America's Young Theologian

book | Thinking About Responsibility

2011-10-09T02:25:00.000Z

"The unceasing calls for responsibility in contemporary culture are always calls to such agency, to the position of a subject-cause. And this insistence as such deserves scrutiny. One might ask at the outset: What concept of responsibility does it seek to reinforce? What lack does it aim at supplementing? What shortcoming is it trying to compensate? What irresponsibility is it trying to suppress, exclude or negate? From what danger does it aim at protecting it? These questions already take us to the heart of the matter. And thus the concept of a 'subject-cause' (along with its unavoidable accompaniment, a system of control and punishment), this 'ready-made,' guiding metaphysical interpretation of the concept of responsibility--namely, accountability as indication of the power of a masterful and willful subject--is left to rule exhaustively over the hermeneutic domain of responsibility."

François Raffoul, The Origins of Responsibility, 6.

link | The Epidemic of Mental Illness

2011-07-07T16:00:00.003Z

Enjoyed reading the two part review at The New York Review of Books on psychiatry (Part I, Part II). I particularly enjoyed reading the sections of Part II about the history of the DSM. If you don't have a mental illness, just wait, you might in 2013 when DSM-V shows up.

One would be hard pressed to find a two-year-old who is not sometimes irritable, a boy in fifth grade who is not sometimes inattentive, or a girl in middle school who is not anxious. (Imagine what taking a drug that causes obesity would do to such a girl.) Whether such children are labeled as having a mental disorder and treated with prescription drugs depends a lot on who they are and the pressures their parents face. As low-income families experience growing economic hardship, many are finding that applying for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments on the basis of mental disability is the only way to survive. It is more generous than welfare, and it virtually ensures that the family will also qualify for Medicaid. According to MIT economics professor David Autor, “This has become the new welfare.” Hospitals and state welfare agencies also have incentives to encourage uninsured families to apply for SSI payments, since hospitals will get paid and states will save money by shifting welfare costs to the federal government.

Where is Freud when you need him? Happy reading.

video | Without Words

2011-07-01T14:33:00.004Z

This video reminded me of Jean Vanier and the work of L'Arche, the work of lovingly accepting/welcoming the people in our lives as they are. At first I felt profoundly saddened by this video given my love of words, but I suppose I love words because I love life and mentally countered with "this too - for all its difficulty - is life":

I'm glad to have friends that are working to start L'Arche communities in Durham, NC and New Jersey.

books | Living Without Enemies by Samuel Wells and Marcia A. Owen

2011-06-28T20:50:00.000Z

IVP sent me a copy of Samuel Wells and Marcia A. Owen's new book, Living Without Enemies: Being Present in the Midst of Violence. It is a lovely little book (144 pg) and an easy read. I say that as a compliment, not to dismiss it. Outside of maybe the pulpit, saying something that is worth saying, in a manner that is compelling and understandable, in a short amount of space is simply a skill that many with theological training do not possess. The book pairs Sam Wells' theological skill with the work and story of activist Marcia Owen, who directs the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham.

The book opens with a reflection on four modes of engagement - working for, working with, being for, and being with - which provides the structure for narrating Ms. Owen's story of her developing involvement in fighting gun violence in Durham.

From IVP:

With senseless violence occurring throughout society, people are suffering and communities are groaning. Fear and not knowing where to begin hold many back from doing anything at all. But is "doing something" really what is most needed?

Marcia Owen and Samuel Wells come together to tell the story of a community's journey through four different dimensions of social engagement. After attempts to seek legislative solutions led nowhere, a religious coalition began holding prayer vigils for local victims of gun violence. It was then that Owen discovered the beauty of simply being present. Through her friendships with both victims and offenders, Owen learned that being with was precisely the opposite of violence--it was love. And to truly love others as God loves us meant living without enemies and taking small steps toward reconciliation.

Owen and Wells offer deep insights into what it takes to overcome powerlessness, transcend fear and engage in radical acceptance in our dangerous world. Your view of ministry will be altered by this poignant tale of coming face-to-face with our God who loves boundlessly and has no enemies.

Having lived in Durham, NC for much of the last decade, I appreciated the local connection, but what I enjoyed most was the authors naming something which I think most will have encountered if one has spent a significant amount of time working on a local issue. When one gets involved, it's generally with the conviction that something could be better and with at least some idea of how to help. Yet, the task of listening, learning (if this is undertaken) and involvement can radically change the form of that initial vision of helping and often the involvement can take one from "working for" through "working with," "being for" and "being with" those affected. It's a richer kind of involvement and often one finds oneself changing and being affected in ways that were unanticipated. You could say the book is about gun violence, but the gift of the book, I think, is providing a compelling picture of what it looks like to move beyond the stage of lack of engagement or opening a wallet for a cause to opening your heart and life to the world.

I feel a book like this is about the ties that bind us to one another. It's more intimate in tone and ends than, say, Jeff Stout's Blessed are the Organized. Still, Wells and Owen's book needs to be read alongside a book like Blessed are the Organized. Love is a powerful force, but there are other powerful forces like greed and corruption which the involvement pictured in this book should lead one to opposing. I guess that's my way of saying that a fifth mode of engagement might be named "joining together," something that is probably not going to occur without the deep interconnectedness Living Without Enemies seeks to foster.

From Living Without Enemies, Ten Gleanings from Marcia Owens:

The only judgment I will make of others is that we are equally blessed by God.
I discover the joy of my particularity in the context of God’s infinite abundance.
I am living in eternity. I measure success by the expression of God’s presence, not by prescribed outcomes.
The most important question to ask myself before addressing difficulty or conflict is, “Do I accept and love this person as I am accepted and loved by God?”
My fears subside when I remember my soul – my existence in the heart of God.
My soul is for all, because my soul is with all. We are all one in God.
The joy of love lives amongst suffering, including my own.
Receiving God’s love is like breathing in. Responding to the suffering of others is like breathing out. If I do the first without doing the second, I will pass out.
Healing is God’s greatest mystery. I can’t explain it. I can’t avoid it.
The heart of justice is mercy. Justice begins when I stop judging.

link | Friends and Film

2011-06-22T15:15:00.004Z

Finally saw The Tree of Life last weekend at the Rialto in Raleigh. I've been waiting on the release of this film for a couple years. It was great, not easily consumed or digested, but such a beautiful film.

If you'd like to read more about the film, I'd suggest a piece that I was editing this week: Contemplating the Whirlwind written by my friend Reno, who was a post-production assistant for the film.

I was going through an old notebook a few days ago and I found this fragment scribbled down on a train ride from St. Andrews to Aberdeen about the final morning of one of my stays with Reno in Scotland:

The morning was bleak, or at least too early, and black. After sticking his head in the room to wake me and pushing some coffee into my hand, we were out the door. I walked to the wrong side of the car which would have put me in the driver's seat. A simple reminder of things being slightly foreign. The car ride brought us back to discussing "The Final Cut" and about how telling the truth is not merely recounting accurate information, but also selecting pieces of accurate information to adequately represent the larger story. But enough of that, the silver Volvo was at the train station.

I'm thankful for films, I'm thankful for friends.

life | Father's Day

2011-06-19T16:15:00.002Z

I had the best of childhoods. Loving parents, a supportive community, safety, health, and happiness. Yet, when it comes time to celebrate a father (or a mother) on one of these holidays, I always feel torn. I think of Billy Collin's poem "The Lanyard."

I also think of Philip Larkin's "This Be the Verse":

This Be the Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

For me, these hold the truths that the parent-child bond is fraught with difficulties, inequalities, gratitude, resentment, love and heartache. It is never as easy as the card's one-liner, "Happy Father's Day!" However, given the difficulty of naming these deepest currents, it's all I know to say.

link | On Poetry

2011-01-17T18:07:00.004Z

The Times Literary Supplement has called Paul Muldoon "the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War." His poetry has won the T.S. Eliot prize and the Pulitzer Prize and was elected Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford (1999-2004). He is the poetry editor at The New Yorker and teaches at Princeton University.

Listen to him discuss poetry over at Wunderkammer Magazine. Thanks to David Michael for the heavy lifting on the interview and J. M. Harper for the camera/editing work.

Enjoy.

theology | Unto the Breach, Lev 18:22 and 20:13

2010-08-31T13:59:00.005Z

"The Torah includes two prohibitions of sexual acts between males, Lev. 18:22 and 20:13, the latter of which prescribes the death penalty for them. These verses are part of the so-called Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-26)." I am getting rid of a book (or two) but thought I'd reproduce a passage (or two) before they go.

"...many commentators...think that same-sex sexual acts between males were attached to a cult that involved sexual activity and that was practices by the neighboring people (and, implicitly, by the Israelites themselves!). The surprising reference to child sacrifice in a list of sexual offences strengthens the impression that there is a cultic background. It has been commonly assumed, therefore, that the writers of the Holiness Code associated homoerotic behavior with sex connected to cultic practices." (39)

Under this interpretation, what is at issue is the worship of other gods and the activities related to that worship.

1. The prohibition of sexual contact between males in the Holiness Code in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 is done in a context of a polemic against a non-Israelite cult. Because the records of cultic homoeroticism are scanty and not unequivocal, however, historical description of this context is difficult.

2. The strategy of postexilic Israelites to maintain their distinct identity by, among other ways, separating from others strengthened the already existing taboos and social standards regarding sexual behavior and gender roles, banning, for instance, castration, cross-dressing, and male same-sex behavior; it was not simply the 'objective' facts of physiology that established gender identity.

3. Israel shared with its cultural environment an understanding of sexual life as an interaction between active masculine and passive feminine gender roles. This interaction was the cornerstone of gender identity, but the concept of sexual orientation was unkown. Sexual contact between two men was prohibited because the passive party assumed the role of a woman and his manly honor was thus disgraced.

From Martti Nissinen's Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspective, 44.

Nissinen's book is lovely and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to start thinking about sexuality in the ancient near east. The presence of these two verses in Hebrew scripture have created all sorts of arguments, proof-texts, etc. but rarely with an appreciation for the context, which is admittedly difficult to pin down. Of course, if you want to go with "The Bible says..." as an argument without an appreciation for what it might mean within its context, then those within the Christian faith who do not see homosexual activity as potentially viable and faithful would have to limit themselves to opposing male same-sex acts. I won't hold my breath for conservative Christians to welcome lesbianism.

books | Churning Through The Reading List

2010-05-24T18:22:00.002Z

I haven't been writing for a while but have turned my attention to my reading list. There are books on it that I simply need to read. If you're anything like me, there are those books that you know are important to you, that you've purchased, that you perhaps have opened and read the forward or preface, but have never actually read. I'm trying to polish off a few of those. I read Michel Henry's I Am The Truth, a lovely book. I'm still puzzling why, though employing arguments that I find similar to Karl Barth's theology, they don't irk me in the periodic way that Barth does. Read Hauerwas' With the Grain of the Universe to see if there was a potential take on Barth and natural theology that I could use in my dissertation. Today, I started Jean-Luc Nancy's Being Singular Plural, which will probably be followed by Agamben's The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans since I've read Infancy and History and wanted to round out some of his thinking on temporality.

Commenting on the epigraph, Agamben provides a long list of violent encounters around the world and writes:

It is an endless list, and everything happens in such a a way that one is reduced to keeping accounts but never taking the final toll. It is a litany, a prayer of pure sorrow and pure loss, the plea that falls from the lips of millions of refugees every day: whether they be deportees, people besieged, those who are mutilated, people who starve, who are raped, ostracized, excluded, exiled, expelled.

What I am talking about here is compassion, but not compassion as a pity that feels sorry for itself and feeds on itself. Com-passion is the contagion, the contact of being with one another in this turmoil. Compassion is not altruism, nor is it identification; it is the disturbance of violent relatedness.

If only I read more quickly, oh well...happy Monday!

quote | Obedience and the Triumph of God

2010-05-23T20:41:00.002Z

"The relationship between the obedience of God's people and the triumph of God's cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection."

John Howard Yoder, "The Politics of Jesus," 238.

theology | Interview with Stanley Hauerwas

2010-05-10T19:09:00.003Z

I've been reading Stanley Hauerwas over the last couple weeks, the second half of his Gifford Lectures for my dissertation and his memoir that was just published, Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir, which I'm finding delightful reading. The latter has delightful passages of biographical detail as well as theological insight:

Discussing his first teaching job at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL:

The students were, however, mainly white and from the middle and upper-middle class. Many of them came from North Side Chicago, which meant they were city kids who thought of themselves as far too sophisticated for a river town that bordered on Iowa. They were in a generalized way Lutheran, which meant in some vague way that they thought they were Christian. At least one of the missions of Augustana was to reinforce that vagueness. Or as I learned to put it -- our task was to give parents the impression the by sending their daughters to Augustana they would not lose the virginity they had already lost in high school.

I had not been at Augustana long before I was drawn into a controversy about whether the doors of coeds could be shut during the times Augustana males were allowed to visit in the women's dorms. A reporter for the campus newspaper asked me what the new Christian ethicist's view might be about this crucial issue. Drawing on my experience as a Texan, as well as having just come from Yale, I responded, "Well, I guess it's a good way to avoid grass stains." I was quoted in the weekly edition of the paper. I later came to understand that such an observation was not well received by the administration (77).

The book is full of interesting passages that provide information that one could not know otherwise:

I still carry in my wallet my history with the Selective Service System. On November 21, 1962, the year I entered Yale Divinity School, I was classified IV-D. In other words, the Dallas draft board assumed that because I was in divinity school I should have a ministerial deferment. I wrote to tell them that I was not going into the ministry, but they did not bother to change my classification until 1967, when I was reclassified II-S, a student deferment. I thought this classification was also inappropriate, so I wrote again, suggesting that I be reclassified I-A. I received a I-A classification on February 17, 1970. I was finally vulnerable to the draft and would remain so until I was thirty-five. But I never lived in fear of the draft. The students I taught did.

I remember one student in particular. His name was Bill Sampson. At another time and place, Bill could have been Bill Clinton. He was extremely handsome, had the manners his upper-middle class background demanded, and was quite smart. He was also the president of the student body...He went to Harvard Divinity School, where, he told me, he never had to study because the reading course I gave him taught him enough to get through most of his courses without studying.

Rather than studying theology, he took courses at Harvard on the side, in the hope that after the war he could get into a medical school. He did go to medical school, but during his residency he became attached to a lady who convinced him to come to North Carolina to organize workers. Bill was killed in Greensboro, North Carolina, by the Klan. I have never forgotten him, not only because I was quite fond of Bill, but also because he seemed to me to exemplify what a strange, terrifying, sad, yet wonderful time "the Sixties" names (83-84).

If you are interested, you can read my interview with Hauerwas that was just published by Wunderkammer Magazine. We discuss his memoir and greed in the US economy. There are also some clips on YouTube that would only be interesting to a more theologically inclined audience.

Enjoy!

film | Street Fight

2010-04-09T20:28:00.003Z

I'm not sure how I missed Street Fight, the Oscar-nominated documentary about Newark's 2002 Mayoral Election. I watched it last night on Netflix and thought it was great. The trailer doesn't do it justice. I felt like I was watching The Wire.

[Don't have Netflix? Sign up for the trial and watch the film for free.]

books | Reading Henry, Thinking Barth

2010-03-18T20:21:00.006Z

If God is Life, then the first results of the phenomenological analysis of life make it possible to understand the fundamental arguments of Christianity. Life never being shown in the world, as we have just recalled, it is therefore impossible to perceive it there, unless in the form of illusory significations coupled to objective processes, significations whose origin remains unexplained as long as one sticks to the appearance of the world and seeks this origin there. Absent from the world, life is thus also absent from the field of biology, which is a worldly one. Hence the question arises: Is it still possible to have access to Life, that is to say, to the essence of God himself? And if so, where and how?

