AKMA’s Random Thoughts

So There!

Ha! You thought I couldn’t finish it—don’t try to prevaricate, I know you doubted me. But I just dropped it in the email to my editor, so I have one fewer obligation hanging over my head. (A couple of overdue book reviews, an essay that's not due till, I don’t remember, December or something, and, ahem, three complete book manuscripts of which I’ve started two.)

Now, on to Rochester for the weekend. Got to remember to run my aggregator before I leave, so I can catch up on the web while we ride the train. . . .

The Full Sermon

The [London] Times Online has published the full text of Rowan Williams’s sermon from yesterday’s enthronement ceremony, of hwich I posted patches yesterday. I can’t sufficiently express my thanks that so thoughtful and articulate a theologian and preacher has accepted this call to serve the church.

More later, if I finish the hermeneutics article in time.

Tick. . . Tick. . . Tick. . . .

No, I haven’t finished the hermeneutics article. Yes, I have to finish it by late afternoon today. Yes, really, because I’m going to Rochester by train tonight to visit our son Nate at Eastman School of Music (for the daylight hours of Saturday and Sunday), where I’ll be getting together with Liz Lawley (we disreputable unrepentant academics have to support one another). Plus I’m saying morning mass, then meeting Kate Wallace to talk over our writing assignments for entering students next fall.

Oh, and “oulipo.”

ABC

I’m taking a blog break to reproduce some portions from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s sermon this morning, a sermon that almost suggests that he’s been squandering precious archepiscopal moments reading the blogthread about spirituality and devotion that Tom, Kurt, Steve, Dave and I have been hashing out.

(Parenthetically, the first Disseminary online seminar will be on “Spirituality and Technology.” We’ve recruited Prof. Wes Avram of Yale Divinity School to conduct it for us. This’ll be a great opportunity to work on these issues, and Trevor and I will be receiving requests to participate from anyone who’s willing to read the assignments and take part in the seminar-blog.)

The Most Reverend Rowan Williams said:

Once we recognise God's great secret, that we are all made to be God's sons and daughters, we can't avoid the call to see one another differently.

No one can be written off; no group, no nation, no minority can just be a scapegoat to resolve our fears and uncertainties," he said.

And this is what unsettles our loyalties, conservative or liberal, right wing or left, national and international.

We have to learn to be human alongside all sorts of others, the ones whose company we don't greatly like, whom we didn't choose, because Jesus is drawing us together into his place, his company. . . .

The Christian will engage with passion in the world of our society and politics - out of a real hunger and thirst to see God's image, the destiny of human beings to become God's sons and daughters come to light - and, it must be said, out of a real grief and fear of what the human future will be if this does not come to light.

The Church has to warn and to lament as well as comfort. . . .

When Christians grieve or protest about war, about debt and poverty, about prejudice, about the humiliations of unemployment or the vacuous cruelty of sexual greed and unfaithfulness, about the abuse of children or the neglect of the helpless elderly, it is because of the fear we rightly feel when insult and violence blot out the divine image in our human relations, the reflection to one another of the promise of Jesus in one another.

And anything that begins to make us casual about this is one more contribution to obscuring the original image of God in us, another layer of dust and grime over the bright face of Christ. . . .

Does there come a point where we can't recognise the same Jesus, the same secret?

"The Anglican Church is often accused of having no way of answering this. I don't believe it.

"We read the same Bible and practise the same sacraments and say the same creeds," he said.

"But I do believe that we have the very best of reasons for hesitating to identify such a point too quickly or easily - because we believe in a Jesus who is truly Lord and God, not the prisoner of my current thoughts or experiences.

"And it is this that gives us the freedom and the obligation to challenge what our various cultures may say about humanity," he said.

If all we have to offer is a Jesus who makes sense to me and people like me, we have no saving truth to give. . . .

The most significant question I can ask myself in your presence about the work ahead is ‘What do I pray for in the Church of the future?’

Confidence, courage, an imagination set on fire by the vision of God the Holy Trinity, thankfulness.

The Church of the future, I believe, will do both its prophetic and its pastoral work effectively only if it is concerned first with gratitude and joy.

Orthodoxy flows from this, not the other way around, and we don't solve our deepest problems just by better discipline but by better discipleship, a fuller entry into the intimate joy of Jesus's life. . . .

About 12 years ago, I was visiting an Orthodox monastery, and was taken to see one of the smaller and older chapels," he said.

It was a place intensely full of the memory and reality of prayer.

The monk showing me around pulled the curtain from in front of the sanctuary, and inside was a plain altar and one simple picture of Jesus, darkened and rather undistinguished.

But for some reason at that moment it was as if the veil of the temple was torn in two: I saw as I had never seen the simple fact of Jesus at the heart of all our words and worship, behind the curtain of our anxieties and our theories, our struggles and our suspicion.

Simply there. Nothing anyone can do about it, there he is as he has promised to be till the world's end.

Nothing of value happens in the Church that does not start from seeing him simply there in our midst, suffering and transforming our human disaster.

Beep Beep Beep

I’m not just being introverted — though by now, I (like most other people on the Web, evidently) have been outed as an introvert — but I really am working on the hermeneutics article in the few waking minutes left to me tonight. The whole day today was swallowed up by a monster faculty meeting, so I only have tomorrow and a little bit of Friday to get the article done.

I’ not avoiding talking with, for instance, Kurt and Dave (Time’s Shadow) (in Kurt’s comments) about creeds. Just resisting until after I keep other promises.

Go to Manfred Klein’s place and check out this week’s type designs (I doubt I’ll use any of them, but LuziFer is intriguing). go to Nick Curtis’s place, where his new site design is up, and he’s offering two new typefaces, Bulwark and Tropicana. And Diane DiPiazza has offered Laura, a script typeface.

But really, go read Gary Turner. I really must emphaticize that point. If you don’t, I’ll be forced to ask you again. Really.

Light Perpetual

Last fall, I heard that a friend had been given only a short time left to live. I preached a sermon on that news and on what he means to me, what the unwelcome news of his extreme illness meant, and some of you responded generously and sympathetically.

Sunday afternoon, Don Juel — a scholar, a friend, but above all an ardent and entirely-committed disciple of Jesus of Nazareth — relinquished mortal life. He was at home with his wife, and had spoken with his children recently on the phone.

Don and Lynda were true to us at a difficult point in our lives, when it was coming clear that we would not be able to stay in Princeton, that I was not going to be elevated to tenurable stature there. Don was a great teacher, particularly to our semi-foster daughter Jennifer. We cherish the memory of our Princeton friends’ sticking with us, and especially of Don’s unprepossessing candor about the whole business. It broke our hearts to leave Princeton, and leaving Don and Lynda made it that much harder.

We will pray for Don and for Lynda, and we ask that those of you who pray join us in giving thanks for all that Don meant to all the countless people whose lives he touched.

Rest eternal grant to him, O Lord;
And let light perpetual shine upon him.

Hmmmmm

Well, if I write about the war and religion, people follow up and challenge me, which is part of the point of blogging, but it interferes with finishing the hermeneutics essay.

Jonathon the more-than-full-witted yesterday (or two days ago, in Australia; I don’t understand how that works) asked me to explain how I interpret the story of Jesus’ encounter with the centurion (Luke 7:1-10, but also Matthew 8:5-13 and, in a different version, John 4:46-53). This is meat and drink to me, but I have to resist the temptation to write a miniature treatise on the subject.

I think Matthew (my personal favorite gospel, the one on which I’m slowly working up a book manuscript) construes the story mostly as an amazing healing story. It serves Matthew’s interests that the story concerns a Gentile soldier; one of Matthew’ characteristic emphases involves highlighting the way that Gentiles (who would think it?) are capable of faith that overshadows the faith of Matthew’ main rivals, the Pharisees. The Pharisees were remarkable for their piety and devotion to the Holy One of Israel; Matthew’s Jesus demands that his followers show even greater devotion, and Matthew illustrates this with the story of the centurion whose faith exceeds even what Jesus has encountered in Israel. The soldier’s identity as a Roman officer heightens the improbability of Jesus’ healing his slaveboy, but doesn’t register with Matthew (I think) as a commentary on the value of the man’s profession. If anything, Matthew tacitly supports the view that the man’s being a centurion was presumptively problematic for anyone who identified with Jesus. And although Jesus doesn’t condemn the man’s profession, the Matthean Jesus specifically commands non-violence, non-resistance to evildoers, and compliance with the demands that the hostile military make upon you, and he was crucified with the collaboration of Roman authorities and their military officers — so I suspect that Matthew’s version of Jesus would have had no room for participation in prosecuting a military campaign.

