narrative landscape

My Top Albums of 2006 (pt 3 of 3)

2006-12-11T22:25:00.000-08:00

Down to the final four. And so here they are.

#4: Gillian Welch - Hell Among the Yearlings

Well, I didn't say I couldn't have more than one. Darker and older than Time (the Revelator), this is Gillian at her best, singing songs with names like "The Devil Had a Hold of Me," "Whiskey Girl," "My Morphine," and "I'm Not Afraid to Die." If she had been born thirty years earlier, we be watching movies about her instead of June Carter.

#3: Margot & The Nuclear So & So's - The Dust of Retreat

I found Margot just browsing through emusic one day, and have been listening to their album ever since. Named after a Wes Anderson character, the word I've seen used most often to describe their sound is "chamber pop." They themselves call it "scarf rock." I would call it well crafted and complex songs with literate and sharp songwriting. It's a great album, and it's their debut. Definitely a band to keep an eye on.

#2: My Morning Jacket - Z

Reverb heavy pop/rock. What sets MMJ apart is their totally unique sound, effortless passion and Jim James' outstanding voice. I've got some of their older stuff off of emusic, but for this one you're going to need to head over to iTunes. Absolutely beautiful music. Why they aren't on the radio is beyond me.

#1 Sufjan Stevens - Live at Lee's Palace, Toronto, 16 Nov. 2004

Like I said, no one said I couldn't have more than one. I love Sufjan's albums, but somehow this captures him better for me. The sound is great, the crowd engaged but quiet, and he plays songs off of all three of his major albums: Seven Swans, Michigan and Illinois. Highlights: "50 States," which has this great line: "Go to New Hampshire, Missouri too--it's not Virgina, but it'll do"; a subdued version of "Chicago," and an essentially perfect rendition of "Romulous," which is my personal candidate for most underrated Sufjan song ever. This is the album that's kept me company more than any other this year--it's now nearly an old friend, and it's also a free download available here.

My Top Albums of 2006 (pt 2 of 3)

2006-12-09T08:46:00.000-08:00

Continuing to post my favorite new (to me) albums of 2006, here's a group of four more-again, in no particular order.

Joseph Arthur - Nuclear Daydream

I first heard about Arthur reading this post on Jeremy Huggins' blog. Seeing that his new album was available for a couple of bucks on emusic, I took the recommendation and downloaded it. I've always really enjoyed singer/songwriter kind of guys, and Arthur manages to be both a smart and skilled writer as well as musician. Read Jeremy's post for more info. I've really enjoyed the album--probably have connected with its lyrical content more than anything else I've heard this year. Hear Arthur's music here, and do yourself a favor and download his album.

Josh Rouse - 1972

All Josh does is make smart and polished acoustic pop. A little too sweet for continual listening, but great in small doses. Music your wife will like. Nashville is probably a better album to start with, but I found that one in 2005, so it wasn't eligible.

Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker

If I had found Ryan earlier in the year he'd be part of my top four. Amazing. Definitely the artist I'm most excited about getting into in the coming year. Alt-country singer-songwriter, sort of a modern day Gram Parsons, but with a bit more edge. You can download a free Ryan Adams concert here.

Sufjan Stevens-Avalanche

The king of the indie pop just keeps on producing. This is an album of b-sides from Illinois that holds together well in its own right. If you haven't heard Sufjan yet, what're you waiting for? Join emusic now and get Michigan or Illinois. Seeing him live in St. Louis in September was definitely a highlight of the fall. You can download basically that same show performed a few days later in New York right here. Oh, and all the cool kids call him "Soof-jan."

My Top Albums of 2006 (pt 1 of 3)

2006-12-04T21:18:00.000-08:00

My take on the whole "Top Albums" concept is a little different than what you'll see on most blogs. I guess I'm emphasizing the "my" part. Not all of these albums were released in the past year--actually most of them weren't. Essentially what I did was go into iTunes, set up a playlist to include all the music I've added since 12/31/05 and then chose those albums which I've really enjoyed over the last year, since discovering them. In other words, they're my top music purchases (or downloads) of the past year. These are the albums that I've found in the last twelve months that have shaped my soundtrack for the year as I've played them in the car, at home and in the library--basically anywhere I use my iPod, which is just about everywhere. It's fun for me to look back and remember all this great music I've been able to find--music gives me a great deal of pleasure and is one of the non-chemical substances I rely on to make it through the pressures of the day-to-day. All of these bands are great--maybe you'll find one of your top albums of 2007 here.

I'll post the albums in three groups, saving my top four albums for the last post. Beyond that, there's not really any sense in ranking them, so I'll just list them in alphabetical order.

Antony and the Johnsons-I Am a Bird Now

I found Antony on Emusic off of a "best of" list for 2005 and quickly fell in love with his passionate and well crafted songs. Most of his music is piano based, though he does use a band as well for a lot of his songs. Antony, who is a great, poetic songwriter, sings in a high falsetto voice that I'm sure is off putting for a lot people, but I think it's really beautiful. If you've heard Rufus Wainwright, you have a pretty good sense of the kind of music Antony performs. Like Wainwright, Antony is also a homosexual. Fine singer and songwriter, though. You can sample his music here, and read his wikipedia article here.

Bob Dylan-Modern Times

Bob. What can I say. Dylan's been my favorite musician for about eight years (Blonde on Blonde-greatest album of the 20th century), so I obviously had to get Modern Times the day it came out. I have to say that so far I don't like it as much as either Time Out of Mind or Love and Theft, though it does continue to grow on me. "Spirit on the Water" is a great track. If you haven't heard Bob Dylan, I can't really explain him to you in a blog post. I'm also not sure where you can go to hear free tracks of his music. Sorry.