The answer, according to the phenomenology of life we have sketched here, is as follows: we do have access to Life itself. Where? In Life. How? Through Life. That it is only in Life and through it that we can accede to Life implies a decisive presupposition: it is Life itself that comes forth in itself. This was precisely our first phenomenological approach to life, its definition as truth, or rather the definition of Truth as Life: life is self-revelation. Within life, it is life itself that achieves revelation; and itself that is revealed. This is because it is life itself that originally comes forth by itself, inasmuch as it is self-revelation and it comes first. Nothing and no one could ever come forth if its coming forth in Life did not depend on the very coming forth of Life itself--and, beyond that, if its coming forth in life were not identified with the original coming forth of Life in itself.

Michel Henry, I Am the Truth: Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, 54-55.

If you replace 'Life' with 'God,' a valid substitution on Henry's terms, it ends up sounding a lot like Karl Barth.

link | On Dinner Tables and Executive Lying

2010-03-09T08:03:00.003Z

Two things happened:

1. My mother brought up a George W. Bush biography for children at the dinner table. I asked if it showed him standing at the head of the 4380 military graves of US soldiers that have died in Iraq...maybe with a thought bubble pondering the cost of a few lies.

2. I learned that in his soon-to-be-released book, Karl Rove says Bush didn't lie.

Well, sorry Karl, here's a timeline of the false Bush administration assertions and an article that begs to differ.

I'm quite glad to have not seen much of W for the last year. I'd prefer to not have to listen to goons patch his legacy.

video | On Leaving Behind No Child Left Behind

2010-03-08T06:50:00.003Z

I'm always interested in education both theory and practice. Found this discussion with Diane Ravitch interesting.

As the Obama administration touts No Child Left Behind and the “Race to the Top” competition for school grants, we speak to leading education scholar and former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch. She’s long been known as an advocate of No Child Left Behind, charter schools, standardized testing, and using the free market to improve schools. But she’s had a radical change of heart, as chronicled in her latest book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. Ravitch says, “The evidence says No Child Left Behind was a failure, and charter schools aren’t going to be any better.

theology | Please Be Retarded

2010-02-09T20:07:00.003Z

Here is Facebook discussion that I'm reproducing here. In the wake of Rahm Emanuel use of 'retarded,' many in the disabled community had something to say. The Facebook group for L'Arche Greater Washington, D.C. posted the following link:

Mentally disabled 'self-advocates' oppose use of word 'retarded'

Here's the beginning of that article by Michael Alison Chandler of the Washington Post:

A national movement to purge the word "retarded" from lawbooks and medical terminology is nearing success, gaining support this week from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who apologized to advocates for the disabled for using the term during a private meeting last summer.

The campaign is led in part by the mentally disabled themselves, who are increasingly politically organized and eager to escape the stigma associated with the term.

"It's a time of change," said Jill Eglé, co-executive director of the Arc of Northern Virginia, a support group for the disabled, who spearheaded a campaign to change the state code in Virginia.

The words "retarded" and "retard" feel threatening, she said. Eglé identifies herself this way: "I am a powerful leader with an intellectual disability."

In Maryland, lawmakers voted last year to replace the term "mental retardation" throughout much of the legal code, and in the District and 48 states, including Virginia, elected officials have acted to remove the words from the names of human services agencies. Legislation has been introduced in Congress that would replace the words in all federal education, health and labor laws.

The 2010 professional manual that psychologists use for diagnosis makes the change in the medical label official: "Mental retardation" is out. "Intellectual disability" is in.

In response, I wrote the following:

AYT: L'Arche, at its best, embodies a politics which makes these conversations sound trite and peripheral . While I'm no more happy with people using 'gay' to mean bad than with people using 'retarded' to mean stupid, the word itself is not the problem and dismissing it from lawbooks and medical terminology is not the answer. Rehabilitating the term may be, in the long-term, more helpful than banning it. Also, and more importantly, the kind of community that L'Arche attempts to foster is at the heart of organically making certain kinds of linguistic formulation unintelligible and allowing people to see that perhaps it is their love and compassion for those around them that is retarded. This issue seems perhaps marginally beneficial, but not of great consequence.

When invited to check out the following link (See: John Franklin Stephens' piece on the use of 'retard') about why words matter, I had the chance to expound a bit further:

AYT: ...thanks for the links. I completely agree that words matter. That's never a question. Mine has always been: Can we treat language, or words, with the same generosity or hospitality with which we would treat those in our lives with overt disabilities? And is there a connection between our in/ability to hold and use correctly a word like 'retarded' which has so often been seen as ugly and our in/abilities to hold those who have had that word applied to them? I'll admit I have less of a desire to rehabilitate 'retard' than I do 'retarded,' which is in a sense just me following the logic of "people first" language, which I take to be a flawed improvement of how we so often speak, an opening up of our overly-condensed use of labels.

So here is a thought experiment. What if what is at the heart of L'Arche, what makes L'Arche prophetic, is a different temporality, a necessarily slowed existence which allows us to meet one another and see beyond labels (labels which only become necessary in a world that moves too quickly for love)? Maybe to love anyone we need to move and interact more slowly. Maybe this is why L'Arche has the potential to transform. Perhaps we must become a retard, one who has been slowed, to have our love quickened. Perhaps 'retard' could become a high compliment and something akin to 'human' in our usage. Maybe that is the Gospel.

I, of course, realize that my pursuit of other linguistic possibilities may even offend those who have been offended by such unimaginative and ugly speech. Rahm Emanuel's use of words was ugly. It is likely, that he may need to be 'retarded,' or slowed, in order to become a person who can speak more lovingly. I'm just not sure that taking away specific words helps him or any of us. I am open to the possibility of that need, but if needed, we should recognize that it is only needed for a time.

Lastly, I'm grateful for L'Arche, for being the kind of place where, at its best, things move slowly enough to have a conversation about how to speak lovingly.

theology | On Theft, Abundance and the Poor

2009-12-23T16:12:00.003Z

There was a news story recently about a British priest that said that shoplifting by the poor is sometimes okay.

LONDON (AP) -- For a priest in northern England, the commandment that dictates "thou shalt not steal" isn't exactly written in stone.

The Rev. Tim Jones caused an uproar by telling his congregation that it is sometimes acceptable for desperate people to shoplift - as long as they do it at large national chain stores, rather than small, family businesses.

Jones' Robin Hood-like sermon drew rebukes Tuesday from fellow clergy, shop owners and police.

From his pulpit at the Church of St. Lawrence in York, about 220 miles (355 kilometers) north of London, Jones said in his sermon Sunday that shoplifting can be justified if a person in real need is not greedy and does not take more than he or she really needs to get by.

The remarks drew a summons from Archdeacon Richard Seed, who said on his Web site that the church rejects the view that shoplifting can be acceptable.

"The Church of England does not advise anyone to shoplift, or break the law in any way," he said.

"Father Tim Jones is raising important issues about the difficulties people face when benefits are not forthcoming, but shoplifting is not the way to overcome these difficulties. There are many organizations and charities working with people in need, and the Citizens' Advice Bureau is a good first place to call," Seed's statement said.

Eleanor Course, a spokeswoman for Seed, said the archdeacon wants to meet with Jones to discuss the "appropriateness" of his sermon.

"The point we are most concerned about is that shoplifting is simply not a blameless, victimless crime," she said. "We want to make clear that it simply doesn't help people. And the last thing a desperate person wants is to be caught for shoplifting, so we feel this advice is very unwise."

Jones told The Associated Press that he stands by his comments. He said he regretted only that the media is focusing on his view on shoplifting rather than the underlying problem he wanted to address.

While Jones' statement might seem foreign to our modern ears, I thought it was worth noting that we have voices in Christian tradition that would back Jones up.

For example, Thomas Aquinas asks, in the secunda secundæ of the Summa Theologica (q.66 a.5), whether theft is always a sin. The short answer is yes. But then (two articles later - a.7) he asks whether it is lawful to steal because of the stress of need. His answer:

Nevertheless, if the need be so manifest and urgent, that it is evident that the present need must be remedied by whatever means be at hand...then it is lawful for a man to sustain his own need by means of another's property, by taking it either openly or secretly: nor is this properly speaking theft or robbery.

You can read all of II.2.q.66.a.7, here. So, while Eleanor Course, Seed's spokeswoman, may be correct when she says "the last thing a desperate person wants is to be caught for shoplifting," there may also be the possibility that from the Church's perspective shoplifting out of need isn't even theft. Said differently, one may get arrested for shoplifting, but in the case of need might have nothing to confess.

For the rest of us, those with computers and few worries about food (unlike 35 million Americans who are food insecure), perhaps we need to hear Ambrose - whom Aquinas quotes - in relation to the purpose of our abundance:

"It is the hungry man's bread that you withhold, the naked man's cloak that you store away, the money that you bury in the earth is the price of the poor man's ransom and freedom."

Maybe Jones, in the end, has a point, maybe Aquinas is right, "in cases of need all things are common property." That's a radical notion but perhaps important to imagining a more just world.

Merry Christmas.

quote | West on Accountability

2009-12-18T14:35:00.002Z

"for me, the priority is a democratization of the state, which has to do with the substantive accountability and answerability of corporate elites and financial oligarchs, who are running amok in terms of might, status, and reshaping the nation, and much of the world, in their image. That’s very dangerous. It is very dangerous. It is as dangerous as kings and queens running amok in the 17th and 18th centuries—unaccountable elites." - Cornel West

Thanks to the editors at The Immanent Frame for posting this and DD for bringing it to my attention.

blogging | Home for Christmas

2009-12-14T07:56:00.002Z

I didn't spend Christmas last year with family, but with housemates and friends in NC. This year I'll be with my parents, but will be headed to NC for New Year's. I'll try to have a book give-a-way before the end of the year for my faithful readers.

If you would like to support this blog, there are a couple ways to do so:

1. The micro-gift. You can click on the Donate button and drop a couple dollars in the cup (via PayPal).

2. Advertising (to the right). If you're buying a plane ticket, consider clicking on my Expedia link to do so. Or, try joining eMusic - right now their free trial offer will net you 35 songs (instead of the normal 25) and donate $6 to my site...all for free. You must click on my links for these to benefit me.

Lots of Love.

poem | For Those Blessed Enough to Have a Fireplace

2009-12-14T07:19:00.002Z

I'm in Illinois for the winter months and though I seem a month behind on sharing this, I will anyway. Last time I took this book off a shelf was 2005. I was in Germany that summer.

November

The Snow
began slowly,
a soft and easy
sprinkling

of flakes, then clouds of flakes
in the baskets of the wind
and the branches
of the trees--

oh, so pretty.
We walked
through the growing stillness,
as the flakes

prickled the path,
then covered it,
then deepened
as in curds and drifts,

as the wind grew stronger,
shaping its work
less delicately,
talking greater steps

over the hills
and through the trees
until, finally,
we were cold,

and far from home.
We turned
and followed our long shadows back
to the house,

stamped our feet,
went inside, and shut the door.
Through the window
we could see

how far away it was to the gates of April.
Let the fire now
put on its red hat
and sing to us.

--Mary Oliver

The line "how far away it was to the gates of April" expresses many of feelings of late, perhaps that is the feeling of Advent...waiting.

quote | On Saying Yes

2009-12-03T19:55:00.004Z

Thanks to DM for pointing me to this from Dave Eggers:

What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. What matters is that the Flaming Lips's new album is ravishing and I've listened to it a thousand times already, sometimes for days on end, and it enriches me and makes me want to save people. What matters is that it will stand forever, long after any narrow-hearted curmudgeons have forgotten their appearance on goddamn 90210. What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who's up and who's down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say. Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes.

That seems right. For me at least, saying yes does not mean being okay with everything, but going out of your way to find what is good and to be vulnerable and vocal enough to love a piece of music, a film, a book, a person.

As a related aside, I've had numerous conversations over the last six months about maturing and its relation to being a hipster or indie music/scene kid. Once you're fine with saying, 'yeah, I'm a hipster' or admitting that Urban Outfitters is no different than the Gap, then I think you're nearing a space where you can legitimately say yes. I enjoyed Paste Magazine's diagram of the Evolution of the Hipster.

quote | Wounds, Time, and the Spirit

2009-11-06T23:42:00.002Z

Packed into this quote you'll find my long-term pneumatological motivations, my concern to allow weakness whisper its theological words and to not bracket emotions when it comes to theological knowledge, and my political preferencing of prophetic listening over prophetic speech:

"...yet to embrace one's suffering...to endure, to go into the wild territories of discomfort and sit amidst one's fears, one's loneliness, requires a different temporality that also involves being sensitive to murmurs in the world, murmurs in our bodies. Listening to the wind that scatters leaves and finds its way through our protective layers is necessary for sanctification. We never learn to listen alone."

humor | Priest Shortage - The Onion

2009-10-30T20:05:00.002Z

I got a good chuckle out of this:

"I was a little intimidated on my first day because I had no idea what I was supposed to do during communion," said Nelson, referring to the transubstantiation of the Holy Eucharist, a miracle he is expected to perform at each mass in order to transform earthly bread and wine into the Most Precious Body and Blood of Christ. "But basically I just have to pour some watered-down cabernet into the gold cup, wave my arms around, say some stuff about God, and give each person in line one of those wafer things."

Read the 'article,' here.

Happy weekend.

music | A Mix Tape...Ahem...Playlist For A Friend

2009-08-05T08:38:00.005Z

eMusic, which I love, sent out an email asking me to rejoin them as a customer after taking a couple months off and offered me some free music. So I downloaded a bunch of new music (see list below) and put together this mix for a friend. Thought you might want to listen.

The Low Anthem - Oh My God, Charlie Darwin
Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming
God Help The Girl - God Help The Girl
Spoon - Got Nuffin EP
St. Vincent - Actor
Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight
Frightened Rabbit - Sing the Greys
Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
Bon Iver - Blood Bank EP
Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
& a bunch of songs off the SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records: THE COVERS! album (hence the Magnetic Fields and Arcade Fire covers in the playlist above).

I also got a new audiobook for free: Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger. Now I have a bunch to listen to as I walk around Durham. If you're looking for a free audiobook, click below, and let me recommend Cornel West's Democracy Matters, read by the man himself.

Happy Listening!
(and let me know if you like the mix)

[America's Young Theologian][Music]

action | Silence Is Support

2009-07-21T20:40:00.002Z

Please read the full article from Wired.com:

"Doctors don’t hand out antibiotics as preventive measures, to be popped like vitamin C, because that would accelerate the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Having a few tough bugs survive in a patient who needed the drug is an inevitable downside, but cultivating those bugs in millions of already-healthy people is foolish.

...

"Last year, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production concluded that 'the present system of producing food animals in the United States is not sustainable and presents an unacceptable level of risk to public health.' Five of their 24 recommendations — including the top two — involved antibiotic use in farm animals. The Pew Commission was composed of national experts, not marginal activists. Other advocates of cutting back on farm antibiotics include the World Health Association, American Medical Association, American Public Health Association and the American Association of Pediatrics."

But that’s not how it works on industrial U.S. farms, where antibiotics are routinely added to animal feed in order to encourage growth and prevent infections exacerbated by overcrowding and stress. About 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to healthy farm animals."

See also: NYTimes.com

Granted, our factory farming of animals in deplorable conditions makes it understandable why companies would want to dope all their animals. Allowing them this irresponsible antibiotic protection is also a vote for the status quo of industrial animal production which is an environmental and food safety issue far beyond the medical implications of disease resistance.

From the NYTimes article:

"The farm lobby’s opposition makes its passage unlikely, but advocates are hoping to include the measure in the legislation to revamp the health care system."