Luke is a different story, and I’m not as well-versed in Luken theology as in Matthean. Luke seems to present Gentile identity as more “normal” than Matthew does, and in his Gospel John the Baptist (mildly) instructs soldiers to forswear violent extortion, but not to hang up their swords. Luke also shows us Jesus advising his disciples to arm themselves (“Let anyone who doesn’t have a sword sell a cloak and buy one,” 22:36) and acknowledging that the two swords they bring out are enough (the interpretation of this very ellpitical expression is highly controverted, but one can quite plausibly construe this as Jesus’ approval of sword ownership). Still, with all that said, the Lukan Jesus is also an advocate of non-violence, still a victim of Roman injustice, still silent on anything like permission to use coercive violence (when the disciples try to fend off the arresting officers in Gethesemane, Jesus tells them to stop).

And the Johannine version of the story suggests that it’s possible to narrate the occasion as a miraculous healing without any explicit attention to the man’s military profession.

All that inclines me to think that Jesus’ example obliges us to extend the same loving, healing ministry to soldiers that we show to anyone else; Jesus shows no self-righteous stand-offishness relative to this man (quite the opposite of the way he treats the Gentile woman whose daughter needed healing). By the same token, though, Jesus’ ministry and teaching suggest no room for disciples to justify acts of military violence against others. Again, the dominant Christian position on this permits military violence under highly restrictive conditions (conditions that the Bush administration seems neither to understand nor even to wish to understand) — but that permission falls clearly under the category of “things it’s wrong to do, although we understand why you’re doing it, and we interpret this not as deliberate refractory self-indulgent blood lust, but as the actions of a disciple whose life is fundamentally non-violent, whose conscience obliges him or her to cooperate with the theologically-grounded wisdom of the head of state.” A soldier may be forgiven for participation in a “just” war, but that still leaves military service in the same category of as a heap of other transgressions — not as a positive good.

Keeping My Word

It’s cold, it’s late (for me), and now I owe the gang a few words on their thoughtful engagement with my response to Steve’s “devotion” blog.

To oversimplify to an extreme, I suppose my point was that devotion (as best I understand it) is always utterly particular, and has as part of its structure a dimension of accountability that didn’t seem obvious in what Steve said. A devotion without either an object-of-devotion or a community-that-shares-in-one’s-devotion just sounds fishy to me.

This does connect, honest it does, with Dave and Kurt’s conversation about Buddhism. I have no interest in dissuading people from Buddhist belief and practice; although I don’t believe it to be true in a final sense (or else I would be a Buddhist), I don’ imagine that I’m in a position to give a laundry list of reasons Christianity is superior to Buddhism. Mercy’s sake, I’m not even sure I think Christianity is superior. I just find it to be right. But the important element of this discussion for the purposes of illuminating Steve’s and my differences has to do with the extent to which non-practitioners of a Way are in a position to size up the strengths and weaknesses of that Way. I share some of Kurt and Dave’reservations about the cultural presence of Buddhism in the industrial West, and I share some of their admiration for specific teachings —but I’ made cautious by (for instance) the exercise of evaluating the extent to which Buddhism is “really” a religion or a philosophy. How much does that question matter to people whose lives are defined by the Buddha’s insight into the true nature of reality? Though both Kurt and Dave are courteous and careful, the risk of condescension certainly seems high; indeed, it sounds from what Kurt and Dave say that the author to whom both they advert (John Horgan, writing in Slate in an article I haven’t read) may have crossed the line into condescending dismissal. But here, my ignorance quotient is red-lining, so I’ll back away quietly and change direction back. . . .

Even more, my discomfort with Steve’s gentle, non-specific devotion involves dimensions on which Tom touches. I already touched on how that would be; Tom addresses the kinds of community life he associates with Catholic and Protestant Christianity. I won’t split the hairs about “catholic” and “protestant”; Tom’s undeniably onto something here, and that’s what I have to follow through.

Tom suggests that the very catholicity of Catholicism — its identity as a church for everyone (whether everyone likes it or not) — effects a significantly different kind of ethos from Protestant congregations which are informed (and deformed) by their historically antithetical origins. Tom pushes me to be more specific about how my usage of “community” plays out, when the term seems to function so differently in these two different versions of Christianity (and we could show more different varieties of “community” by looking at Orthodox and non-denominational, independent congregations).

The point I was aiming at involves the [different] ways that community life itself makes possible the individual’s devotion. So when Tom asks to what the devotion is oriented, I answer quite vigorously, “To God, as God has been revealed in and to the lives of a body of people big enough to damp out individual idiosyncrasies.” That may issue in some traditions as a direct inner experience of the inner flame — but I’d insist that that’s not because somehow Tradition A has discovered the One Spiritual High Road, whereas Tradition B is stuck in muddy ruts of misguided ritualism. Rather, in each case the community’s mediation makes possible a mode of devotion that bespeaks and, pardon the barbarism, be-hears the God toward whom the community shares its devotion.

And then, back round to Steve Himmer (who may by now wish he’d just never brought the topic up in the first place), my unease with the sort of devotion described in “Afternoon Vespers” derives from my uncertainty about what community is mediating, tempering, cultivating the sort of devotion Steve describes (and what its relation might be to an ordered religious community, something of an antithesis of unspecific devotion).

Steve Yost comes into the picture byciting Gary Snyder, whose take on Beat Religiosity strikes several interesting and relevant notes. Snyder, not surprisingly, commends the sort of path that he took, and notes drawbacks to other paths, but charitably observes that even a partial, haphazard beat “may get pretty far out, and that's probably better than moping around classrooms or writing books on Buddhism and Happiness for the masses, as the squares (who will shortly have succeeded in putting us all down) do.”

Now, my eyelids tremble, and I begin to grow in confidence that I’ve written more than the usual arrant nonsense, so I’ll call it a night.

Except to say, you gotta love David Weinberger.

On My List

Tom, Dave, Steve, and Kurt are on my to-blog list for tomorrow. And, of course, finishing up the hermeneutics article. Yeah, right.

Luther, [Just] War, and Preaching

An afterthought on Friday’s sermon: I spoke there not to beat up on soldiers, who may be nobly self-sacrificing, altruistic, and deeply patriotic individuals. It’s pivotal, though, that Christian leaders insist on some distinctions, wherever they come down relative to the impending steamrollering of Iraq.

First, war is never right. There is a prevailing school of Christian ethical reflection—one from which I dissent—that teaches that disciples of Jesus may participate in warfare in defense of a just cause, on behalf of innocents, when every other means of bringing about the desired end has failed; such a situation makes participation in a war “just,” though it does not make the war itself a positive option. (My own Anglican tradition affirms in its Articles of Religion that “It is lawful for Christian men at the commandment of the Magistrate to wear weapons and serve in the wars,” though the Latin version of that article stipulates “et iusta bella administrare.”)

There may be no room for pride in war, only penitence; there may be no room for pre-emption in war, only response. (A righteous combatant will not strike a first blow, because she or he doesn’t know that the adversary actually is a combatant until the adversary starts the fight.) The Bush administration’s actions in North Korea illustrate that there are indeed other ways of addressing unstable tyrants who possess weapons of mass destruction. When Bush singles out Hussein and Iraq as “deserving” a pre-emptive war that will surely affect non-combatants disproportionately (perhaps even deliberately so), his selectivity falsifies any claim that this could be a “just” war.

Second, while soldiers may be humble, altruistic, and noble, theirs is emphatically not the greatest sacrifice one can make. There’s a tremendous difference between risking one’s life in warfare, armed with automatic weapons, missiles, grenades, bombs, and so on (on one hand) and risking one’s life in service to others unarmed, from the conviction that helping those in need is one’s fundamental obligation (on the other hand).