Gillian Welch-Time (The Revelator)

I first heard Gillian on A Prairie Home Companion, singing sad songs with an acoustic guitar in a low, somber, understated voice that got under my skin. I finally got around to downloading some (well, all) of her albums this year and am now kicking myself for waiting so long. Until this year, Emmylou Harris was my unquestioned favorite female vocalist. It's neck and neck now. If you like good country music at all, you need to hear this voice. Unbelievable. You can hear (and buy) some of her music at her website. You can also read a New Yorker article on Gillian.

Great Lake Swimmers-Bodies & Minds

Another find off of that Emusic "best of" 2005 list. Amazingly haunting folk-rock. Kind of like the Cowboy Junkies but with a male lead singer (Tony Dekker, like Margot Timmons, also has a beautiful voice). Dekker is also a very solid writer who manages deep emotion without pretension. One reviewer said this about the album: "Tony Dekker's reliable, vaguely liturgical tenor still dominates the vast, barren landscapes of their sound, a fine, if sometimes frosty setting for his intimations about mundane tragedies and transcendental yearnings." Yeah. That sounds about right. You can hear the Great Lake Swimmers here.

One other thing--Antony, Gillian and Great Lake Swimmers can all be downloaded legally off of Emusic for a fraction of the cost of iTunes. If you're interested in a fifty song free trial, just leave a comment or email me and I can send you an invitation.

an old country

2006-10-15T21:25:00.000-07:00

This is a great essay by Roger Angell on how America has aged as a country since September 11th, 2001.

Mets 2, Redbirds 0

2006-10-12T21:15:00.000-07:00

After the events of yesterday involving first a possible terrorist strike in NY, then a tragic accident, then a tragic accident killing a major league baseball player with a wife and son, the game at Shea tonight seemed nearly anticlimatic. Some would say "baseball doesn't matter at a time like this" or something like that. Of course, that's both true and untrue. No more people died yesterday than any normal day recent American history. Baseball always "matters" (whatever that's supposed to mean) as much as you allow it, regardless of what's going on in the world around you. In any case, Lidle's death combined with the bleak October weather did cast a gray shadow over tonight's game.

Tom Glavine started for the Mets and he breezed through the first three Cardinals batters the same way he went through the rest of the lineup for the next six innings--efficiently, with little drama, and taking full advantage of the extra inches on the outside edge of the plate that the home plate umpire consistently offered him. Even at forty, Glavine is one of the top five or so pitchers of the last twenty years and the Cardinals, the umpire and the crowd all deferred to his experience and skill on this drizzily evening.

The Cardinals starter was Jeff Weaver, a stork-like lanky right hander with curly blond hair pouring out of his red cap and an intense, pacing style on the mound in between pitches. After starting the season in a particularly dreadful manner with the Angels this spring, Jeff was eventually released after being outpitched by his little brother Jered, who is essentially what Jeff Weaver was six years ago--young, talented and highly desired. The Cardinals general manager, Walt Jocketty, who has made a career of snapping up undervalued (mostly veteran) players discarded by other, more hasty teams leaped at the opportunity to sign the elder Weaver, who proceeded to pitch only marginally better for the Cardinals than he had for the Angels. However, in this Cardinal season, marginally better than terrible meant that Weaver was better than two-fifths of the St. Louis staff and that's how found himself starting Game 1 of the NLDS against the San Diego Padres. In that game Weaver pitched in and out of trouble, taking advantage of the weaker Padre hitters and an early Pujols homerun to earn the win by pitching five scoreless innings. Tonight, Weaver was much better, pitching what was probably his best game of the year, limiting the Mets to only one hit through five innings on good location and movement on his fastball and consistently staying ahead of hitters due to the generous strike zone. Then, in his third pass through the heart of the powerful New York lineup, Weaver gave the restless Shea crowd exactly what they had waited for: a scratch hit for Paul Lo Duca and then a mistake fastball to Carlos Beltran on a 2-2 count that burst the nervous knot that had formed in the stomachs of about 50,000 Mets fans and resulted in dancing, cheers and the occasional "Let's-Go-Mets" as Beltran rounded the bases.

The Cardinals accepted their loss meekly, the only real trouble coming in the eighth when Mota inexplicably walked David Eckstein on four pitches and then went 3-0 on Preston Wilson with Pujols on deck. After watching Mota throw two fastballs down the middle, Wilson fouled off a couple of good strikes and then decided that swinging at a ball out of the zone might have a better result, finally popping up ball four for the third out and leaving Albert Pujols and the Cardinals's last real shot at victory standing in the on deck circle.

Even though the Cardinals squandered a great opportunity for a 1-0 series lead tonight, they're a long way from being out of this series. The Mets took a must-win game for them tonight. If they lose to Weaver they then face Carpenter and might be down 2-0 going back to St. Louis. Now the Cardinals have a must win game--they simply must take advantage of Carpenter's starts in order to have a chance in this series. Hopefully they can get Maine out of the game by the fifth inning and have a shot at the Mets's bullpen before Wagner comes in, which apparently will only be in the ninth inning when the Mets's have a lead (Chad Bradford was warming up to face Pujols in the eighth when Wilson almost walked!). Let's go, Redbirds.

Cards-Padres roundup

2006-10-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

I'm currently watching the Detroit bullpen make the A's batters look silly instead of the Cards-Mets game that was cancelled due to rain. The Cardinals's first round was a pleasure to listen to (games 1-3, all at work) and watch (game 4). Both teams pitched well (the Cardinals's six runs in game 4 was the most either team scored in any game) and the games were generally quick, crisp and well-played. Most post-season series turn on one or two moments where one player comes up with a crucial hit or catch or pitch that redirects the course of a game and ultimately the series, and this one was no different. In my mind, the Cards-Padres series really came down to two moments, the first being in Game 1 when Albert Pujols faced Jake Peavy after Chris Duncan had doubled to start the fourth inning. Thus far, Peavy had cruised through the Cardinals lineup, which is admittedly this season nothing like the powerful series of hitters opposing pitchers had to tip toe through in 2004 and 2005.

