Tag Archives: The Georg Sverdrup Society

Religion

Very like a straight line

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Photo credit: Wolfgang Hasselmann wolfgang_hasselmann. Unsplash license.

Had a nice day today, but it stretched long, which is why I’m posting late. The board of the Georg Sverdrup Society, whose journal I edit, met in Mankato, Minnesota. And then we were treated to a tour of the archives and museum of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, on the campus of Bethany Lutheran College in that same town.

There’s probably a lesson in the fact that our different church bodies are the offspring of two opposing sides in 19th Century controversies among Norwegian Lutherans in the U.S., and yet we find ourselves today, if not allies, at least amiable rivals. The ELS is a legacy group out of the old Norwegian Synod, the most conservative and rigidly orthodox of the Norwegian immigrant church bodies. My group, the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, comes from what was then the liberal, free-wheeling, revivalist Lutheran Free Church. Our spiritual forefathers were bitter enemies who anathematized one another in fiery sermons and editorials. Now we find much to unite us.

That observation is, I suppose, the wrong way to introduce my topic tonight. Because I want to talk about objective truth. Eternal verities that must not be compromised.

Yesterday I described my delight at the new, sharp sight I’m enjoying in my left eye since my cataract surgery, less than a week ago as I write. My drive to Mankato today was along one of my favorite scenic routes in my state, Highway 169 along the Minnesota River valley, through Le Sueur, St. Peter, and Mankato. The skies were clear and colors were bright, and I felt ten years younger than I had a week ago.

But, as I mentioned, I do now have minor retina damage that slightly warps everything I see through that eye. Straight lines no longer look straight to me.

The lesson modern thought would have me learn from this experience is that I should abandon the whole idea of straight lines. Since I can’t see them anymore, obviously they don’t exist for me. We all live in our own reality, and my reality no longer includes straight lines.

I say phooey. I can remember straight lines. I can listen to the testimony of reliable people who talk to me about them. I can study geometry if I care to, and learn all about parallels and right angles and so on.

It’s like that bloody elephant in the famous secular parable. One blind man touches its flank and thinks an elephant is very like a wall. Another touches the trunk, and decides an elephant is very like a snake. And so on. Moderns take all this to mean that elephants don’t exist as such, but are something different for each person.

But the actual point of the parable is that they’re all wrong. What those blind men need to do is to get together and pool their information. After some frank consultation, they’ll probably be able to construct a pretty reasonable description of a whole elephant. If not, they can ask somebody who can see.

Music, Uncategorized, Writing

Chronicling my decline

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Not having a book to review tonight, busy as I am with non-paying work, I post the video above. Sadly it’s not a live performance video (there doesn’t seem to be one), but I discovered it and thought it rather nice. This is a song I’ve posted before in its original Swedish version, but there seems to be this English version too. As an expert, I pronounce it a successful translation, since with songs, subjective impressions are more important than accuracy. I realize it’s the wrong time of year for a Christmas song, but who knows if I’ll need it at Christmas?

A day in the life of an obscure author:

In accordance with my recently adopted custom of getting up to write in the morning, instead of lying in bed trying to get back to sleep, I rose at 6:30 a.m. to work on The Baldur Game, my work in progress. What I’d done yesterday was to take a block of text I’d written, which I realized was out of historical sequence, and move it back into its proper year. So today I commenced a review of the whole text written thus far, to see if there were any anachronisms left that I need to fix. I think the work is good so far.

At lunch I went to The 50s Grill, one of my favorite local places, and tried something new — the grilled walleye. It was good, as expected, and I topped it off with a piece of their French Silk pie. They do pie extremely well.

This afternoon, I worked on my book narration. This is the cause of considerable fear and trembling for me right now. Friends have generously provided me equipment to begin doing narration on my own. My first project will be The Year of the Warrior. I am confident — nay, a little arrogant — about my ability to do narration with the best of ’em. But the technical aspects — the software and specifications, etc. — scare me to death. (Back in radio broadcast school, I was the best copy reader in my class and the worst engineer.) This delays my progress, but I press on heroically.

Tonight, after I post this, I propose to work on a PowerPoint presentation I’ll be doing later this month in Iowa for the Georg Sverdup Society. Not Vikings this time, but the background of the Lutheran Free Church movement in America.

These things matter in my world.

Oh yes. I’ve committed to attending the Midwest Viking Festival in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Oct. 6 and 7 (used to be in Moorhead, MN). An opportunity to sell books, and my experience is that venues where I have not yet flogged my wares are the most fruitful.