Soldiers do make the incalculably grave sacrifice of their unwillingness to take another human life. That’s much, much bigger than fast-talking neocon pundits seem to understand, and greater even than the risk of their lives (what does it profit a soldier to win a war, and lose the meaning for which the war was fought?) I will honor the sacrifice of any soldiers, living or dead, who feel (or “felt”) the weight of responsibility that comes from renouncing their obligation to not kill any other human being. I will grieve the loss of any soldiers, living or dead, who can’t face the magnitude of that decision and so must make themselves out to be immune to moral responsibility.

Third, the church could only being to imagine itself making these sorts of distinctions when had lost its first self-understanding, that of stateless witnesses to a peace and glory that admit of no coercion or violence. Once a church begins to think of itself as intrinsically related to state functions, the state’s problems become that church’s problems. That need not be the case; Christians can still find their truest identities as those whose citizenship belongs to no earthly domain, and some still do. They are not retreating from some primary allegiance to the state, but respecting a primary allegiance to statelessness.

Miles, Christ, and Biblical Criticism

Steve Yost’s pointer to Jack Miles’s overview of biblical scholarship includes an invitation to put in my ha’penny’s-worth on Miles’s assessment of biblical scholarship. (Steve wonders whether this would be a good context in which to read my book on postmodernism; I would say that it’s always a good time to read that book, but in this context the strong of heart may find more especially relevant a different book of mine, oriented particularly toward the way criteria function in biblical interpretation. But that one’s also longer and more expensive and less commonly available in libraries, so you have permission to skip it in favor of the cheaper, shorter, more easily accessible one.)

Miles’s survey seems largely to hit the mark; I’d quibble with him on a number of points, but on the whole he seems to have sized up my colleagues in this field pretty accurately. I would probably treat “literary criticism” somewhat differently—his version of lit-crit seems a little too gloriously heroic by my lights—but Miles wisely notes the importance of Hans Frei (and Margaret would quickly add the even greater importance of Henri de Lubac) and the biblical guild’s successful construction of a veil of misprision that insulates the guild from edifying contact with the broader world of critical thinking. I’d be tempted to say simply that graduate study in the Bible trains people to be bad readers—readers whose sense of what’s important about a text derives from extremely narrow and self-justifying premises.

A test case arises in most introductory classes in Scripture. Seminarians typically need to be taught that the modern methods of analyzing Scripture are not risible, but are the exclusively sound and truthful ways of reading an ancient text. They “need” this, that is, because it’s very far from being evident to them. I would say they have good reason to be skeptical about modern biblical scholarship, but that they ought not infer that modern scholarship is a load of dingo’s kidneys. They should instead learn how to distinguish dingo’s kidneys from wholesome, nourishing close reading. Unfortunately, the cultural prominence of modern presuppositions in biblical interpretation makes it hard to say anything more nuanced than Aye or Nay.

Getting back, then, to Miles: the best thing one can do is to learn to read the Bible with sensitivity to theme and character, to what is said, what isn't said, and what may deliberately have been un-said, to the human capacities of amateur authors (even if they be gifted amateurs) and the divine subtlety that brings diverse authorial voices into a collection where they may provide the basis for a harmonious, profound theological testimony—or the discordant jibberish of antithetical yammering, or the monotonous drone of carefully-rehearsed Officially-Approved Interpretive Statements.

I don’t know as my interpretations of the New Testament will align with Jack Miles’s more than incidentally, but that will involve our different purposes, different tastes, different lines of accountability. It will not involve one of the two of us being anti-intellectual, or heedless of historical judgment.

Disseminary Siglum

Well, Trevor and I worked hard on it this afternoon, and came up with a compromise: the Wheel-within-wheel symbol would be a sort of main Disseminary logo, and the Hoopoe would be a more informal, affectionate emblem.

I know you all were holding your breath for that one.

Meanwhile, interesting responses to Steve Himmer’s reflections on monasticism abound, and Halley invoked my prayers, and Steve Yost is tangling me up with the brother of my Seabury neighbor, Catherine Wallace. Oh, his name is Jack Miles. (I have to talk to Kate about getting herself a web page.)

I will have much to answer you all about tomorrow, and I have promised my editor that I’ll finish off that old “Integral and Differential Hermeneutics” essay by the end of the week, which will be a trick because Seabury has its exciting twice-a-term Faculty conference this week, and we have a meeting with Garrett Seminary from across the street, and I get together with the very same Kate Wallace on Friday to plan the writing curriculum for entering students for next fall.

But I won’t forget you.

Friday Sermon

Today I preached in chapel. We were observing the feast day of Martin Luther, which wasn’t the most obvious day for our liturgics professor to invite me to say mass.

Anyway, I don’t feel blogheavy tonight, so I figured I’d put the sermon up. . . .

Isaiah 55:6-13/Psalm 46/John 15:1-11 February 21, 2003

Our professor of liturgics sturdily denies any deliberate intent in assigning preachers to particular feast days, so she will probably affirm that no wry humor played a part in allotting the arch-reformer to this stalwartly catholic presider. I myself just give thanks that it wasn’t Calvin or Zwingli, but instead that I was called to preach on the feast of Brother Martin, hearty Augustinian monk and apostle of grace.
If we had more than just five minutes, I might ask you for some testimonies, sisters and brothers, some witnessing about where your path to discipleship began, what first recognizable steps led you to this most unlikely way-station. If we had more than just five minutes, we could listen one another into truth, and hear how God’s ways vastly surpass our ways, how God?s thoughts transcend our thoughts.
But we don’t have that much time, friends, we must hurry or we’ll be late for lunch, and so I will elbow past all the enchanting, endearing stories of late-night conversions, of dear and trusted companions, of grannies and nannies, of hitting the bottom and slingshotting to the heavens, I’ll skip over all that and cut to the bottom line: discipleship begins in grace.
Our way with God begins in grace, that?s the only way it can begin, because our good ideas don’t save us, our lofty intentions sure don’t save us, our intelligence and fine looks and beautiful music and even the Book of Common Prayer and EOW do not save us, but grace alone. By grace, God calls a no-account rag-tag nation of migrant workers and sets them up as an honest-to-goodness kingdom. By grace, Jesus spots an improbable posse of drinking buddies and calls them his friends, invites them into the sublime love by which the Son and the Father are one. By grace, the Spirit moves among us, dislodging us from successful careers or aimless lives, drawing us together into this common life on the vine of prayer and study. Streams of grace water the earth, rivers of grace nourish and make us glad, cleansing us from our sin and sweeping us along into the eddying currents of God’s way.
By grace and grace alone all good things come to be; grace is our only fortress, our only rock, our stronghold and our only sure defense. And undeserved grace forbids our thinking that we bring about peace among nations, that our strength protects the innocent, that our wisdom adjudicates which nations deserve the full impact of US military destruction, and which tyrants must be supported and encouraged in the name of “national security.” Grace stands up and plainly names the lies and blasphemy that crassly identify God’s justice and God’s saving power with the ambitions of careerist politicians.
Grace falls silent when we manipulate, coerce, force enemies to submit to our will. Grace testifies for us and with us and in us, when all our ways in all our lives sprout flourishing myrtle and cypress, not withered, dry thorns and briars; grace grows in our discipleship when we reject the lies of brutal power, and follow the gentle, peaceable way of Jesus’ command to abide together in his love.
In the presence of grace, five minutes stretches to encompass all our hearts’ testimonies of praise, of thanksgiving and intercession in an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. In the of grace, “cutting off” is all that we can expect.

Amen

Welcome Back

Steve Himmer is back and (evidently) feeling better and vying for the title of “the U.S.’s answer to Gary Turner as funniest guy around.”

Evidently I wasn’t as clear as desirable when I first responded to Steve; I should revisit that, tomorrow perhaps. Or later.

Wanted: Web Host

Now that Trevor and I have the money to contract with a web hosting service, we’re looking for a host to, uh, host us. We saw Mark Pilgrim’s endorsement of CornerHost, and Mark’s word carries us a long way. Still, we’d like to have considered an alternative or two before we sign on the line.