Tigers's game update: A couple bloop hits and suddenly the A's aren't looking so silly anymore, as the bases are now loaded for the Big Hurt with two outs, though they are still down three runs. If I'm Jim Leyland I bring in Zumaya. But he still reads the dreaded manager's book, and that book says you stick with your closer in spots like these, even if you have a much better pitcher on the bench. So it's going to be up to Todd Jones. Never mind--Thomas pops up and it's over. I guess the book was right.

Back to Pujols and Peavy. Peavy's on a roll, Pujols is at the plate with a man on and he pops a pitch up behind home that Mike Piazza turns around to chase first in one direction, then another and finally misses it. At this point it became painfully obvious what was going to happen next. You almost felt sorry for Peavy. When the following pitch finally landed in deep center the score was 2-0 and Game 1 was essentially over--Carpenter shut down the Padres and the Cards grabbed the home field advantage they had thrown away over the last 10 days of the season.

The second crucial moment of series came in Game 4. After Carpenter had struggled through an uncharacteristically wild inning, giving up two runs, the Cardinals suddenly faced a daunting problem--their ace was seemingly off his game and they trailed early in a game they had to win in order to avoid traveling back to San Diego and starting Jeff Weaver on three days rest against the Padres's ace in a decisive fifth game. And so, after loading the bases with two outs in the bottom of the first, Ronnie Belliard stepped in. In late July the Cardinals had dealt Hector Luna for Belliard because the ManRam lookalike was an identical player to Luna expect for being older, slower, and far more expensive and thus was well-suited for "clutch" situations like the one he now found himself in. Not surprisingly, Belliard blooped a two run base hit, tying the game and apparently also restoring Chris Carpenter's command, as the Cardinal ace returned to reel off six scoreless innings. This gave the Cardinals enough time to later execute a scoring swinging and squeeze bunt in succession, thus plating two runs and stretching their lead to four on two hits that together totalled about thirty feet. Somehow, Tim McCarver refrained from using the term "smallball" to describe the Cardinals's combination of skill and luck. Everyone watching was grateful.

It's likely the the Mets-Cards Series will turn on similar moments. Here's hoping we play well enough for Albert Pujols to be the one who determines what happens in those moments. I know, I know this is a shadow of the team that fell short of a World Series championship the last two years. But that won't keep me from pacing and yelling in front of the TV for the next week. Go Cards! Why not? It may as well be our year.

Who's afraid of metanarratives?

2006-09-27T13:49:00.000-07:00

This past spring I wrote an extended paper discussing the importance of a controlling narrative in the formation of the human person and how Moses sets up the narrative of the exodus as the controlling narrative for the people in Israel in his instruction to them in the book of Deuteronomy. I read a lot of Michael Polanyi in developing my argument, but I'm now realizing that it would have also have been helpful to interact with Jean-Francois Lyotard. After commenting that the definition of postmodernism is "incredulity toward metanarratives" in his "Postmodern Condition," he later writes (15),

This breaking up of the grand Narratives...leads to what some authors analyze in terms of the dissolution of the social bond and the disintegration of social aggregates into a mass of individual atoms thrown into the absurdity of Brownian motion. Nothing of the kind is happening: this point of view, it seems to me, is haunted by the paradisaic representation of a lost "organic" society...There is no need to resort to some fiction of social origins to establish that language games are the minimum relation required for society to exist: even before he is born, if only by the name he is given, the human child is already positioned as the referent in the story recounted by those around him, in relation to which he will inevitably chart his course.

What Lyotard seems to be arguing is that even though postmoderns do act as those who are suspicious of controlling narratives, it remains an inescapable part of being human that we are shaped and conditioned by those stories into which we are born and we eventually accept as our own. Incredulity is not the same as separation.

Crabs and fish

2006-08-29T23:32:00.000-07:00

I can feel the summer waning--fall classes start on Thursday. So, a poem for summer. I'm posting this because I miss poetry and don't know how to get back into that world, and this is the best I can do-post old poems on my blog.

Crabs and fish

We caught crabs the way the Indians who first called
the river Rappahannock must have—two boys, a piece of meat on a string,
one long-handled net. You had to be careful
of your shadow. Crabs could see you coming.

When we snared one, we danced; blue shelled crab
trapped on the pier under the net, scuttling sideways,
in circles, jagged pincers snapping at our toes.
You had to grab hard from behind. You couldn’t let go.

When I was seven, and James five, Gramps took
us to the middle of the river to teach us to fish.
Handling the blind and slippery worms, he showed us
how to stitch the hook through one end and then the other.

Sunday mornings at the river were the only times
we didn’t go to church. It wasn’t even mentioned.
During summer, the boat’s metal bottom burned our bare feet.
If the fish weren’t biting, Gramps would spend hours

sitting with one foot hanging over the side, leaning
forward, right hand pulling the line, trying to explain
how to tell, with your lead sinker, oyster bottom from mud.
I didn’t really know. Sometimes I just pretended.

who's afraid of postmodernism? (pt ii)

2006-08-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

Click here for my first post on this book.

James Smith opens the introduction to Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? by attempting to place himself (as many writers do on various topics) in the middle of what he sees as two opposing evangelical perspectives on post-modernism: critique (Smith names Carson, Colson and Erickson as proponents of this view) and unquestioning acceptance (here he names McLaren and Webber). Rather, Smith asserts that he intends to employ a "Schaefferian strategy," meaning that he plans to consider postmodernism as a philosophical system rather than cultural reality, and to argue his case in popular terms as much as possible. It also means, it appears, that Smith intends to offer an appreiciative critique of postmodern philosophy--to weigh it carefully and consider whether parts of it at least might be of use to the church instead of dismissing it all out of hand or accepting it all without question.

I haven't read enough of Carson or McLaren on the topic of PM to evaluate whether Smith's analysis of their approachs to PM is on target. I imagine he's painting with a fairly broad brush here (probably intentionally so, his book hardly has the scope to go into the nuances of Carson or McLaren's positions) but in general I appreciate his sentiment. This Kuyperian approach (i.e. believing that all truth is God's truth and test PM to see carries any value before dismissing it) seems to me to be right on target. Of course it remains to be seen if Smith will indeed carry it out.