Make up for the money imbalance by flexing your communication. Spend a minute and go to:

Tell Congress: Keep Antibiotics Working!

quote | Hauerwas On Hauerwas

2009-06-15T02:25:00.003Z

Currently, I'm working on a review (with a friend) of a book that came out late in 2007, written by friends (of mine and each other). The book is Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary, written by Stanley Hauerwas and Romand Coles. I met Professor Hauerwas for the first time in 2002 when, as an incoming student to Duke University's divinity school, I was sent by my advisor to his office with the instruction that I had to take Hauerwas' seminar on virtue ethics. At the time, neither did I know much about Hauerwas nor did I forsee the influence he would have on my thinking, my reading lists and my choice of interlocutors. While in Aberdeen, Scotland, I started corresponding with Professor Coles as I considered switching my Ph.D. from theology to political theory. During that time, I read many of the chapters of this book as they were emailed back and forth between Coles and Hauerwas. Later, back at Duke University, I'd take a seminar on Kant taught by Coles.

I guess I love the book because it offers what is so often lacking in academic texts, pictures of the engagement that goes on between scholars (and friends). Obviously, knowing the two of them adds to my enjoyment, but I think it nice to see the two working on understanding and learning from their shared commitments and differences. The inclusion of letters between the two helps, something which one usually gains access to only after a scholar's death. So, until we get the review finished, here's a few lines from one of Hauerwas' letters which I think are worth hearing again:

In an odd way you and I are haunted in quite similar ways. You claim that you are haunted by John Yoder, but John would not have wanted you to be haunted by John Yoder. He would have wanted you to have been haunted by Jesus. And remember the Jesus he would have wanted to haunt you was the Jesus who has been raised from the dead. The only difference between us is that I try to put my body in positions in which I cannot avoid being hauted by that Jesus. This mean I go to church. Indeed going to church is one of the most exciting things I do.

That I go to church does not mean I think that Jesus is only to be found there. It just means that he has promised to show up there in a manner that can help us discern how he shows up in other places. Thus, my claim that the first task of the church is not to make the world more just but to make the world the world, is not meant to restrict God's care of us to the church. Rather, it is a way to remind us that whatever we mean by politics, justice, or democracy will be determined by how we have learned to celebrate, that is, to worship. (CDRO, 105)

Though not the newest book, I heartily recommend it.

Avoid Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, I recommend:

film | Something To Watch, Something I Missed

2009-06-08T09:20:00.003Z

I'm not sure how, but apparently Scott Hicks' documentary on Philip Glass flew beneath my radar for the last couple years. Definitely add Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts (2007) to your NetFlix queue...

film | The Soloist

2009-05-25T15:39:00.005Z

American audiences are served certain cinematic plots with such regularity and predictability that we know what to expect when we see them coming. There’s the sports film in which the over-the-hill athlete gets one more chance for glory. There’s the underdog team that overcomes obstacles and makes it to the big dance. So, when the main character in the The Soloist meets a homeless man who happens to be to be an extremely talented cellist, the film has all the material it needs to become a cliché. Thankfully, The Soloist avoids many of the easy mistakes that it could have made.

Robert Downey Jr. plays Steve Lopez, a LA Times columnist who stumbles across a homeless man (Nathaniel Ayers played by Jamie Foxx) playing a violin next to the statue of Beethoven in Pershing Square. Their conversation, which includes the detail that Nathaniel attended Julliard, gives Lopez his column for the week, a human interest story about a talent lost in society’s cracks. Through the film Lopez tries to help Nathaniel, bringing him a cello, finding an instructor, an apartment, all while an unlikely and challenging friendship develops between the two. The friendship is challenged not only by Nathaniel’s schizophrenia, but also by the conditions within which the relationship began. Downey’s character initially is open to doing the small things he can do for Nathaniel because Nathaniel is his story. If one went back to Aristotle’s description of friendship, this would be a friendship of use. Lopez relates to Nathaniel because he gets something else from it, a story rather than simply being involved in Nathaniel’s story. The character of the relationship and the vulnerability Lopez expresses changes over the course of the film. In dealing with Nathaniel’s mental illness, Lopez initially looks for a fix. He wants a diagnosis so that some results, some improvement can be had. He asks at one point in the film, “How do help somebody if you don’t know what they have?” That is the question of the film and answer forces the film to part from our expectations.

The film does not end as a typical uplifting Hollywood drama might and at times it seems unsure of itself. It has both its gritty and maudlin modes. Some will criticize the film on these grounds, as unclear about its intentions, but they might just be the movie’s gift. Sure, a deeper exploration of mental illness can be had, but our expectations are upset by the film just as Beethoven’s Eroica symphony, which recurs in the film, upset expectations in its day. Compare, for example, the light-hearted theme from one of Mozart’s earliest operas, Bastien and Bastienne, with the first subject of Beethoven’s piece and one finds an utterly identical progression except for Beethoven’s ominous deviation from the tonic. The film provides a similar deviation. It asks: Can you be a friend to someone if they are either a means to end, in this case a newspaper column, or a project to be fixed? Can you solve social ills from afar or without personal transformation? Downey’s character must be transformed if a true friendship is to be formed and we see him struggling to be vulnerable to Nathaniel. Again, thankfully, this film doesn’t end with Nathaniel playing at Carnegie Hall; thankfully because friendship, which always learns to flourish by attending to and accepting the special needs and qualities we each possess, is a more salutary end than easily measured results. Director Joe Wright gives us a film anchored by solid performances by both Downey and Foxx that may leave some audiences unsure of its intentions, which although a vice, is perhaps also a virtue of the film. Denying easy notions of success and as a conversation starter about homelessness, mental illness, and friendship, The Soloist succeeds. I'm not sure I'd send you to theaters to see it (and I don't think it is still in theaters), but you could do worse than adding it to your Netflix queue.

quote | Augustine on America

2009-04-29T04:42:00.002Z

"...is it reasonable, is it sensible, to boast of the extent and grandeur of empire, when you cannot show that men lived in happiness, as they passed their lives amid the horrors of war, amid the shedding of men's blood--whether the blood of enemies or fellow citizens--under the shadow of fear and amid the terror of ruthless ambition?"

-Augustine City of God 4.3 (Bettenson, 138).

update | A Month Really?

2009-04-19T00:08:00.002Z

Has it really been a month since I've posted anything? Wow. A lot has been going on which needs to be filled in. I'll just have to remedy that once the weekend is over. In the meantime, I added a new song of the week. Happy listening.

tv | HBO Shows Death On A Factory Farm

2009-03-16T14:21:00.003Z

Tonight (Monday, March 16 at 10PM/9C), HBO will air DEATH ON A FACTORY FARM, a documentary film about the Humane Farming Association’s (HFA) landmark investigation into the mistreatment of animals at the notorious Wiles Farm hog factory in Ohio. Directors Tom Simon and Sarah Teale (HBO’s DEALING DOGS) tell the story of an HFA investigator who goes undercover at the hog farm in order to bring the abuses to light. The evidence HFA gathers leads to a rare prosecution and trial for animal cruelty - and a verdict that surprises nearly everyone.

I encourage you to tune in to HBO on March 16 to watch DEATH ON A FACTORY FARM - and spread the word to your family and friends as well. It’s a great opportunity for the general public to see what happens on factory farms throughout the nation. You can also check out the Humane Farming Association.

Check out the film if you have HBO, or find someone that does.

When I bring up something like this, I fear some might want to roll their eyes, somehow communicating that I sound like a liberal who has lost all touch with his agrarian roots. For what it's worth, I'm not a vegetarian. I do eat meat. However, I am ultimately convinced not only that we eat too much meat (see here), but also I am convinced that how we treat (and even kill and eat) animals is a significant moral issue insofar as how one interacts with what our faith has taught us to call creation ultimately impacts both our own humanity and whether we are honoring our Creator. Further, I am convinced that factory farming is a significant labor issue. Asking others to interact with parts of creation in a manner that asks them to casually disregard the destruction of that creation, can only have a detrimental impact on that person. This cannot be overlooked if we are to care for our neighbor. As Christians, the shared portion of our Scriptures begin with God's creation and pronouncement that God's creation was good. The second creation account in the second chapter of the book of Genesis portrays God in agrarian terms, planting, irrigating, and tending a garden. Humanity is brought into this action of tending, assuming both the role of dominion (as seen in chapter one) and caretaker. Rule and responsibility, humanity cannot have one without the other. Even if we assume that eating animals will be part of our lives, how we care for these animals, how we ask farm workers to interact with them, and how land is potentially denigrated by the factory farming of animals are all moral concerns. Christians cannot merely chuckle and say they taste good.

Yes, I'm asking you to watch television tonight...

life | Happy Monday

2009-02-23T10:26:00.002Z

It's 5:25am. I've been at the library since 9pm. I'm doing that a lot lately, hence the lack of blog posts. I was happy with the Oscars last night. Benjamin Button didn't win any major awards! Yay...it didn't deserve to win anything except what it did win. I was happy for Slumdog's success; even if I thought The Reader was a superior film, I knew it wouldn't win.

I'm listening to music while I write and for the life of me, I can't get into Anthony and the Johnsons. With the exception of a few songs it just makes me want to yell, "oh, shut up." Too slow for me. Here's a song I've listened to about 10x this evening...happy listening, happy Monday.

The Twist - Frightened Rabbit

film | Mendes' Revolutionary Road

2009-01-18T20:39:00.003Z

I have one word for Sam Mendes' film Revolutionary Road: stunning. It's that good. It's that - I'm not sure what to say - stark, honest, nuanced, blistering.

Mendes takes us back to the 'burbs. It has been two films (Jarhead, Road to Perdition) since Mendes' directorial Oscar for American Beauty. American Beauty was, in a way, a movie about bullshit. The characters weren't bad, but enmeshed in bullshit which disconnected them from actual desires. Harry Frankfurt has argued that bullshit is more detrimental than lying, for at least the liar has some connection to the truth. Whereas American Beauty began with an established family firmly enmeshed in a bullshit existence, Revolutionary Road starts with a young couple who is trying to avoid transforming into the family in American Beauty. American Beauty has a comedic element insofar as Lester Burnham can laugh at and play with the absurdity surrounding him at the bottom of the well. Revolutionary Road has a greater sense of both gravity, as we watch a couple as they attempt not to fall down the well, and reality insofar as bullshit is not yet their governing paradigm.

The film takes place in the 1950s, depicting a young couple who meet, marry and create a suburban life with all the trappings and a healthy sense of desperation. Frank and April Wheeler are the product of gifted performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. One can't help but think about Titanic. One can't help but think that love - whether a love like that portrayed in Titanic or otherwise - cannot bear the desire for salvation that people place on its shoulders. Fixing the Wheeler's problems also means upsetting a negotiated set of expectations, cultural and private. The couple demonstrates what happens when people are utterly unsatisfied with their lives and want the person they love to save them but realize that they cannot. The result: hate and love swirl together as one feels one's life hanging in the balance. If you've been there, these emotional performances will astound you with their nuance. It's not an easy movie to watch - it speaks too bluntly and with too much honesty and wades too deeply into the relational and structural contours of our human existence - but it is, in a word, stunning.

[America's Young Theologian][Film][Revolutionary Road]

film | Zwick's Defiance

2009-01-16T11:37:00.002Z

Since Christmas I've seen a lot of WWII films: Der Untergang, a great film about Hitler's last days, Valkyrie, The Great Escape, Saving Private Ryan, and Saints and Soldiers. The last one to add to the list is Edward Zwick's newly released film Defiance.

The film follows three Jewish brothers as they attempt to evade the Nazis occupying Poland. This sends them into the Belarussian forest, where they end up being joined by other escapees. One brother joins the Russian resistance fighters, one endeavors to build a livable village in the woods, and the youngest shares both impulses. What took place in actuality over the course of three years is condensed in the film to a period of nine months. It ends up feeling like one part Robin Hood but with more hiding, one part Schindler's List but with less encounter with actual Nazis, and perhaps one part Legends of the Fall. Generally, I think Zwick may have had a little more success with movies he has produced (I Am Sam, Shakespeare in Love, Traffic) than in his uneven work as a director (Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai, Glory), but I'd put Defiance in the top third of Zwick's work (closer to Blood Diamond and Glory, than the utterly forgettable Courage Under Fire and The Siege). As in Blood Diamond, the actors pull their weight and anchor the film amidst some plot weaknesses. Still, the film ended up feeling a slightly flat. Roger Ebert suggests that the culprit might be a function of the lack of interface with the Germans which makes the film seem more a game of hide and seek when no one is counting. I definitely found the film watchable but not necessarily something about which I'm ecstatic. One could certainly do much worse, but one could also do better, e.g. Gran Torino, Milk, Revolutionary Road, Slumdog Millionaire.

[America's Young Theologian][Film][Defiance]

life | This And That

2009-01-13T06:25:00.003Z

This is just a quick shoot from the hip post. Was sick last week. I spent two days in bed feeling pretty awful. I'm happy to say that I'm feeling better. My friend Kat brought over food and medicine and generally gets credit for being awesome.

While in bed I read a book, entitled The Alcoholic, that I got from one of my housemates for Christmas. Luke, you also get a gold star. It's a graphic novel written by Jonathan Ames and illustrated by Dean Haspiel that DC Comics released last fall. I found it really touching even if it is an unblinking look into a life somewhat crippled by sexual yearning, drugs, and, as the title suggests, alcohol. I'll let you read the NYTimes review, which starts with the delightful line "If ending up in a station wagon with a pudgy, dwarflike hag doesn’t make you want to quit drinking, what will?" You follow the main character through a process of wondering and answering how he ended up where he has. The struggles with sexual confusion, a lost childhood friend, a woman he can't seem to get over (which I thought was well-portrayed), and the gnawing knowledge that there is a better him are poignantly written and depicted. As long as you're not easily offended (and maybe if you are easily offended), I'd recommend it.

Since the whole Muxtape thing went down, I'm now using iMeem.com when I want to throw together a mix for the blog. I put up a new free track that will be on the new A.C. Newman album that comes out in a week. You can download it using the link above, which will take you to Matador's webpage and give you the opportunity to download a collection of tracks, or just go to A.C. Newman's page and download it there. Generally, I love anyone or anything with any connection to The New Pornographers, and can't wait for their frontman's second solo effort. Go Carl Go!

Was happy for the two best picture winners at the Golden Globes: Slumdog Millionaire (drama) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (comedy). Loved both.

Watched The Business of Being Born, which I'm convinced everyone should see. You can stream it on NetFlix, I think.

-- Oh, it's 2009, about time you subscribe to this blog. --

[America's Young Theologian][Music][Film][Birth]

theology | Why (On Jan 18-20th) It's Morally Superior To Be American Than Christian

2009-01-12T16:24:00.007Z

Stanley Hauerwas once wrote an essay that provocatively asked "Why Gays (as a Group) Are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group)." In short, his piece argued that (at the time) homosexuals being banned from the military - a particular moral achievement for Hauerwas - was something that Christians had failed to achieve.

We all know that on January 20th at the inauguration of Barack Obama, Rick Warren, the conservative pastor and author from California, will offer the invocation. His selection caused consternation among progressive Christians and non-Christians alike because of his support for Prop 8 in California and comments that many see as equating incest and homosexuality. Today, it was announced that Gene Robinson, the first openly gay person to be ordained a bishop in the ECUSA, will participate in the first event attended by the president-elect on Jan 18th.

So, in the coming days, you'll have Warren and Robinson participating in a singular function to pray for a place called the United States of America. In the coming days, there will be this little glimmer of unity, something that has been lacking for a long time, but particularly evidenced in the recent schismatic formation of the Anglican Church in North America which separates itself from the ECUSA. It should be clear that church unity - that for which Jesus prayed - is a more important virtue than getting a stance on human sexuality right. It should be clear that lack of church unity, schism, is a greater sin than homosexuality could possibly be. Well, at least in the coming days, there will be this little glimmer of unity, Christians from these unnaturally divided camps together in a particular task. It's sad that being American brings these Christians together rather than being Christian...so much for family values.