We’re also looking for an emblem (currently in the running: a hoopoe, or a wheel-within-a-wheel, as in Ezekiel’s vision). We’re thinking about the design of the front page (impressed by a recent spate of handsomely-designed pages with a banner/logo at top, and a three-column layout, of which the left column is usually empty. Megnut’s subway motif is a great idea; Dooce or Textism’s layout appeals greatly.

All suggestions welcome.

Catchphrase Copyright

In congratulating Tom Shugart for his blogiversary this evening, I referred to these days after the media have caught the scent of what Blogaria’s up to, after the big Blogger/Google merger, after the bloggers claimed credit for Trent Lott’s hide and perhaps for keeping Korea in the foreign policy discussions, when Michael and Tom and Jeneane are agitating to arm Iraqi bloggers with cameras so we can see through bloggers’ eyes what the US military machine does Over There—I referred to these days as “the Blog Rush of ’03.” It sounded catchy, and so I’m tossing it out there as a perhaps-apt catchphrase for the blogging boom. . . .

Blog Refrigerator Door

In Passing

Not much to say today, except that Manfred Klein released a batch of new free typefaces earlier this week. A couple were picture collections, one is an interesting experimental typeface (including only the upper or lower half of each letter), a ransom-note assortment of glyphs in which no two characters are formed on the same design, an eccentric sans serif face, and a strong blackletter typeface.

And today, the grant check for the Disseminary arrived, so Trevor and I can begin making stuff happen (in our copious free time).

Steve and Faith

Let it never be said that Steve Himmer is anything but a class act. Or, go ahead and say it, but you’d better not mean it.

I say this first with reference to Steve’s gentle, thoughtful observations about his latent atheistic monastic streak. Steve ventures to reflect thoughtfully on how it might be that someone such as he, who knows in the full depth of his being, the of any divine phantasms, nonetheless finds himself drawn to a life of contemplative devotion.

Then, after I indicated my appreciation for the care he exercised in not disparaging others’ faith, but my inability to find a way to address his remarks within the frame that his narrative constructed for the conversation, Steve even more graciously disassembled the frame. So although I’d rather ask how his camera got broken, or trade flu stories, I find myself obliged by Steve’s generosity to comment on faith and devotion.

Conversations about faith suffer from the turbulence induced by cultural knowledge, the kind of thing everyone knows about religion—premises that may not actually be true or applicable or well-constructed when brought to bear on particular (alleged) instances of the category. Some of what the predominant public discourses of religion just take for granted falsifies what particular people, or (better) communities do and say and think. It’s tough to dislodge that cultural knowledge, though, since it gets picked up and underscored and repeated and endorsed by people who are presented to us as authorities (maybe I can use this as a springboard back to the “authority” topic in a day or so).

For instance: cultural knowledge holds that ritual is empty, meaningless and separate from a true personal encounter with God; that only from theological vanity might one believe one’s own faith to be true, in contradistinction to different ways of life; that the true goal of authentic faith is a spirituality distinguishable from “outward forms” or “the institutional church”; the individual’s soul is the paramount matter of religious importance; and a bunch of others I’ll probably tack on as I keep nattering.

None of these premises is simply, neutrally, given; some of them are demonstrably polemical claims which have become so successful that their hostile origins no longer appear on the surface, even to those against whom the claim may once have been directed (who thus reproduce the problematic assumptions within the camp the assumption was designed to undermine). None is groundless, either, so that conversation partners can always cite situations and quotations that back the premises. I don’t know what Steve thinks about any of these; he’s a very wise man, except perhaps about snow shovelling, so I expect that he has a nuanced appreciation for the complexities swirling around these a/theological points. (If I try to talk about “orthodoxy” or “authority” or “pacifism” sometime later, I’ll run into similar problems again.)

But if I’m to speak out in public about Steve’ essay in which he ponders the possibility that God not be a necessary component of a life of devotion on the Christian monastic model, I need to answer not only Steve, but also all the cultural overhead that many readers will (inasmuch as there are many readers to this node in the networked digital imagination of the world) bring to bear on my response.

So, first, Steve allows that he may have picked up the stick by the wrong end by concentrating on the devoted individual, rather than on that to which the individual is devoted. That’s a tremendous insight, and touches on one of those bits of cultural knowledge to which I object. I’d go even further, though, and say that some dimensions of the faith that expresses itself in Christian monasticism (and from here on, I’ll use less cumbersome sepcifications, though I risk missing my step in so doing because at the end all my reservations have to do with specificity and particularity) understand the individual’s own devotion not be that important. One way of thinking about devotion involves doing something with one’s individuality that isn’ simply pointing it in a dogmatically “correct” direction and praying, or feeling a warmish glow when one says an appropriate prayer. This way of imagining devotion sets as a more fitting goal the harmonization of an individual’s sense of self-importance with a vastly greater, deeper, wiser, longer-enduring, suffering, persisting, rejoicing communion of one’s sisters and brothers to whose shared devotion one commits oneself, whatever one’s private, individual feelings, preferences, or beliefs.

On this premise, one would draw the wrong conclusion if one deduced from a devout person’s non-specific (or misdefined) faith that the end of faith or its precise contours don’t matter. Rather, one may observe how profoundly appropriate it is for religious communities to welcome people with uncertain, irregular faith (or none at all), since it’s by the community’s embracing any who aspire to that life of devotion that all who partake in the life find the fullness of the sharing that crosses time, location, doctrinal precision, and all the other variables that distinguish believers and non-believers of our various flavors. This “welcoming” doesn’t mean the community reshapes itself in the welcomed-one’s reflected (distorted) image, though. The community welcomes people by speaking and practicing the truth it has received, by making as clear and convincing as possible the Way that justifies the community’s common life.

So—to restrict myself (for reasons of preservation of limited energies) to Steve’ attraction to monastic devotion, I would append the utterly vital aspect of allying oneself to a community, to a tradition, to which one makes oneself accountable. In that sense, God is not a necessary aspect of one’s own life of devotion, as God is not on pins and needles waiting to observe the outcome of a theological plebescite (sort of Bill Clinton with wings and a harp) but the life of devotion to which Steve feels attracted would be something radically different if it were not directed toward God, if such a life continued to exist at all.

(Explicit reservation: Steve was talking about Christian monasticism, at least in all his specific references. Stepping away from my area of first-hand knowledge and the specifically Christian context, one might argue that non-belief in God constitutes a requisite ingredient of some monasticism. I’m not one to assess such claims in public, though—imply to report that I’m not unaware of them.)

(As I conclude these remarks, iTunes supplies a tremendously a propos conjunction of theologically-determined favorites: “Bread and Circuses” by Billy Bragg and Natalie Merchant, and immediately afterward “Alleluia,” by Dar Williams.)

That’s too much for now.

At Least. . .

So, I slept moderately well, and woke up early enough to think I might go to the office for the morning and come home after midday mass for a restful afternoon. Got up, took a shower, dressed, went downstairs, and stepped in a puddle in the front hall.

Was Bea, fierce warrior puppy, responsible? No, this puddle was bigger than that. And, now that I stopped to listen, I heard water dripping in the basement.

(I pause to stipulate that I really do feel noticeably better today; my flu Crud Factor is down to 1 or 2, and the single biggest residual affliction of the Adam Influenza Massacre of 2003 is general weariness.)

I had anticipated tackling today head-on, relishing the full use of my limited capacities. Instead, I hollered for Josiah, hunky hero-youth of the family, and we began mopping and bailing. I’d hoped that we could square things away without disturbing Margaret, but she responded to my summons for Si. As it turned out, the toilet in the front hall had overflowed, which surprised us all because no one had used it since late last night. We mopped up and dried the floors, set pails to catch the drips in the basement, and started back to our respective days—but the toilet then overflowed again. Okay, got that, mopped, dried, now we’re stabilized. I ran out to Morning Prayer, and as soon as I got home I found Margaret mopping the front hall again, at which point we summoned Wolf Waldert, Seabury’s mystically-powerful Maintenance Supervisor, and the full complement of Seabury’s maintenance crew (Wolf and Ricardo) and a guest expert plumber spent their mornings prying the drywall off our basement wall, opening up our pipes, and extracting some inert organic matter from deep therein. From the vent outside our house, you could hear their drilling and sucking and pumping (all in a strictly hydro-circulatory sense) making extremely odd noises.