In order to consider the value of PM thought, Smith tells us here that he has structured his book around three statements by three of the most prominent PM philosophers.

Derrida - "There is nothing outside the text (il n'y a pas hors-texte)"

Lyotard - PM is "incredulity toward metanarratives"

Foucault - "Power is knowledge"

So far, so good. It seems best to interact with the words of PM guys themselves. I'll take his word that these three statements are representative of PM thought. At first glance these statements seem opposed to traditional Christian thought--challenging the authority of scripture, the nature of truth, etc. But Smith suggests that these statements, and the larger thoughts that stand behind them, may actually illuminate and encourage the church in its worship, theology and practice. Interesting. We'll have to see where this goes.

Smith then goes on to begin to link PM thought and "radical orthodoxy" - one of the new theological movements coming out of Britain, which has John Milbank at its center, advancing a compelling vision for the church that is worth quoting at length. Smith writes:

I want to advocate a shift from modern Christianity to a postmodern church, one akin to the paradigm shift experienced by Neo [in the Matrix]. My point here is confessional: as attested in the Apostles' Creed, I believe in the holy catholic church, and I believe that the very notion of the holy catholic church undoes the modern individualism that plagues contemporary evangelicalism. Indeed, we would do well to recover a much-maligned formula: "There is no salvation outside the church." This doesn't mean that a particular ecclesial body is the dispenser of grace or the arbiter of salvation; rather, there simply is no Christianity apart from the body of Christ, which is the church. The body is the New Testament's organic model of community that counters the modern emphasis on the individual. The church does not exist for me; my salvation is not primarily a matter of intellectual mastery or emotional satisfaction. The church is the site where God renews and transforms us--a place where the practices of being the body of Christ forms us into the image of the Son.

Thus far, I'm comfortable with where Smith seems to be headed. I'm not sure if postmodernism really has a lot to offer the church, but I trust him enough to hear him out. The best aspect of the book so far is Smith's tone (which is positive and hopeful without being naive) as well as his vision for the church, which resonates a great deal with my own ideas of what the church should be. Next up: Smith's chapter on Derrida's statement that "there is nothing outside the text." Any comments are welcome.

Today's sign of the apocalypse:

2006-08-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

Albert Pujols and his wife appear on Focus on the Family.

From the episode description:

"Like many kids in the Dominican Republic, Albert had a dream; and that dream was to play professional baseball. Today, you'll see a side of a major leaguer who despite fame, fortune, and MVP status remains true to his family, marriage, and his faith in Christ. Dr. James Dobson discusses things that matter with St. Louis Cardinal Slugger, Albert Pujols and his wife Dee Dee."

There's no incipient gnosticism in there, really. I promise.

All kidding aside, I think Albert's faith is great--and if you can put up with Dobson, the interview gives a good picture of Bert in his off the field life. I'd still love him even if he wasn't a believer, but it seems like Albert does do his best to honor God, etc. Can't complain about that.

who's afraid of postmodernism?

2006-08-18T21:44:00.000-07:00

Over the next week or so, I'm hoping to blog my way through James Smith's new book Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? My desire to read the book is really a convergence of several different interests. For one, James Smith is one of the American writers involved in a theological conversation termed Radical Orthodoxy -- something I've heard bits and pieces about but haven't really been able to look into in any detail. (Interesting sidenote--Ami and I both had classes with John Milbank's wife, Alison, in the literature department while they were teaching at Virginia. At the time I had no idea who her husband was. She was one of the kindest professors I knew at UVA).
In addition to this, I don't really feel that I've thought or read about postmodernism (in the philosophic, not cultural sense) in any kind of systematic way, though I have a great deal of interest in reading postmodern thinkers as I share their concern (because of Polanyi and Newbigin) regarding the enlightenment assumptions about epistemic certainty and "objective truth." So my purpose in reading Smith is to both gain some familiarity with Radical Orthodoxy (which I understand to be based on a fairly sympathetic reading of postmodern thinkers) and to begin to consider how postmodernism might converge with and help develop the epistemological convictions I've come to hold by reading Michael Polanyi and others.

Finally, Peter Leithart calls the book both "very fine" and "lucid," which makes it all the more appealing.

Israel's True King

2006-08-14T22:54:00.000-07:00

For friends/family that weren't able to attend the evening service on 8/13 at Providence, here's a link to download a mp3 of my sermon that evening on Mark 6:30-44. Right-click on the link and select "Save As" to download. If the link stops working, just let me know by leaving a comment.

Liturgical piety (and knowledge)

2006-08-14T15:58:00.000-07:00

Shookfoil recently posed this question to me: If you were going to write a book on Liturgical Piety, what chapters and
subjects would you include?

Though there are many directions one could go with such a book, there's no doubt in my mind what the topic of one of the first chapters should be: an epistemological framework which affirms the value and necessity of non-propositional knowledge--which is of course the primary kind of knowledge that one gains from participation in the church's liturgy.

In my mind, the reason why many evangelicals turn up their nose at a "high church" or structured liturgy is that it seems so meaningless from the perspective of their modernistic frameworks. Give me my forty-five minute sermon, thank you very much. But there's more to learning than information transfer. And so the problem is fundamentally epistemological--for a modernistic epistemology either dismisses completely or essentially minimizes those kinds of knowledge which are unarticulatable.

But the kind of knowledge formed from participation in a structured liturgy (that is, in a weekly service where the sacramental meal, not the preached word, is the center point of the service) is most fundamentally "skill" knowledge--a way-of-being in the world. In the liturgy, the posture and ritual actions and words we make and speak toward God and each other gradually come to inform and shape our posture and words and actions during the other parts of our lives. (This shaping process, in my mind, is what "liturgical piety" means). In this sense, liturgical knowledge is more similar in type to something like knowing how to ride a bike than to knowing that George Washington was the first president of the United States. And unless this type of knowledge is acknowledged and valued, there's not much point in talking about it.