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Politics][Homosexuality]

news | Richard John Neuhaus Died, Thursday

2009-01-09T15:15:00.003Z

"The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a theologian who transformed himself from a liberal Lutheran leader of the civil rights and antiwar struggles in the 1960s to a Roman Catholic beacon of the neoconservative movement of today, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 72 and lived in Manhattan." [NYT Obit]

I always respected even if I never agreed fully with Neuhaus; I am sadden by his passing and thankful for his life.

music | What I'm Listening To

2009-01-06T14:50:00.003Z

It's been a while since I've written about the music to which I'm listening, so I thought I'd throw together a playlist. Some is new, some is old. Happy listening.

View This Playlist On Imeem.com

[America's Young Theologian][Music]

poem | The Ripples Always Lakeside Roll

2009-01-05T14:19:00.005Z

It's a new week, a new year. It's Monday morning and a warm day in North Carolina. I was sorting some files on my laptop and came across a poem I wrote maybe five years ago and thought I'd share it. It's strange for me to encounter it now.

+ + +
The Ripples Always Lakeside Roll

part the willows branches
with your fingers, with your face,
brush a fern and denim scene
of a grace sometimes displaced

gleeful, muttering, furrowed, hushed,
the ripples always lakeside roll,
a shore knows only arms outstretched,
the water filling, making whole

breaking shores become banks
with water learns to play, to move,
to dance within a field together,
never every whole is new

--Daniel R. Morehead

film | Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire

2008-12-25T20:45:00.003Z

With a few caveats in place, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed Danny Boyle's latest film Slumdog Millionaire. The story follows Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India's "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" His life is unfolded through a series of flashbacks that show how his life experiences helped him answer the questions on the show. To be clear, its more about his life than the game show. Sure, it's a feel-good love story and you know how it will end, but these aren't problems or at least weren't for me.

There was a lot I liked about the film. First, it's an offering unlike Boyle's other films (Sunshine, Millions, 28 Days Later..., The Beach, Trainspotting). The muted color pallet of Sunshine has turned into vibrant India, even if tough neighborhoods (Trainspotting) and the whimsy of childhood (Millions) have shown up before in his work. I also appreciated that it portrayed some facets of slum life which I'd guess many fail to realize take place. So, although heartbreaking, I'm glad that what is on the whole a fun film, didn't need to avoid topics like the intentional maiming of children to increase what they can procure from begging. In short, thankfully, it has more grit than a Hollywood romantic film that blithely throws around words like destiny. Lastly, I found it charming, well-paced, and curiously powerful for a film that has a plot anchor that should but doesn't inevitably dash the film against the rocks of credibility. It's a lovely film that I highly recommend. See it if you haven't. [The trailer doesn't do it justice.]

Oh, and I also saw the film Seven Pounds that stars Will Smith. Skip it.

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Film][Slumdog]

theology | Meditation On Matthew 5.7

2008-12-20T17:47:00.003Z

"How honored are those who
treat others with compassion,
because they will find compassion."

+ + +
To reiterate a previously made point about my translation of the beatitudes, I'm using "How honored" because I think the beatitudes in Matthew are working off of (yet inverting) the normative cultural conceptions of honor/shame. Compassion is my translation of the term which most often gets translated as merciful/mercy. Those in the tradition who viewed the beatitudes as cumulative - each building on the former beatitude - are quick to note that justice and mercy are placed together. "Justice and mercy are so united, that the one ought to be mingled with the other; justice without mercy is cruelty; mercy without justice, profusion."

To be honest, I (and perhaps it's safe to say 'we') am more inclined to honor the strong, the solid, the stalwart, the secure. To be compassionate, to treat others with mercy or compassion, is to be vulnerable, porous, taking another's burden as one's own. It requires seeing; it requires being present. [It is interesting to note that die Barmherzigen the German for "the merciful" as found in the above photo can also describe a ministering angel or messanger.] The vulnerability of compassion is not what most characterizes my daily existence, favoring as I do strength and independence. However, to operate from a place of strength is commonly to adopt the position of the giver of gifts and to shy away from being a recipient. Further, it shies away from acknowledging my many needs and those who consistently let my life continue through their gifts. Even if we lived in a wholly just world, a world where justice reigned supreme, this would be insufficient and worse than it first sounds if it didn't include compassion. Perhaps those who rightfully call for social justice should remember also that justice without compassion or mercy is cruelty, that justice needs gentle hands.

Like so many of the beatitudes, it is not my first inclination to honor those who treat others with compassion, those who are vulnerable and who are impacted by the pains of others, even if I find such beautiful. Too often my charity can also be thus, giving resources from a distance, holding benefits (which do in fact benefit, don't get me wrong) that can be just another party to attend. Whether a TV show like Oprah's Big Give or an end of the year charitable donation, compassion can end up emasculated - more of a contest or transaction than something involving vulnerability. This is not to say that some good isn't done. But what is the honor that comes from treating others with compassion? Finding compassion.

This is to say that the more determinatively we allow the burdens of those around us (and I think it important to say that the world as such cannot be our 'neighbor') to be our own, the more compassionately (which is to say that justice cannot be our only dictum) we treat the people in our lives, the more we are opened to the other with their needs, the more our needs, our deficiencies, our burdens seem capable of being embraced or suffered without taking on the character of something that problematizes our existence. In short, it allows for growth, for healing. I'm reminded of the fourth century Cappadocian fathers, in particular Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, and of the Gospel according to Matthew. For Gregory of Nyssa, Christ healed the effects of the Fall as he healed the sick in his earthly ministry - by touching. For Gregory of Nazianzus, "what was not assumed [by Jesus] was not healed." Then, there are the words of Jesus from later in Matthew's gospel: "Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden."

The compassionate often find compassion and the prospect of healing. Through Jesus - whose work was justice and compassion - our honor is that we might be considered members of God's family. Jesus, our physician, does not heal from an uninvolved distance. This is the wonder of Christmas.

+ + +
[The photo comes from a small chapel in Gegenbach, Germany which graphically depicts the various beatitudes from Matthew. The chapel was a stopping point for pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.]

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Politics][Compassion][Matt 5]

quote | Auden

2008-10-24T20:41:00.003Z

When asked what my favorite quote was, this is what I came up with:

For given Man, by birth, by education,
Imago Dei who forgot his station,
The self-made creature who himself unmakes,
The only creature ever made who fakes,
With no more nature in his loving smile
Than in his theories of a natural style,
What but tall tales,the luck of verbal playing,
Can trick his lying nature into saying
That love, or truth in any serious sense,
Like orthodoxy, is a reticence?

--W.H. Auden, From "The Truest Poetry is the Most Feigning"

link | Reforming Our Health System

2008-10-13T21:00:00.009Z

When it comes to our broken health care system, I blame you, well, I blame us. In short, only a nationalized health care system will work. Until we demand it, our system will remain broken. Shame on Republicans for scaring people! Rhetorically, this happens in two ways. First, there's the specter of Canada/UK, etc. I've used both health systems. They're not bad. If there are drawbacks, it is a function of the amount money put into their systems not the system itself. You could change those systems by, for example, doubling, say, the UK's per capita expenditure and still have significantly less than our current expenditure on health care. Second, there's the specter of government. The line generally goes, "you don't want the government making medical choices for you, do you?" No one asks the question, "do you want for-profit companies, who make more money by denying care than providing it, making your medical choices for you?" Still, neither presidential candidate's health care plan goes far enough -- really, it was Clinton who had the best plan. Obama's plan is only slightly better than McCain's.

"The McCain plan is a recipe for shrinking coverage. The individual insurance market is notoriously treacherous and the amount of the tax credits is nowhere near enough to purchase even a high deductible policy. Furthermore, the tax-exempt health savings accounts would not be of much help to poor or even middle-class people since they aren't much motivated by tax breaks and don't have discretionary money to put aside in the health savings accounts anyway."

From: Reforming Our Health System: Why Neither Candidate Has the Answer, a lecture given at Princeton University by Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. In her lecture, Angell explores why -- despite higher and spiraling per-capita costs -- the American system provides fewer basic health services than many other advanced nations. She proposes fundamental changes that would make universal health care at sustainable cost a real possibility. It's worth a listen.

[AYT][Theology][Politics][McCain][Health]

film | Michael Moore's Slacker Uprising

2008-10-04T20:44:00.004Z

I watched Michael Moore's latest film Slacker Uprising two nights ago. I don't always like Moore's films; actually it'd be more accurate to say that I rarely love Moore's films. He's been good for documentary films in terms of exposure (though perhaps less so in terms of form), but I always leave feeling clubbed over the head with a message that tends to lack nuance (even if I tend to agree). Of course, he often sees himself presenting the other side of a story, leaning into an entrenched message, so I can understand why his films feel that way. I can see some taking Slacker Uprising as an homage to Moore himself, but I found it easier to connect to this film than some of his other films. The film follows Moore on his 2004 cross-country tour to get Kerry elected president. The result of Moore's message and presence in front of the camera is a greater sense of sincerity and transparency in the film. There's a delightful scene where a Catholic group starts chanting the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary during one of Moore's rallies. Moore finishes saying it with them and then reminds them how frequently Scripture talks about the poor.

[By the way, I hate abortion, both as a practice and an issue. To be clear, no one is pro-abortion as such. I hate that it has become a litmus test among conservative Catholics and Protestants about whether a candidate is in line with their so-called "values". Republicans would rather support a war-centered hawk, who doesn't seem to see military spending and deployment as oppression of the poor in our country and the creation of poverty abroad, and an incompetent running mate, than sacrifice perceived pro-life purity. I don't say the following to say that thinking about abortion is of little value, yet while there were well under a million abortions in the US in 2006 (a number that continues to fall), there were at the same time (according to the USDA) 35.5 million people living in US households considered to be food insecure. Further, the reason given for a quarter of abortions is poverty. Whether or not one supports a "culture of life" cannot be determined by a single issue. One would also want to attend to positions on war (those dead related to our dishonest experiment in regime change in Iraq is well over a half a million people), heath care (the US currently has the most expensive health care of any OECD country and also has the highest percentage of costs paid privately, yet has some of the worst health statistics among so-called developed countries), income disparity, poverty assistance and reduction, budget allocation, capital punishment, economics, job creation, etc. It is to the credit of Republican strategists over the last 25 years that they've co-opted the Christian imagination of so many to make them focus on one issue. Forgive the rant, but come on people...anyway, back to the film...]

Another enjoyable moment was Joan Baez singing "Finlandia" [Tune: Jean Sibelius; Lyrics: Lloyd Stone]:

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
a song of peace for lands afar and mine;
this is my home, the country where my heart is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:
but other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine:
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
a song of peace for their land and for mine.

It's probably not the best film you or I will see this year but I did enjoy and would recommend it. Also, it is one of the cheaper films you'll see. You can stream/download it for free. See their website, iTunes, or YouTube.

[AYT][Theology][Politics][Film][Moore]

update | Stay Tuned

2008-10-02T22:42:00.002Z

...I've been busy writing my dissertation, but I'll post a couple of posts that never made it past the draft phase from last year. Stay tuned.

poltics | Question Polls Don't Ask

2008-09-17T14:31:00.004Z

Alright Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, you're going to decide who is the next President of our country.

Forget September 11th for a minute, remember October 11, 2002? Come on, October 11th...thirteen months after September 11th. Remember? That's when the resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq was passed. Of course it shouldn't have been passed as our action was misinformed, manipulated, and (even without those aspects) simply unjust. Something wrong was done in our name, your name (and continues). We're clear on that, right?

Seventy-seven senators voted for the action, twenty three against. McCain voted for it, but so did Clinton. It's worth remembering that the 75% who voted for the 'war' were Democrats and Republicans. Still, when it comes to the twenty-three who voted against the 'war,' there was only one Republican. One. It was the Democrats who opposed using our military.

Often polls ask, "Who do you trust more as a commander-in-chief?"

I'd generally prefer to ask, "Who is more likely to keep us out of war?"

Sure, McCain's grandfather was in the Navy. Sure, McCain's father was in the Navy. Sure, McCain got an education from the military at the Naval Academy. Sure, he fought in Vietnam. Sure, he was a POW. Sure, he went to the National War College. Sure, he was the Navy's liaison to the U.S. Senate (around the time I was born) and from there got into politics. When McCain first ran for congress, he used his POW status to deflect criticisms of him being a carpetbagger. That he was a POW was the most common story trotted out at the GOP convention. McCain's whole life has been war and politics. McCain knows military (even if, as he admits, he doesn't know that much about the economy).

The Republican party generally has a strange mix of militaristic hawks and fiscal, social and religious conservatives. To Christians, who may happen to be Republicans, I'd like to remind you that Christians are against war (even the Just War theorists in the Christian tradition were crafting their arguments as an exception to the more general opposition to war). One gets the Pentagon regardless of how you vote, but I think it is worth us asking:

Who is more likely to keep us out of war?

My answer to this question is but one of the reasons I will not be voting for McCain.

[I do not consider voting to be the most important political act
that Christians/Citizens can engage in, but it's not the least either.]

[AYT][Theology][Politics][McCain][GOP][Christian]

quote | Experience, Quest, Adventure

2008-09-16T00:31:00.002Z

"While scientific experiment is indeed the construction of a sure road (of a methodos, a path) to knowledge, the quest instead is the recognition that the absence of a road (the aporia) is the only experience possible for man. But by the same token, the quest is also the opposite of the adventure, which in the modern age emerges as the final refuge of experience. For the adventure presupposes that there is a road to experience, and that this road goes by the way of the extraordinary and the exotic (in opposition to the familiar and the commonplace). Instead, in the universe of the quest the exotic and the extraordinary are only the sum of the essential aporia of every experience. Thus Don Quixote, who lives the everyday and the familiar (the landscape of La Mancha and its inhabitants) as extraordinary, is the subject of a quest that is a perfect counterpart of the medieval ones."

Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History

politics | On Campaigns And Parrhesia

2008-09-11T15:32:00.007Z

For Aristotle, parrhesia is a virtue. Parrhesia, or frank speech, is used in Aristotle's description of what the paradigmatic virtuous person would look like.

One must also be open in his hate and in his love (for to conceal one's feelings, i.e. to care less for truth than for what people will think, is a coward's part), and must speak and act openly; for one is free of speech because...one is given to telling the truth, except when one speaks in irony to the vulgar.
(Nichomachean Ethics, Book IV)

Newspeak, the fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, might be considered the simulacra of parrhesia. Like parrhesia, there seems to be a frankness to Newspeak as the language sought to remove shades of meaning leaving only dichotomous simplicity (which is easier for the state to manipulate). Our own political speech has its approximations of Newspeak, terms like pro-life, patriotism, freedom. The telos of Newspeak was to reduce even these dichotomies to the "yes" of obedience with which everyone answered to whatever was asked of them. Yet, Newspeak cannot be frank, or open and sincere in expression, since it is never honest about its goal to squelch dissent and disallow a plurality of thought. Unfortunately, much of our political language has more in common with Newspeak than parrhesia. When the Bush administration sold the country on the war in Iraq based upon intelligence known to be (at best) weak, when they told us that a control-freak dictator supported terrorism, when they played on our fears by invoking biological and nuclear weapons, they did so under the cover of a single word, patriotism, to which one could only say "yes."

The ongoing campaigns are not much better. When Barack Obama is questioned for not wearing a lapel pin, when McCain chooses "pro-life" over a wealth of political experience, when it is implied that the Clinton's are racist, when the McCain campaign runs a silly context-bending story about lipstick under the guise of the scare-word: sexism, we are witnessing and being involved in a lack of virtue. Insofar as our talk about, our interest in these stories involves us in this linguistic corruption and duplicity, it must over time have an impact on our character. Let's see if McCain can utilize parrhesia and call Obama a sexist during a debate if he in fact believes that to be true, or will he merely hide behind the Newspeak of his proxies?

Are there bright spots in our situation? Absolutely but not always where you'd expect:

"[The virtuous person] is given to telling the truth,
except when one speaks in irony to the vulgar."
Here's is to better reportage, better campaigns, better conversations and more frank speech. In the meantime, we can be grateful for those who help us to see our vice.