I was not feeling nearly as good by midday as I had been at the beginning of the day. I therefore welcomed the extraordinary gift offered to Seabury at midday mass: a visiting choir, “Thula Sizwe,” (named for a Zulu freedom song, “Be silent, nation”) from outside Pretoria (yes, that’s the Pretoria in Golby’s geographic neighborhood) sang an anthem for us at communion, and then a remix (as it were) of “Amazing Grace” after the service. They burned golden grace in a weary gray chapel.

Signs Are Good

We're still sick with the flu, to varying degrees (as predicted, Si went to church today), but trends are at least slightly favorable.

Dishmatique Liberation Movement

My Tutor aims to liberate aficiandi of the premier kitchen hygiene implement, the Dishmatique, from the stifling restraints of Harvard Blog censorship. Freedom of commercial speech, even in the digital domain of crimson ivy!

Except, I didn’t think that I “shamelessly flogged” the Dishmatique (I’d state that I didn’t flog it at all except that I ’never presume to correct the Tutor when it comes to flogging). I have rhapsodized, endorsed, lauded, displayed, and acclaimed this paragon of washbasin cleanliness. But that seems defensible under the “encourged to review products” clause of the rule. (And one can hardly imagine Dave Winer submitting to constraints on his liberty to speak his mind about commercial products!)

And much as I may disagree with Jonathon Delacour about the politics and ethics of warfare, I cannot stand silently by when he’s accused of being a half-wit! If that epithet be fairly applied to him, then I should emphatically insist that “Half a wit is better than one.”

Now, would someone at the Dishmatique’s manufacturer Easy-Do please pick up the clue phone and take steps to remedy that dreadfully appalling webpage design?

Triage Report

The best news is that Si has spent the day a veritable social—well, he’s no butterfly, but “June bug” isn’t fair to him, so let’s just say, “big, friendly, gentle bug”—a social bug, with his Crud Factor down in the negligible range. He’ maybe a 1.5. I started out the day feverish and achey, but the fever has subsided, and my aches hadn’t seemed so bad till I just developed a whopper of a muscle pain (probably unrelated, but it aggravates my CF; call me a 5. Pip and Margaret, long-suffering souls, have bounced back up into the 6 or 7 range. While I was feeling less and less haunted by the flu, it struck back ferociously at the women-folk. One thing we’ve learned from this flu is that it shows a heartbreaking pattern of abating, then intensifying, in waves. So tomorrow morning, I’ll probably be miserable, and Margaret and Pip feeling better. But none of the three of us is going to church tomorrow. We’ll ask Si to pray extra hard. (I was scheduled for a healing service in Winnetka; while I have no inclination to set limits for the power of the Spirit, the irony of an flu-ridden priest laying on hands to heal seemed beyond anything for which I could make myself responsible.)

Mercedes Update

The news has been released: Doc’s laptop is back, and the outpouring of Blogarian charity, once turned loose on Doc’s behalf, now flows over to other worthy causes. And the Mercedes S600 is back, too, in my imagination, where it belonged all along.

Friday Update

♥ First I did not escape the family flu outbreak, and last night peaked at Crud Factor 8 or 9. This afternoon I’m down around 7, Margaret is at CF 6 (and weary and achey), Pip at CF 3 or 4 (low grade fever and cough), Si at CF 2 or 3 (the DareDevil factor: he wants to go to the movies this afternoon, so he’s sure he feels better). I bailed out on midday mass and lunch with Jordon, as I wasn’t sure I could sit through them both and I really didn’t want to spread this accursed flu more widely. It’s frustrating; I had wanted to hear Jordon talk with the students at lunchtime, and to just sit around and talk through some Disseminary stuff with him—but really, no one wants me out of bed today.

♥ Jordon was terrific last night. He very helpfully sketched out the rationale for organizations such as churches moving directly into engagement with digital culture, and the reasons that inhibit churches from so doing. This was just what I’d hoped for; I think that our students who’ve talked with Jordon should have a strong sense of the value of digital technology for church functions.

♥ Some of Trevor’s and my students have shown what can happen when vivid theological imagination intersect with weblogs and professorial frivolity. . . .

♥ A flock of typefaces from DincType: Scout, Broken Doll, Satori (which looks like a very familiar brush script), placemats, Pati, Lonely Frog, and a letters-inside-hearts typeface, Funny Valentine. Japanese fontmakers Maniackers released an alphabetic design, Crayon, with the admonition, “Please Maniackers Design Font Read Me Down Load..” The FontDiner has two new designs also, Luvable and Huggable (they’re all labelled “new,” but some of these designs have been there for ages).

I’m to blog any more, so I’ll just curl up in a fetal position and sweat and cough and blow my nose. Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone (especially my heart’s beloved, Margaret!).

More On Education

Liz Lawley points to a provocative reflection by Flemming Funch on education, conformity, and accomplishment. She cites a juicy paragraph on how highly-trained computer science students typically make weak programmers; I was impressed by the scorching paragraph about how well practitioners can actually do things:

The problem is that in the real world, if you have the job of building something that actually works, as a computer programmer or as an engineer, or you need to do something very precise and important, like surgery, you can’t get away with anything much less than 100% right. You might get away with 99.99% right, and the last 0.01% will still haunt you. But if you’re several percent off, the bridge will fall down, the patient will die, and your software just won't run. You can’t almost save an account record and still call it an accounting program. It doesn’t matter if you made a good effort and that your notes look good if you amputated the wrong leg.

I understand that ministry isn’t only about knowing a bunch of dates and doctrines, that it’s not just for highly-educated elite highfalutin’ clergy. At the same time, though, seminary education frequently concentrates so hard on helping students feel good about themselves and their capacities that we don’t push Funch’s “percentage” up from 80% to closer to 99 or 100%.

In ministry, the percentage doesn’t correlate with good grades and lots of education—just as Funch’s computer science students were less reliable as programmers than were the less-educated hackers he hired. But even a hacker needs to know the language, know the APIs, know the point of the program he or she’s coding. Somewhere in the knots of the conundrum to which Funch points, there’s an important lesson and warning sign for theological education.

Jordon Cooper Report, Part 1

Eminent pastoral technologian Jordon Cooper has landed safely in Chicago and gotten to Seabury, where we have ensconced him in one of our guest suites, and are now eagerly awaiting his presentation on “Discontinuous Change and the Church: The Impact of Technology and teh Creative Class on Ministry Today.” I showed Jordon everything about Seabury (small building, about fifteen minutes) and left him in his room so that I could come home and check in on our influenza sick ward. The scoreboard presently reads, Si = crud factor 2 and dropping, Pip = CF 6 and wavering, Margaret = CF 9 and stable. I'm mostly just exhausted from not sleeping well with everyone coughing through the night, and fighting off a flimsy imitation of the real flu that they have. I’ll go back to Seabury to greet Jordon before evening worship, where tonight we’ll celebrate teh feast day of Absalom Jones, the first African-American ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. Then dinner, then Jordon’s talk, to which a number of us are very much looking forward. I’ll report in later.

I Know It’s Around Here Somewhere

Well, it happens to the best of us, so I can’t complain if it happens to me. There I was, wandering out in front of our house, when it became clear that somehow I had mislaid our brand new Mercedes S600. I thought it was just west of the alley, but somehow I must have forgotten where I left it, and someone picked it up. Well, even though I’m not as prominent as Doc, I’m sure that someone out there will start a PayPal account to restore what once was lost. You guys are swell. . . .

I Didn’t Know You Cared

Well, mercy sakes, I must admit that I didn’t anticipate as much feedback on the Disseminary naming question as you offered. I especially appreciated Donna’s perspective, but as she and I seem to have been somewhat overwhelmed by the enthusiasm for “Disseminary”—an enthusiasm I quite share, in almost every regard, partly because of the polysemous possibilities of the tag that Alex notes—it’s a good thing that Trevor and Margaret and I seem to have worked something out.