An interesting book that seems to argue among many of these same lines: Worship As Meaning, by Graham Hughes.

Hezbollah, etc.

2006-08-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

It's good news whenever an armed conflict in the Middle East (or anywhere else) finally begins to wind down. Hopefully both sides will actually follow through with the cease fire that's been proposed. Of course it's difficult to imagine real lasting peace between Israel and the various groups that oppose their nation. Hopefully this pause in the fighting will last for a while.

However justified Israel may have felt in pursuing their invasion and bombing of Lebanon, it's hard for me see how an aggressive policy really helps their long term goals of peace and prosperity. In the short term Hezbollah may have been damaged, but in the long run they've probably been strengthened in their own, more sinister agenda, as this article argues. Not that I'm blaming Israel for defending itself and its citizens...though I wonder if there was a way for Israel to both effectively defend itself and not kill innocent Lebanese. The whole situation there (and with the Palestinians) is a very tangled web, and has little hope of unraveling without a real advance of the gospel in that part of the world. Indeed, I'm very confident in saying that it's not a problem America is going to solve anytime soon (or ever).

Preaching

2006-08-11T21:46:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of preparing my first "real" (i.e. non-classroom) sermon and realizing how conflicted my view of homiletics actually is.

I've been taught a certain way of preaching here at Covenant and I'm not even sure if it's a good way in general for scripture to be communicated, not to mention if it's a good way for me in particular to communicate scripture.

Turns out it's one thing to think you know what a passage means and another to articulate it.

Why blog?

2006-08-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

It’s a good question.

Paul Graham (British blogger) has a good answer:

I think what most bloggers are doing is thinking out loud.

It’s a little misleading to talk of “putting things into words,” because that implies the ideas come first. In fact, expressing thoughts creates them. And especially expressing thoughts to other people, even people you don’t know. So I think the reason many people like blogging is that they like the thinking it causes.

The relationship between ideas and words is an odd one, and perhaps isn’t possibly understood in any kind of complete way. But it does seem that there is a difference between an idea or image or memory that merely resides in our heads and one that is articulated in language. Blogging is just another avenue of that articulation.

New Cardinals

2006-08-11T21:24:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about intensely following a baseball team over a season is “getting to know” its players. Obviously I don’t really know any of the members of the St. Louis Cardinals…my relationship with them is based on their appearance, demeanor, radio descriptions, performance on the field, etc. That said, it’s always fun when there’s new year and new players to develop affection for. Some of my favorite new guys this year:

Chris Duncan–Sure, he’s the pitching coach’s son, but it’s always nice when Tony gives a young guy a legitimate shot and he performs well. Personally I think Young Dunc looks like a bumbling idiot most of the time on the field, with his height, build, thick gold chain, mighty Casey swing from the heels and running forward then back to catch a routine fly ball. But he’s a lovable kind of guy. And he’s got a real power stroke, something that’s always fun to watch.

Anthony Reyes–Probably my favorite young player. Talented, a little cocky and distinctive fashion. Actually the stockings are a little scary, what with the not so distant memories of the implosion of the last pitcher who pulled his red socks up his calves. But Reyes is fun to watch pitch, with good movement on his fastball and a great changeup. Here’s to hoping that TLR and old Dunc let him actually try to strike guys out once in a while.

Hector Luna–Oh wait…never mind.

Adam Wainwright–Descended from a long line of wagon makers, I’m just hoping Adam actually gets to throw that wicked breaking pitch in the first inning sometime next season. Tall, lanky, talented–if he gets a shot Wainwright could definitely be the best thing to come out of the J. D. Drew trade (although Marquis, King, Bigbie and Miles haven’t set the bar too high).

Jeff Weaver–I really want to like him, anyway. He’s got good stuff, which is more than can be said for half the Cardinals’ staff. Could be another great Jocketty trade. We’ll see in the next two months. The strikeouts against the Reds are encouraging.

New Cardinals I don’t have that much affection for:

Tyler Johnson–Blah. Another LOOGY for TLR to play with. Not much to see here.

John of the Incarnation–What an ugly swing. He’s better than I thought he’d be, but I didn’t think he’d very good. Actually pretty good defensively and better power than expected. If only the man took a walk once ever homestand or so.

Aaron Miles–I’ve had it with Tony’s obession with scrappy middle infielders who are slighty better players than he was at that age. If only Hector had gotten the playing time that Miles did. He’s obviously much better at pinch-hitting, just ask Brad Lidge.

Ricardo Rincon–Now that was a good investment.

Sidney Ponson–See Ricardo Rincon.

Scott Spezio–Again, better than I thought he would be. If we win the division and the Stros don’t make the playoffs, it might have to be traced back to the solo shot he hit off Lidge in July that led to Albert’s winning homer. The bright red soul patch on the other hand…that’s what’s keeping me from really liking the guy.

Liturgics

2006-08-11T21:21:00.000-07:00

In another life, I’m a father/husband who leads morning prayer with his family every day. I don’t think there’s any spiritual area I’d like to grow in more. In reality, I have no idea how to get to that place.

If I ever get to be that guy, the Reformed Liturgics Institute seems to be a great resource.

Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

2006-07-14T23:01:00.000-07:00

One book I neglected to include on my summer reading log was Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. If you operate in Christian circles, I'm sure this is a book you've heard about. My (mostly positive) review was just posted at Writers Read. In all, it's a great (though not unflawed) book--an especially helpful resource to work through with someone who's new to or curious about the faith.

Summer update

2006-07-12T18:21:00.000-07:00

My last two summers in St. Louis were dominated, in turn, by Greek and Hebrew--learning paradigms and vocabulary, translating, etc. The summer of 2006, in contrast, has mostly consisted of reading novels, chasing after our now-crawling and suddenly willful son, and lazy nights drinking/smoking in the deck or yard--sometimes accompanied by wife or dog or friends, sometimes alone, often with Mike Shannon and John Rooney in the background.

