiet.)
Fifty years later, it seems like most of us are still trying to impress that teacher.
Maybe it’s because our culture has bought into the myth of the Wisdom of Children (an opinion that seems to gain adherents as the birth rate decreases).
Or maybe it’s because we’re just culturally stuck in an infantile mode, dressing even in middle age like kids in an Our Gang feature, and bragging loudly about the toys we’ve accumulated (like Viking live steel gear, I know).
But I think a lot of us—even the old codgers of the Iraq Study Group—stopped refining our thinking about public affairs back in elementary school, and we haven’t noticed that the world is a little more complex than we knew in fifth grade.
What was your suggestion again, Thomas?
Tomorrow shall be my dancing day
We are singing this traditional carol in our Christmas concert this month:
Tomorrow shall be my dancing day;
I would my true love did so chance
To see the legend of my play,
To call my true love to my dance;
Chorus
Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love,
This have I done for my true love
Then was I born of a virgin pure,
Of her I took fleshly substance
Thus was I knit to man’s nature
To call my true love to my dance. Chorus
In a manger laid, and wrapped I was
So very poor, this was my chance
Betwixt an ox and a silly poor ass
To call my true love to my dance. Chorus
Should I Use the N-word in a Title?
Mr. H.S. Key has kicked up a conversation on the word “nigger.” Regarding Michael Richards’ outburst:
Most offended Americans said it wasn’t necessarily the word that bothered them – since the word is used by rappers and even some crazy white people in somewhat less unacceptable ways (nigga and so forth). Rather, it was the manner, context and intent behind Richards’s usage that made the situation so bad. Or was it the word itself?
He describes another comedian who used the word clearly without malice and has apologized.
The word “nigger” is not one I plan to use when I’m not talking about the word itself, but I must say it doesn’t have the negative connotations for me that some people seem to give it, probably because it and other words like it carry more meaning in their usage than they do in the definition. For more on this, see Randall Kennedy’s 2003 book, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word.
The Last Survivors of Pearl Harbor
From AP reporter Jaymes Song: “With their number quickly dwindling, survivors of Pearl Harbor will gather Thursday one last time to honor those killed by the Japanese 65 years ago, and to mark a day that lives in infamy. This will be their last visit to this watery grave to share stories, exchange smiles, find peace and salute their fallen friends. This, they say, will be their final farewell. . . .
Nearly 500 survivors from across the nation were expected to make the trip to Hawaii, bringing with them 1,300 family members, numerous wheelchairs and too many haunting memories.”
Thank you, gentlemen, for giving your lives to protect our country and thank you to your families for supporting you. May we never forget, and may the Lord of all creation bless you and your families richly.
Grave meditations
It’s cold in the Twin Cities now, but we’ve only had light flurries of snow, flurries that left small trace behind. It’s kind of academic anyway, because it’s supposed to get up to about forty on Saturday, and anything we’d gotten, short of a major blizzard, would melt then anyway.
It felt even colder yesterday, out in the cemetery at the committal service. Especially bareheaded as I was. I wore my full winter Sunday regalia to the funeral, including my black homburg hat. I wore the hat in particular so I could take it off at the cemetery. And that’s why I’m taking zinc to fight a head cold today.
I feel that every person has a right to have some man in a black homburg hat at their funeral, to take it off at the appropriate time. In the past such uncoverings were taken for granted, but nowadays you’ve got to find an eccentric like me to give the proceedings that particular classy note.
Perhaps its part of the ancient tradition of human sacrifice at funerals. The Romans, as you may know, held gladiatorial combats to say goodbye to the dead. The Vikings liked to strangle a slave or two to keep King Gunnar company in his funeral mound.
And up until recently, we had men taking off their black homburgs at our funerals in the dead of winter, so that there was a good chance one of the older ones would contract pneumonia and follow after shortly, along that long, lonesome road.
This by way of Archaeology in Europe: Vatican Archaeologists Unearth St. Paul’s Tomb.
Vatican archaeologists have unearthed a sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the Apostle Paul that had been buried beneath Rome’s second largest basilica.
I wonder if they’ll find the skull with the body (Paul is said to have been beheaded, so that part could be missing). I’d like to see a forensic recreation, to learn how close to the traditional description he really was. I have to think the traditional picture is right, because I can’t imagine any reason why anyone would make up such an unattractive image. Paul is said to have been short and bowlegged, with a large, domed head and a prominent nose. He is also supposed to have been bald and to have had thick lips, which would probably be harder to determine working from the bones.
I love skull reconstructions. Somebody find me St. Olaf’s skull, or Chaucer’s. Give me a face to look at. If I can’t have a time machine, I’ll take whatever I can get.