But before I get ahead of myself: Steve and Anne wonder who might be these mysterious parties whose delicate sensibilities would impel them to turn their noses up at “The Disseminary.” I don’t know for sure who really cares, but enough people indicate their skepticism about such an endeavor, about who’d be willing to participate in online publishing, about what non-tenured person would risk valuable scholarship on an experimental medium that might not count toward tenure, or what tenured person would squander valuable scholarship on an experimental medium that might not count toward promotion, and so on, that I’m wary about raising even the faintest impediment to participation.

If beginning professor Naomi Chana (not picking on you, Naomi) has to play her publication cards carefully in order to cinch her tenure process, she might be a shade less ready to publish her article on medieval women mystics in a series of online publications whose name would appear on her vita as “Disseminary Publications” than, perhaps, “St. Vitus Publications” (or “Pardes” or “Hodos” or some other nomen). If eminent senior professor Sébastien Paquet can pick among the various editors who beg for the scholarly scraps that fall from his table, he may be less likely to favor “Disseminary Publications” than “Climacus Electronic Press.” Maybe they wouldn’t, but I’m intent enough on seeing this enterprise come off that I don’t want to admit impediment to the marriage of any minds with ours.

Nothing is final, so you and Trevor can keep coaching me on this. It may be that the idea is so brilliant that I’m playing it too safe, or that it’s so bogus an idea that even the world’s catchiest nomen wouldn’t help.

But last night, as Trevor and I walked home to dine with Margaret, we reached a tentative solution. The project itself can be “The Disseminary,” a name for the encompassing network of activities that we’re sponsoring. Each of the activities can then have a sub-name: electronic publishing, online seminars, study guides, whatever. That way, we can approach scholars of any degree of pomposity and desperation with a sonorous name, without dissing the Disseminary.

Now, in answer to Dave’s most important question: Trevor and I haven’ sat down and had the design meeting, but the Disseminary sweatshirts will be available as soon as we receive the check from our granting agency and we turn loose our design imagination. But believe me, they’re unreasonably high on our priority list! We have a line in the budget for travel to tech conferences, and we would of course want to show up wearing Disseminarywear to O’Reilly Emerging Technology or PopTech or whatever.

More Type

Nick Curtis has added two handsome new designs to his collection, Indochine and Fatty Snax. And this time, he projects a date definite for his new site design.

Not a type matter, but one of those worth-the-download monsters: “Driving Us Crazy,” a short feature about bad driving habits produced by the Methodist Church’s Temperance Board. It’s 99 megs, so dial-up users may just have to take my word for it that this is a hypnotically-fascinating animated temperance tract, with a soundtrack by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Or download it at work.

Thanks, Jeff Ward, for calling this one to my attention. I do relish Jeff’s profound meditations (the Arnold Genthe series is lovely), but I couldn’t resist calling more attention to Rusty the gospel-loving Martian not-a-car creature. . . .

The Home Front

Margaret and Trevor are looking at me as though I’m a sell-out, a traitor to the cause, a rank huckster among the true believers.

It’s because I suggested that we develop another, more formal name for our endeavor than “Disseminary.” I wasn’t suggesting that we abandon the Disseminary name. I reckon, though, that some potential participants in the project would be less likely to associate themselves with something that sounds as scruffy as the Disseminary. I’m not embarrassed; but I don’t want to chase away people whose sense of their proper dignity would be besmirched by association with us.

I don’t feel any reluctance to be associated with the Disseminary. I anticipate the possibility that some other folks would, and I don’t see the point in chasing them away (rather than enticing them aboard), especially if we’re not talking about renaming the whole endeavor, but developing a more formal alternative name by which we can refer to the project with stodgy people.

And, candidly, if someone dropped a bucket of money on us, I’d be ready to rename the endeavor after them in a flash: call it the Locke Center for Theology, hang a portrait of Rageboy on the home page, and accept the check with a smile.

But Margaret and Trevor outvote me. . . . .

VegID

Did you ever get to the grocery store and realize that you're not sure exactly what the vegetable on your shopping list looks like? Or do you know what it should look like, but you’re not sure that the article in front of you constites an edible example of the species? This happens to me often enough that I have a proposal for Eric. Instead of trying to build up an interface for the digital identification of humans, who are—let’s face it—complicated creatures, highly resistant to change, why not start with vegetable ID?

Think of the advantages. On the coding side, vegetables won’t insist on their anonymity. They don’t know they have anonymity. Maybe they don’t even want it. There is a relatively limited number of vegetable names, so there aren’t as many identities to worry about. And supermarkets have already done the heavy lifting of assigning numerical and bar codes to these healthful snacks.

On the consumer side, VegID would save you from that embarrassing situation when you know you have to bring home some Boston lettuce, but you don’t see the appropriate tags under the lettuce bins, and you’re not certain just which characteristics make for the true Bostonian Boston lettuce. Just pull out your laptop computer, attach your USB or Firewire ID scanner, and hey! presto, you’ll know for sure whether that’s romaine or raddichio.

Now, back to less important things. Eric, when this takes off, I’ll send along my consulting bill.

Type Check-In

Some notable new designs emanating from diligent designers this week: From DincType, a shiny new interface complete with pop-up menu and two script faces, Thousand Lies and Thousand Oceans (at midday today, the PC version of “Oceans” wasn’t there, and the Mac version had a path error that rendered the lower-case “o” solid—but Diane is onto it and these will surely be fixed soon, if not already by now). And Manfred Klein offers more birds, but also a strong text face, MKLatino Plain. These are the only new designs I’ve seen today. . . .

Listen Up

I haven’t seen anyone in the usual gang noting this, so I’ll point to the full-page ad in this morning’s New York Times that reproduces this column by Wendell Berry, from the magazine Orion (someone tell them to can the useless entry screen, please).

Can anyone clarify why it is that a state as (presumably) committed to democracy and the rule of a law before which all parties stand equal, is explicitly repudiating any obligation to any international decision-making body, including particulary the International Court? If the U.S. were a single powerful man among a number of other, relatively weaker neighbors, and he expressed and followed through on an intent to do whatever he wanted in the name of protecting what he (alone) took to be his well-being, regardless of the interpersonal laws, to the point of seeking out and inflicting mayhem on fellow-citizens he suspected of anticipating harming him, wouldn’t most observers excoriate that man as a dangerous tyrant? Would you tend to love and respect that man, or fear, mistrust, and loathe him?

Where have you gone, Thomas Jefferson? A nation turns its frightened eyes to you. . . .

Indeed, I tremble for this country when I reflect that God is just, and that God’s justice cannot sleep forever.

Marital Communication

Margaret: “Look at that! You and Halley and Gary!”

AKMA (thinking, “What about me and Halley and Gary?”): “Hunh?”

Margaret: “There! All together!”

AKMA (thinking, “Is this one of Gary’s answering-machine gimmicks?”): “Hunh?”

Margaret: “It’s a picture! You and Halley and Gary!”

AKMA (thinking, “I’ve visited Halley a couple of times, but never together with Gary. He must have been photoshopping again.”): “Oh.”

Margaret: “That is his name, isn’t it? ‘Euan’?”

AKMA: “Oh-h-h-h-h—Euan, Halley and Gary. . . yeah. . . .”

Uh-Oh

Did you love this as much as I did? Microsoft observes,

“The popularization of the open-source movement continues to pose a significant challenge to the company's business model. . . . To the extent the open-source model gains increasing market acceptance, sales of the company's products may decline, the company may have to reduce the prices it charges for its products, and revenues and operating margins may consequently decline.”

Oh, no! What shall we do?

Yes, it’s an SEC filing, so it’s not as dramatic as if they were telling a Congressional committee that “something must be done about the Open Source menace, or we’l have to change our business model and maybe even lower prices!” But it does feel good to know that Redmond is capable of reading handwriting when it miraculously appears on a wall before their eyes.

(Did I say I was pleased for Dorothea? Just checking.)