Reading list over the last six weeks or so:

A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean (Fly-fishing brothers)
Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy (Apocalyptic lapsed-catholic fantasy adventure story)
Embers, Sandor Marai (Hungarian translated into English)
The Last Best League, Jim Collins (Amateur summer Cape Cod baseball league)
Saint Maybe, Anne Tyler (Pseudo-spiritual family drama)
The Challenge of Jesus, N.T. Wright (historical context of Jesus)
Child of my Heart, Alice McDermott (Sad coming-of-age story)

All excellent books--I would recommend any of them, depending on your interests. The N.T. Wright book was especially enlightening--sort of a popular version of his Jesus and the Victory of God. Wright's arguments are compelling and helpful--he is a master of stripping away our cultural assumptions about Jesus and revealing his life, death and resurrection for the radical and climatic event in history that it was.

Believing and Belonging

2006-07-01T22:38:00.000-07:00

The project I most invested myself in this past semester was an idependent study focusing on the importance of narrative in the Christian life. The fruit of that study was a paper (called "Believing and Belonging") studying the ways in Moses uses the narrative of the exodus in the formation of the people of Israel in the book of Deuteronomy and then positing implications for how that pattern might inform the Church's use of its own narrative of redemption.

As Christians, we live in a community that is shaped by a story, and as we mature in the faith, we discover that our own story is a simply a chapter in the one we find in the scriptures. I am firmly convinced that to live as a follower of Christ in his world is to allow his story to pattern our lives as it shapes us in our participation in the body of Christ through our communal, sacramental and gathered worship.

The paper, which also relies heavily on the insights of Michael Polanyi, can be downloaded here. (Right-click on the link and click on "save as..." to download).

Edit: Apparently the link wasn't working earlier. I believe it is up and running now. If you're still having problems, leave a comment and I'll email it to you.

an easter narrative and the meaning of life

2006-04-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

Ami's out celebrating a friend's birthday over ice cream and I'm home with little boy sitting on the deck and enjoying the night air (the boy's in the bed). I should be reading 2 Kings.

Baseball's a couple of weeks into its season and so far hasn't been without drama or surprise. The Cardinals game on Sunday against the Reds was an instant classic--a great story of one player who just wouldn't let his team lose despite their best efforts to the contrary. I watched Juan-got-no-glove-or-bat err the game away with frustration, but of course he was just setting the stage for baseball's best hitting pitcher to get on base with a single up the middle so that baseball's best hitter could take one swing, throw his hands in the air, flip his bat and stutter step to first, watching his third homerun of the day curve just a few feet right of the left field foul pole and send everyone home happy. New life right out of the death of a ballgame, and on Easter no less. How 'bout that?

Studies continue to well and keep me busy, not that I'm complaining. There's something about constant hard work interrupted by one day of rest every seven days that's helpful and right.

My thesis paper is developing--there's four weeks to go and twelve pages are done, most of them not half bad.

Just finished a group exegetical paper on 2 Sam 11 (David and Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite) which is fascinating passage when you look at it closely, especially in the Hebrew. I'm sure I've spent 40+ hours on that chapter in the past week and I still get the feeling the surface is only being scratched. From a strictly literary point of view, I'm more and more convinced that the Hebrew Scriptures can go toe to toe with the best of Homer and Virgil and come out on top every time. Books by two Jewish scholars, Robert Alter and Meir Sternberg, have helped a me great deal and I recommend them highly ("Art of Bibical Narrative" and "Poetics of Biblical Narrative"). Alter's is more accessible.

Another pleasure: Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Alamanac" is now available as a daily podcast through itunes, which means I can listen to Garrison tell stories and read a poem every day on the way to school. That's a pretty good way to start the day, even if it is in the middle of the daily knucklehead St. Louis traffic jam.

The other day in my intro to counseling class our professor asked something like "how would you explain the meaning of life"? I couldn't think of a good summary at the time, but I was a little frustrated with the answers of my classmates, which were mostly of the "love God a lot" variety. I think I have an answer now: To enjoy God's good creation as much as possible all the days of my life and join with him in working for the renewal of all things, believing that all the best of what there is in this world is only a shadow of its reality in the new earth that is to come.

Season Preview

2006-04-03T15:22:00.000-07:00

In honor of opening day, I thought I'd post a few thoughts about each division.

American League East: For something like the last five years, the AL East has stacked up NY, Boston, Toronto, Baltimore and Tampa Bay. While there's been a fair amount of shakeup in the divison since last season, I don't really expect things to change this year. New York's lineup is overwhelmingly good, and Joe Torre isn't wasting his time with guys like Tony Womack. Obviously, there are a lot of questions about the rotation, but I'm guessing the starters will stay healthy enough to pull out the divison. Boston will challenge, but when Mark Loretta is your best hitting infielder, you know you're in trouble--the Red Sox will settle for the Wild Card (again). Toronto will be better, but not nearly as much better as spending $100 million should have made them. Baltimore and Tampa will be Baltimore and Tampa.

American League Central: Top to bottom, the best divison in baseball. It might be a year too early still, but my hunch is that the dynasty in Cleveland will begin this year. Hafner, Sizemore, Martinez, Peralta-that's a pretty good core, and there's enough pitching to get them to the divison title. Chicago will finish a close second and miss the playoffs-they're good, but this is a tough division and the White Sox bullpen, a strength last year, is looking like it may have a lot of question marks. The Twins will beat out the Tigers for third, and the Royals will be the worst team in the AL by a long shot.

American League West: Oakland looks solid in all aspects of the game, and their overall balance and superior starting pitching should be enough to win the division. The Angels are still a great team, but Vlad won't be able to carry the offense by himself this year. Texas will score a lot of runs and give up almost as many, and Seattle fans will enjoy watching Felix Hernandez imitate Doc Gooden (the last time a pitcher this young was this good) and not much else.