For further reading on parrhesia, see Michel Foucault's Parrhesia and the Crisis of Democratic Institutions.

[AYT][Theology][Politics][McCain]

politics | Palin & Hauerwas

2008-09-08T21:43:00.002Z

I'll be back to blogging soon. In the meantime, here are two links:

From The Economist (hardly a left-wing source), a story about McCain's choice of Palin that is well worth a read:

Mr McCain’s appointment also raises more general worries about the Republican Party’s fitness for government. Up until the middle of last week Mr McCain was still considering two other candidates whom he has known for decades: Joe Lieberman, a veteran senator, independent Democrat and Iraq war hawk, and Tom Ridge, a former governor of Pennsylvania (a swing state with 21 Electoral College votes) and the first secretary of homeland security. Mr McCain reluctantly rejected both men because their pro-choice views are anathema to the Christian right.

The Palin appointment is yet more proof of the way that abortion still distorts American politics. This is as true on the left as on the right. But the Republicans seem to have gone furthest in subordinating considerations of competence and merit to pro-life purity. One of the biggest problems with the Bush administration is that it appointed so many incompetents because they were sound on Roe v Wade. Mrs Palin’s elevation suggests that, far from breaking with Mr Bush, Mr McCain is repeating his mistakes.

From the blogosphere, Hauerwas on electoral politics:

Namely..., why is it that no one is angry at the inequality of income in this country? I mean, the inequality of income is unbelievable. Unbelievable. Why isn’t that ever an issue of politics? Because you don’t live in a democracy. You live in a plutocracy. Money rules.

[AYT][Theology][Politics][Palin]

books | Politics & The Order of Love

2008-08-15T03:45:00.002Z

I don't get excited by books being published all that often, probably a couple a year. I think this one deserved both mention and my recommendation. Eric Gregory's Politics & The Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship has just been released by UChicago Press.

From the publisher:

Augustine—for all of his influence on Western culture and politics—was hardly a liberal. Drawing from theology, feminist theory, and political philosophy, Eric Gregory offers here a liberal ethics of citizenship, one less susceptible to anti-liberal critics because it is informed by the Augustinian tradition. The result is a book that expands Augustinian imaginations for liberalism and liberal imaginations for Augustinianism.

Gregory examines a broad range of Augustine’s texts and their reception in different disciplines and identifies two classical themes which have analogues in secular political theory: love—and related notions of care, solidarity, and sympathy—and sin—as well as related notions of cruelty, evil, and narrow self-interest. From an Augustinian point of view, Gregory argues, love and sin constrain each other in ways that yield a distinctive vision of the limits and possibilities of politics.

In providing a constructive argument for Christian participation in liberal democratic societies, Gregory advances efforts to revive a political theology in which love’s relation to justice is prominent. Politics and the Order of Love will provoke new conversations for those interested in Christian ethics, moral psychology, and the role of religion in a liberal society.

Give it a read.

music | A New Song

2008-08-03T18:33:00.002Z

I'm listening to a new song, which came out in the last four months, thanks to my neighbor (who is housing me at the moment and introducing me to Americana music I wouldn't listen to otherwise). The song makes me chuckle. I love songs that give a funny/irreverent/unconventional take on Christianity/Jesus/Religion. If you'd like to listen, drop me an email and I'll send it to you. Happy Sunday.

theology | Need Something To Read?

2008-07-21T03:29:00.002Z

I'm currently in the Chicagoland area. Still working on my dissertation, but with some home cooking thrown in. Not much to share, but thought that I'd share a link in case you're looking for a little light theological reading.

Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (click to download the .pdf), which grew out of the World Council of Churches meeting in Lima, was published by the WCC in 1982 (Faith and Order Paper No. 111, aka the “Lima Text”).

This famous text explores the growing agreement – and remaining differences - in fundamental areas of the churches’ faith and life. The most widely-distributed and studied ecumenical document, BEM has been a basis for many “mutual recognition” agreements among churches and remains a reference today. It weighs in at a mere 30 pages and is a great read. Definitely manageable on your next train ride.

.: tolle lege :.

[AYT][Theology][Baptism]

poem | Marry Me

2008-07-18T04:29:00.002Z

I came across a link to this poem on my friend's blog. I liked it. I'm sharing it. Check out American Life in Poetry if you're not familiar with it.

Marry Me
a senryu sequence

when I come late to bed
I move your leg flung over my side
that warm gate

nights you're not here
I inch toward the middle
of this boat, balancing

when I turn over in sleep
you turn, I turn, you turn,
I turn, you

some nights you tug the edge
of my pillow under your cheek,
look in my dream

pulling the white sheet
over your bare shoulder
I marry you again

--Veronica Patterson

[AYT][Poetry]

quote | Where Is Jesus Hidden?

2008-07-13T06:41:00.000Z

"But where is [Jesus] hidden now? With God, at the right hand of the Father? in His Word and sacraments? in the mystery of His Spirit, which bloweth where it listeth? All this is true enough...[but] He is no less present though hidden, in all who are now hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick and in prison. Wherever in this present time between the resurrection and the parousia one of these is waiting for help (for food, drink, lodging, clothes, a visit, assistance), Jesus Himself is waiting...They represent the world for which He died and rose again, with which He has made Himself supremely one, and declared Himself in solidarity...This is the test which at the last judgment will decide concerning the true community which will inherit the kingdom: whether in this time of God's mercy and patience, this time of its mission, it has been the community which has succoured its Lord by giving unqualified succour to them in this needy world."

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.2, 508.

Happy Sunday!

[AYT][Theology][Barth]

blogging | Link Of The Day

2008-07-12T17:30:00.002Z

My friend Reno is posting again on his blog and links to a wonderful little video from the Guardian. It's my link of the day.

politics | H.R. 6304 (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 )

2008-07-09T20:49:00.002Z

H.R. 6304: A bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to establish a procedure for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence, and for other purposes.

Bowing to President Bush's demands, the Senate sent the White House a bill Wednesday overhauling bitterly disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and shielding telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans.

The relatively one-sided vote, 69-28, came only after a lengthy and heated debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks. It ended almost a year of wrangling over surveillance rules and the president's warrantless wiretapping program that was initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

I for one am not thrilled this passed, and for those who are interested, here are the here are some of the votes:

Clinton - Nay
Obama - Yea
McCain - Not Voting
Kerry - Nay
Durbin - Nay
Dodd - Nay

Obama may be getting a letter from me.

misc | 4th Of July: Part I

2008-07-04T09:22:00.001Z

why must itself up every of a park

why must itself up every of a park

anus stick some quote statue unquote to

prove that a hero equals any jerk

who was afraid to dare to answer "no"?

quote citizens unquote might otherwise

forget(to err is human;to forgive

divine)that if the quote state unquote says

"kill" killing is an act of christian love.

"Nothing" in 1944 AD

"can stand against the argument of mil

itary necessity"(generalissimo e)

and echo answers "there is no appeal

from reason"(freud)--you pays your money and

you doesn't take your choice. Ain't freedom grand

--e.e. cummings

misc | 4th Of July: Part II

2008-07-04T09:06:00.005Z

Have you ever had the thought that like Canada, Australia, and India, yes, the U.S.A would have become independent without the so-called Revolutionary War? Well, we got our political independence, but let's not say freedom. How can we say freedom when we're corporately enslaved? How can we say free when political apathy is rampant? Back then, at least one knew who the enemy was; now the assumption of freedom makes our dependence all the more debilitating. I'm glad, however, that there are always voices on the margins:

Maybe the most patriotic thing one can do is listen to voices from the underbelly of the American experiment and of the world, Emma Lazarus' huddled masses, the wretched refuse, and the homeless. Maybe it would be to celebrate the recent immigrants and aliens among us, those who most exemplify the spirit of escaping tyranny (economic or political) in search of freedom and opportunity. Maybe it means shuttering our military bases abroad in the spirit of combating our own colonial whims or sharing a meal with someone of a differing race, religion, orientation or class. There is plenty to celebrate in the United States and there are plenty of ways to be patriotic which go beyond unfurling flags and the lighting of bottle rockets. We probably need more patriots and less patriot blood.

[AYT][Theology][America][4th]

humor | WrongCards.com

2008-06-27T18:50:00.004Z

Another irreverent ecards site to scroll through: www.wrongcards.com.

humor | Link

2008-06-26T10:18:00.000Z

[Link]

humor | N.T. Wright On The Colbert Report

2008-06-23T09:46:00.002Z

HT: Clayton

books | Simple Spirituality by Christopher Heuertz

2008-06-23T05:39:00.002Z

Simple Spirituality: Learning to See God in a Broken World
by Christopher Heuertz

What is this book that ended up on my desk? It is certainly not academic theology, not the kind of book that I normally read. It seems in a way part memoir, though from someone too young to write a memoir, part theological reflection, though simple in its aims, and part guide, though not from someone who has arrived.

I met Chris while he and his wife Phileena were on a sabbatical from their work with Word Made Flesh, an organization that feels called by Jesus to birth communities which practice the presence and proclamation of the Kingdom of God among the poorest of the poor. I didn't get to talk with them as much as I would have like, but enjoyed our encounters. He was nice enough to send me his first book before it went to print.

As the title suggests, this is a book about seeing God. With a fair measure of humility, it discusses both where to look and what it takes to see. Heuertz uses stories, his own and his friends, to make his points. It's a personal book, a book designed to be approachable in its writing and tone, and a book where Heuertz argues that spirituality is often made too difficult.

There is much to commend in Heuertz' book. He discusses five spiritual disciplines that he sees as essential to shaping the Christian life: humility, community, simplicity, submission, and brokeness. His life, work and stories continually point to those who are poor, marginalized, and exploited in society. This is the strength of the book. He is right to suggest that Christianity errs when it insulates and isolates itself from those who are poor, because in so doing it insulates and isolates itself from Jesus. The book gives snapshots of a life transformed by eschewing such isolation and it speaks to some of the pitfalls of our lives: our pride, individualism and independence, lives of excess, desire to be in control and be on the winning team. These pitfalls warp our lives and our churches making Christianity far from compelling.

Heuertz' book weighs in at a mere 150 pages (with afterword, epilogue, and acknowledgments and the print isn't small). Published by a wing of IVP, Likewise Books seeks to publish books that support a practicable, active faith. Heuertz' book fits in this vein, but possesses a wisdom which outstrips its simple and conversational writing. Part of this comes from hard won experience, part from relying heavily on some great thinkers and Christian practitioners (though they aren't necessarily ones with which everyone will be familiar). The reflections are wide-ranging:

"Humility is a principle and virtue that flows from love in its purest form."
[about MySpace and Facebook] "I wonder if this virtual environment is actually damaging the spirit of true community because they're actually more closely related to role playing games."
"Our view of poverty [unfortunately] becomes defined not by access to resources or opportunity but by possessions."
"...if we are unable to give something away, then we do not possess it, rather it possesses us."
"On one hand, we assumed that giving to someone begging encourages a lifestyle of pathetic dependency. They all seem to have the same needs, but many of them fabricate stories to prey on the emotions of rich foreigners. It is also a challenge to determine whether the man, woman or child is being forced to beg. Black markets (informal economic endeavors) around the world have been known to kidnap children and intentionally mutilate them, gouge out their eyes, or otherwise maim them, then place them in strategic locations to earn money for their handlers. On the other hand, the man, woman, or child begging from you may literally be dying before your eyes. How, then, can you not give? Scripture says, 'Give to the one who asks you' (Matthew 5:42). But does that mean giving exactly what they ask?"
"When we don’t submit our lives to God and our possessions to people in need, when we mistake our financial and material blessings as personal provision rather than as resources with potential for kingdom development — have we perpetuated an unjust imbalance between us and our neighbors?"

It's Heuertz' stories, however, that hold the chapters together. Getting to meet his friends through the stories he tells is worth the price of the book.

The only contention I had with the book is that in his effort to show that spirituality can and does have connections to the everyday activities of our lives, Heuertz seemingly harbors an implicit anti-institutional stance toward Christian practice. His desire to show us Jesus in the lives of those who happen to be poor is commendable, but that doesn't necessitate his worry about trying to fit our spirituality into complex religious practices. While religious practices can become corrupted or lose the purpose for which they created, all practices need institutions to sustain them. In a way, Heuertz knows this insofar as he works for the WMF organization. We need to police our institutions and keep them from becoming parasitic on the practices which they sustain and we need to make sure that they evolve with the evolution of our practices. However, while Heuertz is right to refresh us by returning our gaze to Jesus in and through those who might be considered least, the book could do more to think through God's creation and use of institutions for God's redemptive plans. Do our practices of baptism, eucharist, and ministry make connections to humility, community, simplicity, submission, and brokeness? Do they drive us to seek Jesus in the poor? This a criticism of what he does not say rather than what he says and in that sense perhaps the book (or his view of spirituality) is refreshing but too simple.

This is only Heuertz' first book, and what he does say I highly recommend. I promise you'll gain something from his discussion of humility, community, simplicity, submission, and brokeness. For a welterweight book, Simple Spirituality occasionally throws a cruiserweight punch.

[AYT][Theology][Books][WMF]

theology | The Anglican Communion?

2008-06-19T19:33:00.003Z

While I have some appreciation that AMiA has concerns about what it means to faithfully witness to Jesus, I generally think unity, that for which Jesus prayed, is a larger theological issue than differing views on human sexuality. Even if one desired to voice dissent, something for which I always want to maintain space, I question the decision of the hundreds of bishops that are boycotting the Lambeth Conference and attending a rival meeting for conservative Anglicans in Jerusalem. I'm not opposed to the gathering in Jerusalem, even if it does betray a certain ideological and theological factionalism. But, why have it at the same time as Lambeth? Why not show up for a conversation that clearly needs to continue? I would think it more honorable to continue to gather with those in our body with whom one disagrees, to maintain eye contact with those who also worship the Lamb, than to intentionally shun such difficult fellowship.

Further reading: NYTimes article.

[AYT][Theology][Anglicanism]

life | Clarifying Some Things

2008-06-18T04:58:00.002Z

1. The voice of the poem is not the voice of the author. Several of my friends were concerned that there was something that they didn't know about.

2. The title of my blog started as a joke, not as some sort of self-aggrandizing claim. True, I've worked with some great minds from the theological guild, Bruce McCormack, Stanley Hauerwas, Geoffrey Wainwright, John Webster, but the blog started as an inside joke. So, its a little weird when you get snail mail that uses your blog title:

I've been thinking that I might need to kill this blog, at least temporarily, when I go on the job market.

[AYT][Theology][Life]

poem | Elegy For My Unknown Child

2008-06-11T05:04:00.001Z

Elegy for My Unknown Child

it was an october half-moon when
you told me about the watcher in your belly

my excitement’s first thought was
something not even our love had occasioned:

i will give up cigarettes

my candle burning low, less feared
than a young and feeble flame
with no one to tend the tinder

so, three full moons later, i met your
tears, a twigbare landscape

outside, shivering, i remember our
time together in dublin, that beguiling
warm day when i read aloud heaney’s

‘elegy for a still-born child’
my spirit rejoicing in you wept for
the poem, my eyes then bright and dry

i retrieve my lighter from my pocket

this absence, the weight of a body emptied
of growth and expectation, the present’s burden

you ask for a drag of what i did not know then
would be my last

your hand trembles beneath my shoulder blades
gentle, present, birthing

Daniel R. Morehead

My latest poem references (and was partly inspired by) a poem by Seamus Heaney, one of Ireland living literary flames, that he wrote early in his career. Elegy for A Still-born Child contains a line that has lingered with and haunted me: Your mother heavy with the lightness in her.

Through my friends and family, pregnancy, adoption, children are increasingly a part of my life, as are the concomitant hopes and joys and the related pains of loss, infertility, etc. This is my nascent attempt to give a voice to the relational context of those pains.