How About This?

Why don’t we settle this in the good, old-fashioned way? Let’s put George II and Saddam in a grassy field surrounded by cheering spectators. No weapons—just bare knuckles (or gloves, I suppose). If Saddam knocks George out, the US leaves the Gulf and we let the inspectors do the work that the UN has commissioned them to do, without browbeating the UN to start a war that only the US wants to start. If George wins, Saddam steps down and the UN oversees a peaceful transition to a new, hypothetically-democratic regime. No more than two people get injured this way (unless they start rioting in Oakland), and it makes about as much sense as a war. George looks to me as though he’s in better shape.

But On The Other Hand

Kevin may be wrong about Roger Scruton, but he’ way right about Mark Nadel’s essay on “Questioning the Economic Justification for (and thus Constitutionality of) Copyright Law's Prohibition Against Unauthorized Copying”—at least, the first few pages are spot-on. Now I'll go back and read the rest. Thanks, Kevin!

DRMA:"Criss-Cross" by Miles Davis & Thelonious Monk .

Oddments

I was about to call in the LazyBlawg about our copyright/license problem at the Disseminary, but a student’s husband has shown an interest in looking into our problem. At this point, we have a referral from a Northwestern professor, an inquiry from a student’s husband, and some undefined possibilities. I’d still love to square this away online with people who already see what we’ looking toward, but we’ll see how the latest round of prospects shapes up.

This morning I was intrigued by a report that North Korea claimed the same prerogative to pre-emptive self-defense against the U.S. that the U.S. is presently claiming against Iraq. David Weinberger, awake one time zone earlier than I, beat me to blogging it, and this way he attracted all the attendant flaming. Still, I wonder who decides which nation’s pre-emptive strike is legitimate and whose isn’t. Even if the UN were to intervene by speaking in favor of the Iraq invasion and against a strike in Korea, do the relevant decision-makers want simply to ascribe this authority to the UN? If the UN doesn’t endorse the invasion of Iraq, will the U.S. government simply say, “Oh well, then, I suppose that’s all for now”? Pre-emptive war may not make the world less safe, as David wonders, but it certainly exposes how vulnerable we are to shabby excuses for war.

And Kevin invited me to comment on Roger Scruton’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua in the New Criterion, “Why I Became a Conservative.” I disagree with the most important point of the article (to the extent that it has a point other than narrating a romantic Bildungsartikel of Scruton’s coming to the Burkean light): that is, that the only alternative to the brand of leftist thought that Scruton rejects is the brand of conservatism that he endorses.

If he were right—if we faced a binary choice between banal libertinism and sensible, prudent conservatism—I might still hang with the more interesting libertines than with sensible people who sound as smug as Scruton. But a moment’s reflection should remind readers that their worlds aren’t populated solely by the scruffy soi-disant anarchists and the erudite, sophisticated conservatives whom Scruton describes; there are lots of sorts of “leftists” and “conservatives,” some crass and callow, some venal, some outright vicious, some thoughtful and perhaps even insightful. On both sides.

But the kicker here, again, is the assumption that whoever does not gather with Scruton scatters with Foucault (for whom Scruton seems to have an overdetermined revulsion). Scruton foregrounds his own deep and varied studies, but never hints that anyone with whom he disagrees is anything but a shrill ideologue. Since this makes me a shrill ideologue, or at best the pathetic dupe of a decadent deconstructive anti-philosophy, no one has any reason to listen to me; still, in my pitiable condition, I tend not to rely on the intellectual depth of someone who characterizes another academic as another’s academic publication as “satanic mendacity,” “the old nominalist sleight of hand that was surely invented by the Father of Lies,” rather than introducing a single, even a flimsy, argument against the book’s thesis. Scruton may well be a better man than Foucault, but one would be hard-pressed to make such a case on the basis of his self-presentation here. This doesn’t even rise to the level of an ad hominem attack; if Scruton wanted to say, plainly, “How can one rely on the judgment of a man [Foucault] from whose sexual practises most people recoil?” he could at least make a sort of a case. Instead, he treats Foucault’s sexuality and death from AIDS as a self-evident proof that his opponent was of no intellectual importance.

Most important, though, I think it may be possible to show the respect for tradition that Scruton cherishes without adopting a shallow, self-centered nihilistic egoism (or resolving one’s philosophical conflicts by name-calling). The binary choice that Scruton offers is too facile, and by posing the alternatives so simplistically, he invites us to benchmark the depth of his alternative at the same level as the public rhetoric with which he expresses his ideas.

My hermeneutics oblige me to give the strongest possible account of Scruton’s wisdom and intelligence—so I’l change the subject and suggest that interested readers opt not for glib fleers, but that they follow the insightful Doc Searls’s Law, “It’s more complicated than it appears.” When we acknowledge the truths that Burke and Foucault were getting at, if we’re not still satisfied with either of the alternatives they propound, may we please discuss our dissatisfactions in lucid arguments, rather than these embarrassing smears?

DRMA: “Get Off This,” by Cracker; “Summertime,” by the Reivers; “Hit Parade,” by the Beautiful South; "History Never Repeats" by Split Enz; "Paper Sun" by Traffic; "Celestine" by Kirsty MacColl; "Young Offender" by the Pet Shop Boys; "Spirit In The Sky" by Norman Greenbaum; "You've Got A Friend" by Housemartins; "Somebody Bigger than You or I" by Marion Williams; "Deep Elem Blues" by the Grateful Dead; "Dire Wolf" by the Grateful Dead; "Infamous Angel" by Iris Dement.

Non-New Type

I don’t think there’s anything new of Lutz Baar’s on the web, but his non-commercial type is available in a couple of out-of-the-way places, so you probably wouldn’t have just stumbled over the sites unless you are, as I, a first-rate typeface skinflint. His commercial faces include several popular and familiar faces, but he makes available several characteristic faces through what looks like an Anthroposophy site. I’ll demur at the theology, but I warmly approve of the typefaces: Sophia, Antropos, Philo, Metanoia, and several other handsome designs. Note that these are not free; if you use and keep them, you’re asked to make a $10 donation to a charitable cause.

Then at the site of the graphics house he and his son operate, you can download Miraculus and Miraculus Oblique. The body copy indicates that these are free for commercial use.

DRMA: "Garageland" by the Clash; "Blue in Green" by Miles Davis; "Legalize It" by Peter Tosh.

Late to the Party

I’ve been too busy moping, then pulling myself out of it, to congratulate Dorothea on her spectacular news. This path seems so remarkable a connection with Dorothea’s gifts and interests that I cannot but believe it will lead her to a most rewarding career. Hearty congratulations, and three cheers, Dorothea!

DRMA: "Whatever It Takes" by Sinéad Lohan; "Theme from Twin Peaks" by Angelo Badalamenti; "Disappear" by R.E.M..

Light Dawns

For many, many reasons—especially including the lovely, encouraging messages my cyberkinfolk have left for me—today has gone better, and felt lighter, than the last couple of days.

For one thing, I did get a lot of sweet and generous messages, all of them estimating favorably the likelihood that we’ll encounter a positive outcome from present disappointing experience. Y’all are so smart, how can I doubt that you’re right?

Then too, I was invited to serve on a panel at the annual biblical scholars’ wing-ding, which was a gratifying inflation to my ego. And a friend who chairs another section encouraged me to propose a presentation on hermeneutics for his session. It’s a good proposal, and he’s predisposed to like my stuff, so there’s a reasonable chance that I’ll be two-timing the conference.

And this afternoon, I was invited down to a class at McCormick Seminary, a Presbyterian school down in Alex Golub’s ’hood, where they were using one of my books for a course on “Thinking Biblically” (this wasn’t the postmodernism book that some of you frittered away idle minutes with last year; it’s a revised version of my dissertation, published under the title Making Sense of New Testament Theology). So the profs generated a little classroom controversy with my book, and then invited me to take the heat in person. The class was sharp and demanding, and they accepted my responses to their tough questions, even when I didn’t necessarily convince them. We spent about a half hour more than we were supposed to, but we could have gone on longer; they were inquisitive, and I was excited to talk with them, and we had a great time together. Times like that remind me why I got into the teaching racket in the first place.