In the playoffs, Cleveland will beat Boston in 4, and Oakland will finally beat New York to set up an A's/Indians ALCS, which Oakland will win.

MVP: Travis Hafner
Cy Young: Barry Zito
ROY: Ian Kinsler

National League East: Honestly, I have no idea who will win the NL East. The Braves, Mets and Phillies will be close all year. Ultimately, if the Mets' pitchers stay healthy, I think they'll pull it out. Atlanta will finish second (missing their pitching coach) with the Wild Card, and the Phillies third. A Triple-A Florida team will beat out the gloriously mismanaged Nationals, who were better off when they were owned by no one.

National League Central: The easiest division race to call--unless Albert goes down, the Cards should cruise to another title here. The Brewers will beat out the Cubs and Stros for second, and Cincinnati will continue to evolve into the Texas Rangers of the National League. Pittsburgh will make Royals fans feel better about themselves.

National League West: Another crapshoot divison. I'll go with San Diego in a close one over LA and San Fran. The most exciting event in the NL west will be when Barry Bonds breaks Babe Ruth's record on the road and has objects thrown on the field at him. Probably needles. Arizona should have their own dynasty in a couple years but not in 2006. The Rockies will continue to hope that maybe, just maybe Jeff Francis and Aaron Cook will be a couple of guys who can pitch in Colorado. They will be disappointed.

Playoffs: Cardinals over the Braves, Mets over San Diego. In the NLCS, Pujols takes Wagner deep in game 7 to clinch the series. In the world series, Dan Haren and Kiko Calero pitch lights out, Mulder gets shelled and the A's win in six.

NL MVP: Albert Pujols
Cy Young: Jake Peavy
ROY: Prince Fielder

spring break update

2006-03-28T22:17:00.000-08:00

Spring Break always seems to arrive a little too late and fly by far too fast, leaving not much semester and a lot of work still to do.

My foremost project continues to be a thesis paper on the use of narrative in Deuteronomy. I've started writing it even though I'm not yet sure all the paths my arguments my travel down, because I've realized that I'm not the kind to perfectly outline my thoughts and then put them into prose. Somehow the paper writing process is the thing that frees me to think in new ways, in directions that I couldn't if I was still just reading and doing research. So the paper has begun.

The outline goes something like this so far:

Thesis: Our believing (i.e. acting, knowing) is shaped by our belonging (cf. Polanyi, PK)

A. Our Belonging = our worldview/tradition/fundamental assumptions imparted to us by our culture

B. Worldviews are narrative in structure/authoritative narratives shape our view of the world (cf. Wright, many others)

C. In Deut., Moses shapes the belonging and worldview of the people at least in part by use of the story of the Exodus. (this, as far as I can tell, is my original contribution)

1. By authoritatively telling it--i.e. give the authoritative version of the Exodus in summary statements
2. By setting the story of the Exodus as an authority:

A. to compel their ethical action
B. to compel their graditude
C. to shape their identity

3. By setting up ritual recitation and enactment of the story (Deut 6 & 26)

D. Conclusions for the church's use of its own narrative of deliverance?

the quest for certainty

2006-03-28T12:59:00.000-08:00

"After three centuries of a quest for, if not an assurance of, certainty we must contritely confess that we in the Western world have lived by nothing more substantial than hope, recognizing nevertheless that hope has always been rewarded by unexpected knowledge and that speech, made bold by hope, has always disclosed to us more than we could explicitly anticipate and than we can ever fully say."

--William Poteat reflecting on the epistemology of Michael Polanyi

Our knowledge of all things has always been uncertain--it has always been founded on hope. But hope does not put us to shame. Our words are fumblings towards a reality we can hardly conceive of or imagine, much less speak of with absolute authority. But hope does not put us to shame.

From the Sunday Times

2006-03-13T07:08:00.000-08:00

How Wikipedia might need to evolve in order to be a really useful resource.

Use statistical analysis to pick your NCAA bracket.

An early look at the field for the 2008 GOP nomination.

Another book on Jesus. (This one looks interesting, though).

Missing KMOX

2006-03-10T17:42:00.000-08:00

It's a well-known fact that people who have a hand or limb amputated often take a long time to adjust to the missing appendage--habitually using their bodies in ways that made sense when they were whole. Right now that's how I feel about a radio station.

For the past week I've been occasionally tuning my car's radio dial to 1120 AM, hoping to catch Mike Shannon in the middle of Cardinals' spring training game on KMOX. I know that these games aren't important, but I can't help but want to hear Mike's voice--more than anything, it's a sign of the season changing, the fact that spring is on its way, and though the games are meaningless, it's fun to hear the names of the unlikely players, the young and the old who might make the team based on a high batting average in March.

Although I hadn't been able to find Mike yet this spring, I didn't think much of it, just figured that I hadn't caught the games at the right time of day. But then, driving along the highway the other day I caught a billboard out of the corner of my eye that was probably put up precisely for Cardinals fans like me who turn to KMOX out of pure habit as they get in the car on warm nights. The billboard, of course, was an announcement/reminder of the radio station switch that the Cardinals had made over the winter. After 50 years or so of games broadcast on KMOX, the Cards are moving over to another network--a radio station bought by the team so that they can exclusively control the profits. On the face of it, this doesn't sound like a big deal--it's just a few digits down on the dial, just a couple twists of the fingers. But a summer without KMOX in St. Louis feels foreign to me, uncharted territory I have no desire to explore. I'm sure that my body will adjust, that sometime soon I'll scan the dial to 550 instead of 1120 without thinking twice about the action, but for the moment it just feels like I'm missing something important and don't know where it went.

Kolmarden Zoo

2006-03-10T14:56:00.000-08:00

Two stanzas from Kolmården Zoo, by Bill Coyle, a suprisingly powerful poem on the subject of death. From the March 2006 issue of Poetry.