[AYT][Poetry][Miscarriage]

blog | A Quick Look Back

2008-06-08T23:14:00.003Z

From the AYT Archives:

A poem, a quote, a post about war, a trip, a meditation.

Happy Sunday.

life | What Do You Do When...

2008-06-07T20:19:00.002Z

What do you do when you're sitting on your front step and someone comes up to you and asks you for a light and proceeds to sit down next to you and smoke crack? Yeah, well, that was my Thursday.

life | We Didn't See This Post Coming

2008-06-07T02:50:00.007Z

I can't believe I'm writing this. I've actually intended to for years, but, well, as you'll see it's a bit of a delicate matter. And, well, it probably shouldn't be coming from me. Oh well...

About two or three years ago I was involved in several campaigns on Duke's campus relating to various social issues. One of the campaigns was to try to minimize the amount of factory farmed meat used on campus. Most of the people involved were vegetarians or vegans and then there was me. At the time and I guess now as well, my biggest concern with factory farming of animals was the labor issue. I'm concerned about what happens to people when they have to interact with animals in conditions which are disrespectful to those animals (just as I'm concerned about what it does to someone to be in the military and be trained in violence and to kill other humans, to witness horrors, to be exposed to acute stresses - the recent homicide and suicide rates may give us some clue). Some of the female students at the time were also working on an environmental campaign to minimize the amount of waste that comes from the use of tampons. The thinking, as I remember it, was twofold. First, there is just the material waste inherent in disposable products. Second, the cotton used is generally bleached or chemically treated in ways that may pollute communities in which they are manufactured and pollute the bodies of women who use them. Most commercial tampons on the market today contain rayon and trace amounts of dioxin, a potentially toxic by-product of chlorine-bleached products. They were recommending either unbleached, natural cotton tampons or a reusable menstrual cup. Since then, I've been around several conversations when one of my female friends brings up the idea of a reusable menstrual cup and generally the response among the other women is one of bafflement, having never heard of a product like the DivaCup. It's that reaction that made me decide to write this. But what do I know? If it's common knowledge, or they are in common use, we can just forget about this post. And let's face it, I'm not dumb enough to tell woman how to relate to their menstrual cycles, but the friends I know that use them do appreciate the cost savings over continually buying tampons and that it helps decrease the billions of tampons and pads that are dumped into landfill and sewage systems each year in the U.S. alone.

For more information or to locate a store, see: The Diva Cup
iHerb is selling them at the moment at almost half price.
See also: BUST blog, The Bitten Apple.
There's even a Facebook group.

I know, I know, I didn't really see me blogging about environmentally responsible feminine hygiene choices either...and doubt I will again...so back to your regularly scheduled internet browsing.

life | Friday

2008-06-06T18:09:00.003Z

Well, I guess I'm supporting Obama now. Now, all my Obama friends can finally quit pestering me. Found this page: Christian Principles in an Election Year, from National Council of Churches USA. Its a short, but worthwhile read.

Last week I mentioned a friend was starting a blog, I found this post rather funny. Happy Friday.

misc | Giving Fundamentalists A Walk?

2008-06-05T17:45:00.004Z

In some ways, I'm glad that there has been a resurgence in the U.S. in recognizing that theology matters to the church. Maybe that's because the anti-intellectual impulses of evangelicalism combined with the anemic ecclesiology of Protestant churches to cause a corrupting (though sometimes hard to communally diagnose) incoherence within U.S. churches. This spawned reactionary movements which some feel will help the church 'emerge'. Others have tried to stop the aimless drifting with the anchor of (a more robust and usually Reformed) theology. Primarily a shift in church life, pastors with a some level of advanced theological training have gained in prominence. Pastor and author John Piper (who did a Ph.D. in New Testament studies) has become a more well known and listened to voice within the zealous rubble of a collapsing evangelicalism. His blog at DesiringGod.org has 11,000 people on its feed. I appreciate his work more as a pastor than his theology. He maintains some the least happy parts of the Reformed tradition. He keeps predestination located as a soteriological category, instead of a Christological one (as someone like Barth does), or vocational (as seen in the work of Lesslie Newbigin). His minority position that Scripture explicitly prescribes gender roles is at best, in my opinion, unfortunate. I like that theology governs positions he takes pastorally and think the books of his that I've encountered are not without merit. Still, I thought I'd playfully question the following list, which apart from the general point that it's probably not a good idea to take potshots at anyone, seems utterly vacuous.

20 Reasons I Don't Take Potshots at Fundamentalists
June 2, 2008 | By: John Piper

1. They are humble and respectful and courteous and even funny (the ones I've met).
Sure ain't nice to take potshots at nice, good humored folk.

2. They believe in truth.
This hardly seems terribly unique.

3. They believe that truth really matters.
What does 'really' mean? You appreciate their white-knuckled foundationalism?

4. They believe that the Bible is true, all of it.
The question of true or not true is never as interesting as true in what way, to what ends, to what degree, etc.

5. They know that the Bible calls for some kind of separation from the world.
We might terminologically prefer difference to separation.

6. They have backbone and are not prone to compromise principle.
Yay, except the flip-side is rigidity, fear, and inability to listen and learn.

7. They put obedience to Jesus above the approval of man (even though they fall short, like others).
Does it matter what you think obedience to Jesus entails?

8. They believe in hell and are loving enough to warn people about it.
Granted this is a list and inflected toward the positive side, but do all of these seem like they could equally go on a list of 20 things that are troubling about fundamentalists?

9. They believe in heaven and sing about how good it will be to go there.
This hardly seems noteworthy for it's uniqueness.

10. Their "social action" is helping the person next door (like Jesus), which doesn't usually get written up in the newspaper.
...but the separation from #5, often makes them unable to partner with other organizations to help make systemic change happen.

11. They tend to raise law-abiding, chaste children, in spite of the fact that Barna says evangelical kids in general don't have any better track record than non-Christians.
...maybe true, but I'm not sure that fundamentalism is conducive to training children in wisdom, moral reasoning, or makes it likely that they will engage the world poetically.

12. They resist trendiness.
Hmmm...except when they think up their own untrendy trendiness...which is generally worse than just being trendy.

13. They don’t think too much is gained by sounding hip.
Not much is gained by being out of touch either.

14. They may not be hip, but they don’t go so far as to drive buggies or insist on typewriters.
So, some untrendiness = good. Too much = Amish, I mean bad, I mean....uhhh....

15. They still sing hymns.
Now you're just sounding old, John. Granted the theology of "Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord" praise songs is horrendous, but there are some terrible hymns too. I'm surprised that organ-hugging didn't make your list.

16. They are not breathless about being accepted in the scholarly guild.
...or the larger contours of theological reflection that has taken place throughout Christian history.

17. They give some contemporary plausibility to New Testament claim that the church is the “pillar and bulwark of the truth.”
But in what way? Excessive razor-wire does not do anyone any favors.

18. They are good for the rest of evangelicals because of all this.
Or maybe because they make the rest of evangelicals not look so crazy?

19. My dad was one.
So?

20. Everybody to my left thinks I am one. And there are a lot of people to my left.
So this is self-serving, then?

So, while we can all agree that potshots generally aren't fair, in the spirit of #8 it's probably not alright to give fundamentalist a theological free ride either.

[Sigh.]

[AYT][Theology][Piper]

theology | Are You So Dull?

2008-06-04T11:38:00.008Z

The question is not mine, but belongs to Jesus and comes to us through the gospel according to Matthew. Of course, the NRSV renders it slightly differently: "Are you also still without understanding?" Somewhat predictably, I like the more blunt translation: "Are you so dull?"

Jesus, of course, was having a run in with the Pharisees and scribes over why his disciples weren't following their cleanliness rituals. In this case, the issue was hand-washing before eating. Jesus charges them with hypocrisy, using rules to circumvent responsibility. His one-liner: "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." Zing! Disciples scratch their heads and ask Jesus to break it down for them. Jesus verbally rolls his eyes, says that the things that are already inside a person are what defiles them (evil intentions, slander, etc.)...end of story. So much for the start of Matthew 15.

Now, I'm always uneasy with connections drawn between health and sin. When encountering a blind man, the disciples draw too much of a connection between the two, asking, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus says neither. The problem with health, like the problem with safety, is there is no upward limit. Can you reach a point when you are healthy? Can you reach a point when you're safe? Sure, there are degrees of less and more, but there isn't a telos to reach short of immortality. As one of my favorite people likes to say, "God intends to kill us all in the end." I think that's right. This, of course, leaves us in the arms of wisdom when we ask questions like: How much medical care should you throw at a person before their personhood is lost? If one can never be safe as such, how much money should we spend on national security? Nothing is probably not the answer, but these kind of concepts with no upper limit do quickly and easily give themselves over to excesses and pathologies which we might call sinful, or at least unwise. In the medieval conceptions of the seven deadly sins tradition, the sins are departures from a proper mean which in the end distracts one from God. Pride, then, can be over- or undervaluing oneself. Gluttony: the sin of the distracted person who spends too much time obsessing about food, potentially the eater, the gourmand, the health nut, the anorexic.

There are really two points I'm making here. First, not everything that might be labeled unhealthy should or could be avoided. If health is not something at which one can arrive, "less than optimal" is just part of life. Plus, like many other things, by way of example we could use acquiring information on a new car, each incremental gain comes at a higher cost. Sure, you could visit the plant and get the life stories of the people working on the line, but at some point more is not more. So I'd argue, it is with health. Second, some things - once weighed - are wrong even if you can't make a rule out of them, things we might term unwise. [Generally, I take this sort of determination to be more important in terms of moral reflection.]

I recently came across the video below in which Mark Bittman discusses what's wrong with what we eat. Now, I love Mark Bittman. I love his "The Minimalist w/ Mark Bittman" videos on NYTimes.com where he usually prepares a simple but inventive dish. In this fiery and funny talk, he weighs in on what's wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it's putting the entire planet at risk. While I'd hesitate to make a doctrinaire moral injunction, I agree with what he's saying and think it is a moral issue.

Here are some things we can do to start:

1) Grow some food. Benefits:
Provides healthy food.
Maintains a relationship with the earth which is not simply one of consumption, but caretaker.
Might even inspire you to compost.
2) Find and join a CSA. Benefits:
Lots of locally grown, fresh produce.
Supports smaller farms.
You don't generally select what you'll receive since it depends on what is growing, so you have the opportunity to learn about how to prepare things you wouldn't normally buy at the grocer.
3) Take a cooking class. Benefits:
More enthusiasm for cooking.
Alternatively, find two recipes online and make them in the next week. [Here is the Food Network's seasonal produce guide.]
4) Keep a food diary for a week and then cut your meat consumption by half. If we're eating too much meat, let's find out how much.

5) No soda for a month. Benefits:
Stronger bones.
Less sugar (or if you drink diet soda, less sodium and odd chemicals).
Less waste.
More money to put towards one of the above.

While I don't want to say that something that is unhealthy is thereby sinful, given the evidence, how we eat may be profoundly unwise. Thus, even though Jesus said "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person...," well, maybe it is, if our heart cares not for the social, environmental, and physical ramifications.

Feed others, eat well.

[AYT][Theology][Food][Bittman]

friends | I'm Glad They Blog

2008-06-02T23:18:00.002Z

Just found out my friend Dave [not to be confused with my other friends Dave, David, David, or my brother Dave] is blogging. I met him in D.C. when he was working for Sojourners. Then we both ended up kicking around Duke's Divinity school. He's politically and theologically savvy and generally has a good read on how or how not to conceive the relation between the two. He blogs here.

Another Duke friend and former L'Arche assistant, blogs here. She cares about the right sort of questions/issues which may not initially seem theologically significant but are quite so. She and her blog are pregnant.

Yay for friends who are blogging...

film | The Yes Men

2008-06-02T17:20:00.002Z

I've been on a little bit of a documentary kick of late. This morning I watched The Yes Men (2003), a humorous documentary which follows the exploits of a group of jokester liberals who make names for themselves as they mimic members of the World Trade Organization at various venues across the globe. It all starts when two members of The Yes Men create a web site that looks quite similar to the WTO site, resulting in the group being invited to high-level meetings and being mistaken for WTO officials. Granted they could have been more informative (especially for those who don't have a lot of information about the WTO, globalism, or late capitalism rolling around their heads), but I thought it was a fun documentary and reminded me that satire is made more powerful when it occurs within the walls of legitimacy. It made me think of 2005 when Banksy waltzed into New York's most prestigious museums - The Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Natural History - and put up his own work on their hallowed walls.

Now that that Lost, The Office, etc. are done for the season, perhaps add this to your NetFlix queue or that list on the fridge of films that you might watch on a lazy Saturday.

[AYT][Film][Banksy][WTO]

poem | Frost On War

2008-06-02T07:05:00.004Z

The first poem I ever memorized was by Robert Frost. Now even though my favorite poet is W.H. Auden, I'll never truly escape Frost's work or influence. I thought I'd share one of Frost's poems that sadly I hadn't seen before.

In 1918, Robert Frost wrote a poem in the cover of a friend's book. For 88 years, the work remained lost, until Robert Stilling, a graduate student in English at the University of Virginia, discovered it in 2006.

The poem is called "War Thoughts at Home" and was written in the cover of a book belonging to Frederic Melcher, a well-known American publisher and friend of Frost. That book was part of a large collection of materials related to Frost recently acquired by the university.

Back in 2006 there is a NPR piece about the poem being found.

War Thoughts At Home

On the back side of the house
Where it wears no paint to the weather
And so shows most its age,
Suddenly blue jays rage
And flash in blue feather.
It is late in an afternoon
More grey with snow to fall
Than white with fallen snow
When it is blue jay and crow
Or no bird at all.
So someone heeds from within
This flurry of bird war,
And rising from her chair
A little bent over with care
Not to scatter on the floor
The sewing in her lap
Comes to the window to see.
At sight of her dim face
The birds all cease for a space
And cling close in a tree.
And one says to the rest
"We must just watch our chance
And escape one by one
Though the fight is no more done
Than the war is in France."
Than the war is in France!
She thinks of a winter camp
Where soldiers for France are made.
She draws down the window shade
And it glows with an early lamp.
On that old side of the house
The uneven sheds stretch back
Shed behind shed in train
Like cars that long have lain
Dead on a side track.

[AYT][Poetry][Frost][War]

theology | Glancing Into the Reformed Fishbowl

2008-05-29T23:24:00.002Z

It is uncommon that a former professor of mine finds their way into the blogosphere. Well, there's a first for everything. Give it a read, if nothing else, it's a good example of careful theological reflection. If only all theological blog posts were so literate.

link | Franchises In The UK

2008-05-28T15:38:00.006Z

Franchise Gator UK< prides itself on linking real people with a real franchise opportunity. They offer a wide range of franchises to suit any chosen work style including work from home, online business opportunity, low cost business, property services business, B2B and owner-operator.

Franchising provides you a route into business ownership with the back-up of a larger organization. By purchasing a franchise, new business owners are able to avoid enduring the learning curve of operating a new business by taking advantage of a proven business model and product. The businesses offered on Franchise Gator are called ‘Business Format Franchises’ which means the business (the franchisor) grants another (the franchisee), the rights to trade under the trade mark/trade name of the franchisor and to make use of an entire package, comprising all the elements necessary to establish a previously untrained person in the business and to run it with continual assistance on a predetermined basis. Franchising can be described as a 'business marriage' between a 'franchisee' and a 'franchisor'. Be in business for yourself but not by yourself. You'll find helpful information on buying a franchise business, and the latest franchise news and articles. You can search their extensive UK Franchise directory to research franchises for sale and to find the business opportunity that fits your needs and investment goals.