Lesson: respect and intellectual engagement make me feel terrific, whereas numb uninterest and being treated as a disposable impediment in someone else’s factory make me feel weary and dispirited. So, how shall I maximize the extent to which I operate in a sphere that offers me the former and minimizes the latter?

Two Things

One, I’ve so far neglected to call attention to the site for Eric and Bryan’s new venture, SourceID. This isn’t as dramatic as Chris Pirillo’s promotional gesture (will probably be gone by the time you click here, but believe me, “sourceid.com” once appeared on this, er, location), but I don’t think Blogaria is ready for me to follow in Chris’ bare feet. Besides, it’s been done.

Second, Chank the Alphabetician released Rapscallion, a robust piratical typeface by guest designer Ryan Splint.

From Blue to Brown

I think I’ve graduated from a blue funk to a brown study. Is a brown study better? At least I’m not, for now, seeing red.

Breaking Late

I’m glad I did a heavy job of bloggery early today, for in the afternoon I had some unpleasant news that cast me in a bit of what they used to call a blue funk. I’m hoping tomorrow dawns cheerier.

Orthodoxy

Jonathon and Shelley are two of my favorite bloggers. I read them daily, learn from them constantly, disagree with them occasionally, and look forward to meeting them moderately soon.

I don’t know what this means: “orthodoxies are the enemy of free, creative thought.” I suppose it would help if “orthodoxy” were more explicitly defined; probably Jonathon and I just don’t use the word in the same ways, and would be arguing over a non-disagreement if I picked a fight at this point.

In a similar way, when Shelley observes that “There must be more subtle nuances to this issue then the black and white pronouncements of ‘copyright is evil’, ‘artists wanting to maintain control of their work are stealing from the public domain’, and ‘creative control suppresses free speech.’ ” A while back Aaron Swartz, himself a brilliant if exuberant guy, made the claim that artists who would withhold their works from the public domain are the real pirates, or something to that effect. I haven’t heard a groundswell of support for that claim, though perhaps Jonathon and Shelley have gotten emails defending Aaron’s position. I certainly don’t support abolishing copyright laws altogether—merely respecting the extent to which they were written as, and remain, limited monopolies granted for a particular purpose.

May we together try to help usher in the more nuanced phase of the discussion, though, by agreeing to discuss one or two key points of actual disagreement? For example, for what duration should writers (et al.) who want to retain copyright to their works have the limited monopoly to determine the conditions under which (apart from “fair use”) these works are distributed? If we work on this topic, we can avoid red herrings about the piracy, since the topic itself stipulates that we’re not talking bout imposing public-domain distribution on someone who wants to retain customary authorial prerogatives, but about how long those prerogatives last.

No, Wait, Not Exactly

I think I went awry when I suggested that The Tutor and I have taken different roads, high and low. More to the point, we seem to walk by very similar paths, perhaps even the same one. Both of us repudiate the notion that a single, manifest, undeniable point of orientation guides human steps. Both of us forge ahead naytheless—the Tutor in the name of “art, or giving, or solidarity,” and I in the confidence that where my travelling-companion discerns there abides a fullness and subtlety that escapes my capacity to define: an art and a giving and a solidarity.

This makes a difference in how I account for “authority,” but I have to write some letters and reconcile some course schedules and other administrative joys before I can afford the time to spell out what I’m aiming at.

Tutoring on Authority

The Tutor has not waited for me to answer his inquiry, but has promulgated a fine and fierce balestra of thought about authority. It’s too late in the evening for me to say anything for which I might be held accountable later—especially when Candida Cruikshanks heads the accounting firm—but I’ll presume to respond to several of his enticements.

The Tutor plays on the bow that describes an arc between “authority” and “authenticity.” The former, in this composition, constitutes a coercive exercise of suasion; the latter, to an equivocal discourse that insulates individuals from the significance of their actions by interposing the non-conducting barrier of “preference,” “lifestyle,” and freedom of self-expression. A plague emanates from each of these charnel-houses of truth! The Tutor and I both, I think, aspire to something more durable and bracing than fashion, more liberating, deeper, than manipulated conformity.

The Tutor takes the lofty road, from which one can clearly perceive heaven’s emptiness. His path leads by way of satire to an ideal short of God, but greater than any present sign of human attainment. Certainly his goal transcends the transactions that boil off our freedom to leave us with consumer choice, or that exercise naked brutality to impose one will on others’ lives (or that imposes death on any who bend not the knee).

I travel by a different, lower route, from which I can’t see clearly enough to deny God. I cannot shake the conviction that I have glimpsed the City toward which I’m bound, faintly, afar off; I’ve heard about it from reliable witnesses, have occasionally observed the traces of its influence on the affairs of my temporary habitat.

On this road (not a high road at all!), “authority” doesn’t rightly signify the capacity to impose one’s demands on others, but signifies the effect of truth on life.

But now I’ve ventured too far past my bedtime, I hope that tomorrow I won’t wince at what I said tonight! (Before I sign off, though, I should own up that my dissertation draws on Swift, but I didn’t really write my dissertation on him. Such a thesis would have been a good deal more interesting, probably.)

More, Quickly

This being the beginning of the month, a number of type distributors have released new designs. Harold Lohner, who always updates monthly, released a handsome Roberta and a dramatic (if hard-to-use) Onion. I daresay that if you find a use for Onion, it will be the only typeface suited for the job. Manfred Klein this week offers more picture collections, no typefaces. Daniel X at fontor.com offers not the eagerly-anticipated Octane, but another handwritten face, Scribblebear. Nate Piekos’s comics script Mouth Breather presumably evokes a character’s mania; probably not ideal for business memos.

Then, I didn’t figure Chris Corrigan for an admirer of John Henry Newman, but then one of the joys of getting acquainted with people comes when they falsify the quick assumptions one makes based on first impressions. I think I wouldn’t call Newman “a man in search of trouble,” but he would not quail at trouble if it lay between him and the truth. Poignantly, Newman’s life discloses just ho wcomplicated this business of searching for truth can get. As Chris notes, Newman ranged from one end of a spectrum to the other, not quite satisfied by what passed for truth at any given point. At moments when the loudest-barking dogs demand simplicity of their truth, I remember appreciatively Newman’s willingness to fidget and tinker with the formulas he had been handed, in order to bring them closer to what he understood to be true—even when that alienated those whose support or protection he needed.

A saint closer to Jerome than Francis, he reminds me not to compromise rigor in the name of convenience. Nice to meet you at his picture, Chris!

Children and Life and Death

We’re deeply relieved in Evanston to read that Ruairie has taken a turn for the better (prayers for this bearer of a most Irish name were offered at St. Brigid’s Day Mass, which probably amplified their effectiveness). We'll sleep better knowing that, although since Pippa’s having sleeping problems these days—nightmares and crying jags, predictable age-transition issues, missing Nate and Jennifer (J. went back to school yesterday, and Pip misses her badly)—“sleeping better” adds only incrementally to the scant hours we’ve been getting. We manage with diminished sleep and thank God that she’s doing okay, that she can talk to us about her fears and frustrations, that her brothers are okay, that we have the chance to help out other folks, that Michael and Leona and all their kids are hanging on and looking better every day; and we pray that all continue to hang on and get better, a littl ebetter all the time.

And of course we grieved that seven brave explorers died over Texas. Grieved, too, that the cultural attention of a vast nation can’t connect the dots that lie in Texas, British Columbia, Zimbabwe, and then Afghanistan, the Gaza strip, Iraq, Jerusalem, and lower Manhattan. If we fix our attention on only one or two of these sites—understandably, given a greater proclivity to tune into that which touches us more nearly—we miss the perspective that might enable us to make plans with a view to the fullness of our humanity.

But then, a fully humane view of the world doesn’t lend itself to simplistic accounts of moral clarity (from anyone on any side), doesn’t make for positive public relations on behalf of a war relatively few people are eager to fight, doesn’t fit the parochial confines of a jingoistic spirit, doesn’t always endorse what someone’s gut wants to do.