Their website is informative and well laid out. Definitely worth checking out, if you're in the UK and looking to start a franchise. Franchise UK!

theology | My Favorite Collect

2008-05-25T21:25:00.003Z

For my non-Anglican friends: This is my favorite collect (collect - a brief formal prayer that is used in various Western liturgies before the epistle and that varies with the day), often called the collect for purity:

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Happy Sunday.

blogging | My Little Anti-Amazon.com Crusade

2008-05-24T12:26:00.006Z

So, yesterday, I posted my somewhat snarky rant about blog practices, namely the propensity for people to link to places like Amazon.com. I understand insofar as it is easy and many people use Amazon.com affiliation as a revenue source. I sketched (and sketched is the appropriate word as I could go into significantly more detail) why I've come to stop buying books at places like Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or Borders. There was, of course, rumor this week that that Barnes & Noble was looking into acquiring Borders. Barnes & Noble and Borders would combine for roughly a third of the meandering book market. Its appropriate that we should have to pay for our convictions and I don't mind paying more for a book to support my local bookstore. I find doing so is better for the town in which I live -- keeps businesses open, allows money flows to circulate within the community, enriches the intellectual life of the town, etc., obviously better for the owners of my local bookstore and its employees, and holds out the possibility of resisting the homogenization in the book market, which is dominated by increasingly fewer publishers and booksellers. I'll gladly pay $5 more for what I consider a better way of life, both communally and as a lover of books.

Well, if I think that shopping at a place like Amazon.com is deeply problematic, I also think driving traffic to or getting paid by them is problematic as well. At least, in my opinion, it is something to think about. I linked to a bunch of bloggers who, probably with out much thought, do so. Wess (seen above with me in Paris last summer) over at GatheringInLight.com thought I was being a little harsh, a little unfair. He was right, but it spawned what I think was a worthwhile conversation. [Read the comments of the previous post.]

I generally link to Powells.com when I need to link a book title to information about the book. Powell's is a huge bookstore in Portland [though Powell's roots began in Chicago, where Michael Powell, as a University of Chicago graduate student, opened his first bookstore in 1970]. It may not be my beloved bookstore around the corner, but we shouldn't forgo the better waiting for the best. I've spent many hours wandering the aisles of new and used books at Powell's. My conversation with Wess made me dig around a bit. As it turns out, if you're worried about a loss of revenue by not directing traffic to Amazon.com, Powells.com has an affiliate program which looks just as lucrative as Amazon.com.

Well, so much for my little rudder trying to turn a big ship. I'm off to the Farmer's Market.

[Update: See Wess' post here.]

[America's Young Theologian][Amazon.com][Books][Blogging]

life | A Friday Morning Micellany

2008-05-23T14:42:00.009Z

1. If McCain wins the presidency, it will be tempting to leave the U.S.A., not a responsible course of action, but tempting. It's strange I would say that though, given that I think grassroots political organizing is more significant than national electoral politics. Still...

2. With my economics background and Christian ethics training, I'm always thinking about companies. I don't like large companies (or large churches for that matter). Yes, that includes your precious Starbucks, even though they do deserve credit for their stances on health care. I don't like stockholders, since, in my opinion, there's not enough personal accountability. I'm sorry but a stockholder losing some money, or a CEO leaving with a $15 million severance package is not strong enough incentive to dissuade corruption. Passing thought, why do we look so lightly on Martha Stewart's criminal behavior? If you're going to put a kid in juvenile detention for shoplifting, put the diva behind bars, not under mansion arrest. I don't think a corporation's responsibility should be limited to its shareholders; if it is, then we need to avoid supporting publicly traded companies. When a college student kills herself because of the pressures of overwhelming credit card debt, banks have some responsibility for targeting 'profitable' populations, namely, those who are not likely to handle debt well. Profit can't be the only measuring stick.

3. More of the same, but this time on books. People, stop shopping at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Borders! Not only are you not supporting your local businesses, but given the percent of the market that these three make up and how they inventory books, it is killing (not only independent book stores but) smaller presses as well. It's not only a social responsibility and quality issue, but an avenue of publication issue. Also, in the spirit of the above, it's not okay that bloggers link their book lists to Amazon.com. And, no, its not okay to make money by driving traffic to Amazon. S o r r y. Need other options? Find a local bookstore that you've actually stepped inside of and link to their site if they have one, or link to AbeBooks search page for the book in question. No, I don't care about the $4 you'll save at Amazon.com. My budget is tighter than yours. If your budget is so tight that can't afford to support independent businesses in your community, you shouldn't be buying books. Find a library! End of rant. Do you have a favorite local bookstore?

[Please read the comment section on this
post, which relates to my rant.]

4. Read Amy Laura Hall's newest book, Conceiving Parenthood: American Protestantism and the Spirit of Reproduction. Even if you're not a parent or thinking about parenthood, this is important look at how we've come to see children and the role of procreation.

"Hall mines church publications and popular media to reveal several dynamics at work. Partly because of its attempts to market itself as part of the American dream, the mid-century church became infatuated with an image of the ideal family that inevitably, if unintentionally, encouraged middle-class Protestants to insulate their families from their troubled neighbors. At the same time, corporate and scientific messages undermined the confidence of parents — and particularly mothers — in natural or traditional ways of providing for their children without commercial products and expert advice. Aspiration and anxiety combined to create families that were more focused on themselves, less secure in their Christian identity and less engaged in mission to others."

5. Russians and the use of flying penises as a means of deriding dissent. Ha.

6. My sleep schedule has been crazy. Some friends have worried that it might cause a lack of productivity, others that it was caused by depression. Neither true. Just without other people around, what do I care if I sleep from 10pm to 6am or 6am to 2pm. Still, I'm trying to get back on a so-called normal schedule. Today, up at 7am, had breakfast with friends at 9am.

7. I'm curious about Soderbergh's movie about Che, see here. This, however, worries me:

"There is a lot, however, that the audience will not learn from this big movie, which has some big problems as well as major virtues. In between the two periods covered in “Che,” Guevara was an important player in the Castro government, but his brutal role in turning a revolutionary movement into a dictatorship goes virtually unmentioned. This, along with Benicio Del Toro’s soulful and charismatic performance, allows Mr. Soderbergh to preserve the romantic notion of Guevara as a martyr and an iconic figure, an idealistic champion of the poor and oppressed. By now, though, this image seems at best naïve and incomplete, at worst sentimental and dishonest. More to the point, perhaps, it is not very interesting."

8. Happy Friday, everyone; play it like a weekend.

film | I Bought You A Bouquet Of Movies

2008-05-22T01:43:00.003Z

I don't normally watch as many films as I did over the last ten day, let's see: The Boondock Saints, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Red Without Blue, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Maxed Out, My Own Private Idaho, Iron Man, Cool Hand Luke and, last night at midnight, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It's probably not a good thing when you're averaging a film a day. Perhaps that was my answer to my college town emptying out for the summer.

So here are 10 micro-reviews:

1. The Boondock Saints (1999) - Two Irish-American lads, get in a post-St. Patty's day fight, and after dispatching with the goons, feel that they have a vigilante calling to rid their Boston neighborhood of crime. Charismatic characters, bland moral dilemma, namely, what has the law to do with lawlessness? Not great.

2. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) - Two brothers plan to rob their parents' jewelry store as an answer to their financial troubles; you'll never guess: it doesn't solve their financial troubles. Like Ebert's review, I don't want to say more. This movie was fantastic. Sidney Lumet (who was nominated four times for the best director Oscar and who gave us Dog Day Afternoon, Network, and 12 Angry Men) directs a film, which was superbly acted through a range of emotions by Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman. What was I doing last year that I missed this film? Hopefully, I was the only one.

3. Red Without Blue (2007) - I've mentioned this before. An award-winning documentary about twin brothers and their family as one of the twins transitions from male to female. It's good, not always gripping, but pleasantly tells its story, probably in the manner it should be told.

4. The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) - Winner of the highest award at Cannes in 2006, the film takes place in Ireland, 1920. Damien and Teddy are brothers. Damien, a medical graduate, joins Teddy in fighting the British for Irish independence. The two brothers fight side by side until they end up on opposites sides of a treaty. A compelling film, certainly. Well acted, well shot. To be honest, I wasn't in the mood for a film like this, but that's not the film's fault.

5. Maxed Out (2006) - Another award-winning documentary, Maxed Out shows viewers the vortex of the American style of debt, where things seem fine as long as the minimum monthly payment arrives on time. Like selling online poker to people with gambling problems, the film shows the cruel practices of predatory lending, which seeks out those who are most desperate and financially creates a class and culture of indentured servants. Hey, America, isn't freedom grand?

6. My Own Private Idaho (1991) - River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves in Gus Van Sant's (Drugstore Cowboy, Good Will Hunting, Elephant) film about two young street hustlers. The movie drifts along with its characters, through the streets of Portland to Idaho, in and out of male prostitution, in and out of sleep. There is the Shakespearian son of privilege (played by Reeves) who cavorts with undesirable company as a mode of rebellion, who has sexual encounters with men but is not gay, who can and does return his privilege. Then there is the narcoleptic drifter (Phoenix) who is looking for home, looking for his mother. I've spent time with homeless youth, many prostituting themselves as a means of subsistence, and this captures the transience of such lives. I thought it was visually beautiful and I appreciated the last two sex scenes in the film which are nothing more than a handful of erotic stills.

7. The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) - I wouldn't assume that a movie with Woody Harrelson and Courtney Love could be considered well acted. I wouldn't assume I'd enjoy a biopic about Larry Flynt. It can; I did. Larry, who founded Hustler magazine and made millions never overestimating his readers taste, finds himself in a Supreme Court case after printing a parody ad about Jerry Falwell. The movie is as raunchy and raucous as Flynt, well probably not, but make a worthwhile point: if unpopular speech isn't protected, protecting speech doesn't do very much.

8. Iron Man (2008) - Aren't we tired of comic book movies? I am. This one is better than most. Probably helps to have actors who can act (Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, rather than Tobey Maguire) and a hero who is more of a flashy jerk than lovable.

9. Cool Hand Luke (1967) - I couldn't remember if I had seen this Paul Newman film. I like going back to actors before they became shelf-stable salad dressing. Newman plays the cavalier Luke, a cool prisoner in a rural jail, who refuses to care enough to bow to authority. Because of this, the respect of the fellow prisoners grows. Another film worth seeing, Luke is one of those characters who you can't take your eyes off, who you believe must know the secret to the world. You watch because he's beautiful, kind of like Paul Maclean in A River Runs Through It. You heart breaks when he is broken.

10. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - I'll save you from the the plot details and you know who stars in and who directs these things. I experienced something about ten minutes into this film that I don't think I have before. It was 25% nostalgia (I was 12 and headed to summer camp with my friend Sean, when the last film came out), 75% just a childish being given over to play. I didn't care that physics didn't apply in this film, I wanted to play along. Without those two aspects, playing along and a dose of nostalgia, I don't think the film works, but, for me, it did. I won't say it was great. I won't say it wasn't over the top. In a way though, I wanted that, even if the end of the movie seemed like I was warped into a different Spielberg film.

[America's Young Theologian][Film][Indiana Jones]

books | Simple Spirituality

2008-05-21T00:29:00.009Z

Over the next couple days, I'll be reading Christopher Heuertz's first book, Simple Spirituality : Learning to See God in a Broken World, available in July. Chris is the International Executive Director of Word Made Flesh, an organization that exists to serve Jesus among the poorest of the world's poor; I met him in the fall while he was on a learning sabbatical at Duke. I'll post a review when I finish.

[America's Young Theologian][Books][Word Made Flesh]

poem | Elegy For A Still-born Child by Seamus Heaney

2008-05-20T05:11:00.002Z

I

You mother walks light as an empty creel
Unlearning the intimate nudge and pull
Your trussed-up weight of seed-flesh and bone-curd
Had insisted on. That evicted world
Contracts round its history, its scar.
Doomsday struck when your collapsed sphere
Extinguished itself in our atmosphere,
Your mother heavy with the lightness in her.

II

For six months you stayed cartographer
Charting my friend from husband towards father
He guessed a globe behind your steady mound.
Then the pole fell, shooting star, into the ground.

III

On lonely journeys I think of it all,
Birth of death, exhumation for burial,
A wreath of small clothes, a memorial pram,
And parents reaching for a phantom limb.
I drive by remote control on this bare road
Under a drizzling sky, a circling rock.
Past mountain fields, full to the brim with cloud,
White waves riding home on a wintry lough.

I've been working on a poem that references this poem, but I couldn't find it online anywhere, so I thought I'd reproduce it here. It's from one of Seamus Heaney's early works Door Into The Dark. The line "Your mother heavy with the lightness in her" is absolutely crushing.

[America's Young Theologian][Stillborn][Poetry][Heaney]

theology | Grumble Of The Day

2008-05-19T13:57:00.002Z

I'm always annoyed that things like The Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood exist. Really? I read the post, Are Women Called To Be Pastors?, on their blog. Gag. I'm glad they want to help the "church deal Biblically with gender issues," but as far as I'm concerned they are just mucking around in theological backwaters. The whole discourse would be more honest if they said, "Helping conservative churches use a particular interpretation of Scripture to conserve the 1940's." It's never a question of Biblical or not, but which reading of the Bible, through what lens and to what ends. "Biblically" as they use it assumes they have the Bible on their side. Convenient...and pretty much a conversation stopper. Things like this are just theologically embarrassing. While I know some people like John Piper and some students at conservative colleges might read Wayne Grudem, theologically, I don't take either seriously. I don't really know anyone in theological circles who does. It's not that they aren't saying anything, just not anything interesting. I feel like like the film critic who wants people to watch a film like Raging Bull and audiences watch Ghost Rider instead.

.: sigh :.

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][John Piper]

life | An Ad On A Bus

2008-05-19T06:06:00.007Z

When I was living in Scotland last year, I came across an advert put out by an organization called ENABLE Scotland.

Having spent the previous year at a L'Arche community living and working with adults with intellectual disabilities, I found this haunting. If there is a L'Arche community near you, I'd consider contacting them to see if you can visit their community for a day, or ask if they could use a group from your church to volunteer; also, consider making a financial donation to a community.

L'Arche USA has communities in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Clinton(IA), Erie(PA), Jacksonville, Lynchburg(VA), Mobile(AL), Portland(OR), Orange(CA), Overland Park(KS), Seattle, Spokane, Syracuse(NY), Tacoma, and Washington, DC.

"I call you to take seriously how beautiful you are, even with all your wounds and weaknesses and the call to honour those who are weakest."

Other Posts about L'Arche:
July 2005 | "...And what we did, we did together in Jesus' name."
Jan. 2006 | A Painting on My Wall...
Jan. 2006 | Masquerading as a Fox (in the Fox's Hole)
April 2006 | Count Your Pennies
May 2006 | Learning To Listen

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][L'Arche]

blog | New Blog Design

2008-05-16T12:09:00.003Z

It has been over a year since I last updated my blog design. I'm still working out the kinks on this one, but everything should be functional (search, feeds, etc.). What do you think? Anyone notice anything screwy?

life | Happy Birthday To Me (2008)

2008-05-13T04:45:00.003Z

I turned 31 years old at the end of April. It wasn't as extravagant as the previous one in London, but I absolutely loved having everyone I love in Durham, NC come out. After not smoking for a month, I decided it's my party and I'll smoke if I want to...

Thanks everyone for your well wishes and the beer!

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Life]

music | I Made You A Mixtape

2008-05-07T14:44:00.004Z

As promised, click here to listen to the 12 songs I put together as a mix. Originally, it was 18 songs, but I had to lose a few. Since I made this with a particular friend in mind, its not exactly what I'd put together for a wide audience, but it's enjoyable enough. Happy listening.

[If you like my blog, please consider sharing it with others
by putting a link on your blog or website. Thanks.]

[America's Young Theologian][Music][Okkervil River]

music | Musical Dispatches For April/May

2008-05-06T19:47:00.004Z

Two weekends ago I returned to Wilkesboro, NC for my second Merlefest, one of top Americana music festivals in the country. I'm not a bluegrass kid and for me its just a nice change of pace rather than being all about the music. I did get to see Old Crow Medicine Show and The Avett Brothers, both of whom I enjoyed, and attend a Blues guitar workshop with Roy Book Binder, who impressed me greatly.

Last weekend, the Obama people threw a rally in Carrboro, NC. Superchunk opened for Arcade Fire. It was a hot and sweaty affair, but one of the first outings of the year that fully felt like summer. I'm still supporting Hillary and had to suffer the wrath of the sun god (in the form of a sunburn) for attending the Obama rally. Still, the concert was great. I had not seen them live before and was surprised in their ability to replicate the sound of their studio albums on stage. Plus, let's be honest, I don't go to a lot of shows where someone plays a hurdy gurdy (also known as a "wheel fiddle").

In other music news, I got two albums for my birthday: Destroyer's Trouble in Dreams and The Magnetic Fields' Distortion. Both worth a listen.

My duplexmate, Toby Bonar, recently put out an album as well. Have a listen [and I'd say contact him on MySpace if you want to buy a copy].

Lastly, I'm making you a mix-tape. Well, sort of. I put together a mix for a friend about a month or two ago. I pared it down to twelve songs and will have it online tomorrow.

Happy listening.

[America's Young Theologian][Arcade Fire][Merlefest][Music]

film | Friends and Films [Part II]

2008-05-05T18:06:00.003Z

As I mentioned last week, my friend Reno Lauro entered a 5-min ultra-low-budget film into The Doorpost Film Project.

Last Rites is the story of Laura's last day on earth. A soul in transition, Laura is filled with regret about the choices she has made in life and is incapable of embracing the forgiveness she desperately needs to pass into the next stage of existence. With the help of three messengers --who comfort her body, emotions and spirit-- Laura gathers the courage to let go of her regrets, embrace forgiveness and finally be reunited with her love.

You can watch the film here. If you like it, please register and rate it favorably.

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Film]

theology | How To Respond?

2008-05-05T15:58:00.003Z

Not long ago I considered working for a random Christian organization but quickly learned that doing so would make us [at best] strange bedfellows. On the application they asked: We believe that Christians are called to take the initiative to share the gospel even when there is no pre-existing friendship or relationship. Do you have any theological objections to this kind of evangelism?

I could have simply answered with one word: Yes! But I thought I'd actually try to answer the question in a manner that neither communicated my "are-you-crazy?" sentiments, nor was simply dismissive. Here was my response:

Given the question, I would imagine that I would understand 'share the gospel' differently than some involved in your ministry. I affirm that Christians are to go into all the world to preach and make disciples. Discipleship, for me, requires relationships and training over time. Again, for me, preaching is a theological task that primarily makes sense within the context of a worshiping community (just as the missionary activities of the NT used the synagogue as their base). Sharing the gospel cannot simply be the sharing of information and should not be primarily about looking for rational assent. It is not a large leap from the testimony of Holy Scripture where it admits that even the demons believe in the one God (in James, chapter two), to the claim that demons might also believe Jesus to be God. Faith cannot be something which one individual decides in a vacuum (this would trend too close to American Romanticism), but the content of the Christian faith is always transmitted through the habits, practices, and linguistic formulations of the Christian community. In this sense, I affirm the sentiments long held and echoed in phrases like "Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus," or Cyprian's: "He cannot have God for his father, who has not the Church for his mother," which has wide agreement from Augustine to Calvin. The Holy Spirit's activity cannot be limited (not even limited to its own creations: the church, Scripture, Creation), but it does instrumentally utilize its creations of Scripture and the Church in its primary economic task of pointing toward Christ. Thus, while I think the love Christians must possess makes encountering the world (and naming the world as such) unavoidable and that God's reconciling the world to Godself is indeed good news, a strong emphasis on this sort of evangelism brings with it a certain set of challenges. It can have the negative consequence of buttressing a theologically tenuous individualism; further, by looking for conversion outside of the communal practices of the church, it can also diminish the sacramental role of the church (especially for those who come from theological traditions where baptism, for example, is a means of grace--this is my way of saying that while this sort of practice might have something to say for it, it makes more sense in some theological traditions than others). Given my Anglican theological tradition, where those who have gone through catechism enter the body of Christ through their baptism on Easter, it doesn't receive the emphasis it might in other Christian traditions.

That's my version of playing nice. I was actually disheartened to be asked this question. I'm not saying that God doesn't or couldn't use such forms of evangelism. However, it doesn't follow from God's calling people to Godself in the midst of the horrors of war, that starting wars is an advisable mode of evangelism. Alright, that was unfair...people don't fight wars as a form of evangelism...[well, except one could read the crusades that way...and a prominent student ministry (Campus Crusade for Christ) still exists with crusade in the name and a page full of statistics].

No, I do not think going around "sharing the gospel" when there is no pre-existing friendship or relationship is a good idea. No, I don't think the language (or practices that attempt to make sense of it: attempting to convince random people to make decisions) of personal relationships with Jesus is helpful. I always profoundly bothered that these are still seen by some as a live options.

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Evangelism][Campus Ministries]

film | Friends and Films

2008-04-29T01:37:00.006Z

My love of film is really just part of my love for storytelling. Given that I had difficulty reading growing up, I think film gained a disproportionate role in my love for stories. I love that some of my friends make films.

In February, I had the great fortune of having Todd Sills, a friend of a friend, stay with me. Todd co-directed the documentary that won the Audience Choice Award at the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival entitled, Red Without Blue. Red Without Blue is an artistic and groundbreaking portrayal of gender, identity, and the unswerving bond of twinship despite transformation.

An honest portrayal of a family in turmoil, Red Without Blue follows a pair of identical twins as one transitions from male to female. Captured over a period of three years, the film documents the twins and their parents, examining the Farley's struggle to redefine their family.

Luckily, if you have Netflix, you can add this documentary to your queue. While I'd prefer everyone to frequent independently owned video stores, two decades of Blockbuster, with it's uninspired and anemic holdings -- sure they have 100 copies of Pirates of the Caribbean, but what if you want to watch The Diary of a Country Priest? -- has decimated their kind. If you want to join Netflix, click on the logo to the left.

I recently got to see the rough cut of the South American footage of The Soccer Project, a documentary film about pickup soccer around the globe. My friend Ryan White is one of the people working on the film.

So far, the footage, stories and editing are great, the cinematography is beautiful. You really get a sense that when people play, they are at their most vulnerable, their most human. I'm excited to see the final cut in a year or two.

Then there is my dear friend, Reno Lauro. We walked the streets of Princeton together; he picked me up when I moved to Scotland; I was there at the baptism of his first. Reno is finishing up his dissertation which links theology, Tolkien, imagination, Baudrillard, and craft in interesting ways. Somehow between being a husband, father, and doctoral student he also finds time to make films. Recently, he has been interning on the set of the new Terrence Malick film, Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. As this is only Malick's sixth film [Lanton Mills (1969), Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), The New World (2005), Tree of Life (2009)] in forty years and since the humble Malick is one of North America's living directorial geniuses, I'm sure Reno is like the proverbial boy in a candy shop.

[Reno on the set of Last Rites]
A month ago I receive an email that Reno is working on a short film, entitled Last Rites, in order to enter it in the newly created The Doorpost Film Project, an organization created to recognize, honor and equip emerging filmmakers whose work depicts themes central to life, its struggles and its ultimate purpose. Winners of the contest receive $10,000 in order to make a 10 minute short film. I'm really curious to see how Reno marries old films of his parents with his recent filming (see pictures of the shoot, here). Reno reports that the film shoot on April 19th in Dallas was a success, and I can barely wait for the film to be up on the DFP website in a week's time.

Two ways of contributing to this project. First, Reno still needs to raise $1000 to cover the cost of making the film. If you can donate some money [even small amounts help -- $5-$25], go to PayPal, then click on “send money,” enter Reno's email address r_lauro@yahoo.com and choose service/other and follow the rest of the instructions. Second, when the chance to view and vote on the film arises, I'll add another post asking everyone to vote for Last Rites.

I love film and I love that I have friends that are engaged in the process of crafting stories through a camera lens.

[If you choose to give money to this film project, please
email me to let me know, so I can thank you personally.]

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Film][Red Without Blue][Malick]

politics | The Philadelphia Debate?

2008-04-18T16:34:00.003Z

If you missed the debate on Wednesday, you didn't miss much. The questions were terrible, Obama wasn't particularly sharp (despite using his favorite line "I want to be clear about something." When he says that, you know he means business), and Clinton admitted that Obama can win (Her rejoinder was that she would be better. What she should have said to keep her electability claims alive is that she has a greater likelihood of winning.) If you must watch, click here, or take a look at Jon Stewart's take:

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Politics]

news | AAR And SBL

2008-04-14T18:39:00.001Z

From the American Academy of Religion:

"In light of the scheduling and logistical problems connected with the proposed Independent Annual Meetings, and given the views our members expressed in our recent member survey, the Board, in its April 12, 2008 meeting, approved a recommendation that the AAR begin scheduling concurrent, yet independent Annual Meetings with the Society of Biblical Literature as soon as is feasible."

Hopefully SBL will play nice. The two meetings should have never been separated.

life | My Former Automobile

2008-04-12T20:09:00.000Z

Some who have known me for years will remember the last car I owned, a green Acura Integra. I sold it to a friend in 2005 before I took off for Europe. Obviously it hasn't faired too well as it was recently stolen and stripped.

[America's Young Theologian][Life]

life | Giving Up Things...

2008-04-11T11:49:00.000Z

I haven't smoked in a week. I'm done with MySpace.

film | Forgetting Sarah Marshall

2008-04-11T08:30:00.006Z

I've seen two comedies recently that were both set in Hawaii. The first was the 2004 Adam Sandler film 50 First Dates. I was looking to waste some time and accomplished that. The acting: poor. The humor: induced eye-rolls instead of laughter. Rob Schneider is a good sign that a movie will be awful.

The second is the soon to be released Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I saw Anchorman, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad (all produced by Judd Apatow). Frankly, I wasn't overly impressed with any of them. They all had their scenes certainly (and Anchorman had Will Ferrell), but only Knocked Up had any character development and that was at best anemic. Now, you might say that character development, or plot development for that matter, is not what they are going for in these films. I understand that the comedic elements may be the driving force, but I'd suggest that the best comedies have comedic elements equally matched to the story in which they are placed.

I actually enjoyed Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Jason Segel deserves credit for writing the script and acting the male lead. He plays Peter Bretter, a recently-dumped man who goes to Hawaii to get away only to find his TV star ex (Sarah Marshall, played by Kristen Bell) at the same resort. Sarah is there with her new boyfriend and plenty of awkwardness ensues. Peter falls for a member of the resort staff, Rachel Jansen (played by Mila Kunis, probably most well known for her role as Jackie on That '70's Show). Segel provides more subtle acting than we are perhaps used to in such a comedy and does well playing the depressed, heart-broken lead. Kunis is equally effective. In short, while neither performance demands a lot, neither disrupts or gets in the way of the standard but surprisingly fruitful storyline. The humor of the film is sexually based and not for the young or easily offended, but I watched the film with a theater full of college students and joined them in laughing throughout. I'm not normally a huge fan of this sort of film (and by 'this sort,' I mean movies that rely on ploys like frontal male nudity for shock humor), but this is probably the one I enjoyed the most since There's Something About Mary (and that was a decade ago). Perhaps the audience I watched it with helped, but I found it a lot of fun: not as over-the-top as Superbad but far funnier than Knocked Up.

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Film][Forgetting Sarah Marshall]

misc | A Day In The Life Of...

2008-03-27T00:56:00.002Z

Haven't been blogging much as I've been trying to make big strides on my dissertation. Today's task: Read Heidegger's 1962 lecture "On Time and Being," which opens with the lines:

"If we were to be shown right now tow pictures by Paul Klee, in the origianl, which he painted in the year of his death - the watercolor 'Saints from a Window,' and 'Death and Fire,' tempera on burlap - we should want to stand before them for a long while - and should abandon any claim that they be immediately intelligible."

Of course I had to track down the paintings (see above). I finally got around to watching Todd Haynes' most recent film I'm Not There.

As Roger Ebert writes:

"I'm Not There" is an attempt to consider the contradictions of Bob Dylan by building itself upon contradictions. Maybe that's the only way to do it. If you made a biopic with Dylan played by the same actor all the way through, it might become the portrait of a shape-shifting schizophrenic. Todd Haynes' approach is to create six or seven Dylans, depending on how you count, and use six actors to play them. This way, each Dylan is consistent on his own terms, and the life as a whole need not hold together.

My friend Sophie wrote this review. I love Dylan and thought it as interesting a film as it was unconventional. Dylan is 'not there' as any of the character names, each portray a different Dylan myth and have correspondingly different names, but Dylan is there in the soundtrack of this delightful work which gives some evidence that Haynes studied semiotics in college.

Lastly, Destroyer has a new album out. I'd recommend it. You can download the track "Foam Hands" here.

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Bob Dylan][Music][Film]

politics | Iraq & McCain

2008-03-17T02:37:00.003Z

Just a few thoughts:

I worry that the discussion about Iraq is as morally anemic as it was 5 years ago. Now, the war is unpopular in the US. I'm glad to have more voices against it, but not sure those voices are clear on why to be against it. Clearly, it has been a disaster. But the reason to be against the war is not that it went poorly or was mismanaged. A better reason would be because it was unjust. In the case of robbing the proverbial liquor store, one doesn't make a decision to be for or against the action by how well it went.

I also worry about how common war is in our history, and how much profit there is in the industrial-military complex, which makes war profitable (read: desirable). Like the child who grew up around abusive adults and failed to learn other ways of dealing with problems, I fear that the US imagination/identity is too formed by war.

Tom Engelhardt writes:

To put this in more human terms: Imagine that a child born on March 19, 2003, just as Baghdad was being shock-and-awed, will be of an age to enter first grade when the sixth anniversary of George Bush's war hits. He or she will have gone from babbling to talking, crawling to walking, and will by then possibly be beginning to read and write. Of course, an Iraqi child born on that day, who managed to live to see his or her sixth birthday, might be among the two million-plus Iraqis in exile in Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East, or among the millions of internal refugees driven from their homes in recent years and not in school at all.

(Similarly, a child born on October 7, 2001, when the President first dispatched American bombers to strike Afghanistan, will be in second grade in March 2009; of course, seven-and-a-half years after being "liberated," an Afghan child, especially one now living in the southern part of that failed narco-state, is unlikely to be in school at all. As with Iraq, we could take some educated guesses about the situation in Afghanistan a year from now and they would be grim beyond words.)

For those children, the real inheritors of the Bush war era that is not yet faintly over, the Iraq War has essentially been the equivalent of an open-ended prison sentence with little hope of parole; for some Americans and many Iraqis, including children, it is a death sentence without hope of pardon.

Ultimately, this determination by war is what scares me about McCain with his constant talk about the military.

[America's Young Theologian][Iraq][Politics][McCain]

theology | Cornel West At St. Sabina

2008-02-26T19:06:00.001Z

Cornel West gave his annual February address at St. Sabina Catholic Church in Chicago, Illinois a few weeks back. Listen here.

internet | Video Of The Week

2008-02-26T18:36:00.003Z

A Charlie Rose discussion from 1996 with Henry Louis Gates, then chairman of the Department of African American studies at Harvard University, and Cornel West, then professor of African American studies at Harvard, about their book "The Future of the Race", which examines the W.E.B. Du Bois essay, "The Talented Ten". Gates and West also discuss civil rights, apartheid, affirmative action and what race relations in America will look like over the next fifty years.

"I'm first and foremost a Christian. But by Christian, you see, as one who works through Chekhov, through Coletrain, through Toni Morrison, as says what?: that the tragic-comic character of the world is such that the suffering and the pain and the grief that sit at the center of it serve as the terrain upon which we must struggle, but preserve our compassion no matter what."

Cornel West

[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Politics][Video][Cornel West]