Still, to teach children this is how things go
is one thing, to insist that it is good
is something else—it is to make a god
of an unsatisfactory status quo,

this vicious circle that the clock hands draw
and quarter, while the serpent bites its tail,
or eats the dust, or strikes at someone’s heel,
or winds up comprehended by a claw.

the gospel

2006-03-08T20:00:00.000-08:00

Growing up in a solidly evangelical Christian home, I always heard that the "gospel" that was talked about in the New Testament was something like "the good news that Jesus died on the cross for my sins." One of the largest shifts in my thinking since coming to seminary has been to realize that while my childhood definition might be the way that the "gospel" is defined in American evangelicalism, and is an essential part of the biblical definition, the way the New Testament talks about the gospel is actually more comprehensive than that.

There are a lot of perspectives out there on the New Perspective on Paul. I'm not sure what to think about the "movement" myself, and certainly don't have enough knowledge or training to come to any kind of definitive idea about it. I imagine that like most new biblical/theological ideas there are probably both positives and negatives, insights to learn from and theories to avoid. All that said, I have learned a great deal from many of the emphases of N. T. Wright, both from reading his book "Jesus and the Victory of God" for a class at Covenant, as well as from various articles that he's written.

As I've thought through these issues regarding the gospel and how its definition might be different from the idea I grew up with, one of the best essays I've read on the subject has been Wright's Paul's Gospel and Caesar's Empire. Wright's thesis is essentially that Paul's gospel is "the announcement that the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth is Israel's Messiah and the world's Lord" and that this gospel stands in direct opposition to Caesar's empire. While at first glance, this gospel might sound pretty similiar to my earlier definition, there are actually some pretty significant differences, as well as many different implications.

One major implication of Wright's redefinition of the gospel (and of course, it's not just Wright that is saying this) is that it moves the focus from the individual sinner being saved to the entire world being redeemed--an idea that impacts my life in many ways.

To take one small example, this refocusing breaks down the secular/sacred divide that plagues the lives of many Christians. If Jesus is "simply" the one who saves me from my sins, then it becomes debatable, in practice if not in theory, how much impact his salvation ought to have on the daily actions of my life. Obviously I ought to live a life of thankfulness, a life that is centered around acknowledging my dependence upon and need for him. But in practice, it's easy to see Jesus as the one who pays for my sins and opens the doors of heaven to me and yet does not have much to say about how I live. If the his law impacts my life at all, it's often in a moralistic way that merely serves to differintiate me from the surrounding world. Of course, I make this critique not as a outsider imagining the way evangelicals behave, but as one who lived this way for a long time. I should also add that I am not ashamed in the least of the way in which I grew but believing in Jesus. I both knew and loved him. I'm sure that I knew no less about theology then than I do now.

But if the "gospel" is the summons and announcement that the resurrected Jesus is the king of the world and lord of all things, then this sacred/secular divide totally breaks down. Jesus is lord of the world in precisely the same way that he is lord of my heart. My salvation is not just being cleansed from my sins, but it is demonstrated in my being part of a world that is being restored and transformed, a membership in the new humanity of the king who is ruling all things with wisdom and power. Obviously Jesus atoning on the cross for my sins is a part of this gospel, even an essential part, but it is never its comprehensive definition.

Ideas do matter, and the way that we define the gospel of Jesus Christ will inevitably impact the way we live as those who are baptized in his name. And this, I am becoming more and more convinced, is the heart of the gospel, that is, the good news that Christians are to announce to the world--that the risen Jesus is both Lord and Christ. In short, that Jesus is king, and the whole earth belongs to him.

New bands

2006-03-06T11:43:00.000-08:00

If you're a fan of iTunes and you like indie music, you might want check out emusic. Basically, it's just like iTunes except that the songs are only about 25 cents apiece instead of a dollar, and they mainly carry indie bands. If you send me an email or leave a comment, I can send you an invite and you'll get a 50 free downloads trial offer (with no strings attached) instead of the 25 free downloads that are advertised on the site.

A couple of the new bands I've gotten into:

My Morning Jacket - if you're a fan of current music and don't listen to the radio for everything, I'm sure you've heard of these guys. Z is one of the best albums I've heard in a while. I downloaded Tennessee Fire from emusic, and have really enjoyed that as well.

Modern Skirts - I heard about this band through the Paste Music podcast. Great energy and songwriting. Give the song "Pasadena" a listen and you'll be hooked.

Jose Gonzalez - Don't let the name fool you--he's a Swede. A Swede who sings beautiful acoustic folk songs in English.

Never Let Me Go

2006-03-03T13:08:00.000-08:00

oldSpeak, the online journal of The Rutherford Institute has again been kind enough to publish another of my review essays. The topic of this essay is Never Let Me Go, the new novel by Kazuo Ishiguro that explores questions regarding the ethics of human cloning. I highly recommend the book because it is first of all a very fine story and only within that context an ethical statement. You can read the review here.

My past essays for oldSpeak can be found here.

Acts, fantasy baseball, asking too many questions

2006-03-02T18:36:00.000-08:00

Not much posting this week, due to a couple projects for school and a fantasy baseball draft. One of the school projects was one of the hardest tests I've ever taken-a midterm on the book of Acts adminstered by Hans Bayer, Covenant's resident German professor (Now, granted, I was a poetry writing guy in college and never had organic chemistry or anything like that).

Over the last year, I've discovered that I just hate studying for tests and so have a hard time preparing for them, even when I have time blocked out beforehand. It just seems really tedious to try to guess what questions the professor is going to ask, then cram all that information in my brain so I can spit it out and then forget 90% of it over the next couple of weeks. I know this is the way that education is done for most people, but two years into a graduate degree, it's beginning to become very tiresome. Luckily, Bayer allows us to write an exegetical paper instead of taking the final for this class (Acts and Paul) and so I'm definitely going to go that route-I find the paper writing process far more helpful and interesting.

The fantasy draft was overseen by George, a good seminary friend who let me get in a long-standing keeper league that he runs. I'm excited about my team, it's led by Alex Rodriguez and Travis Hafner and includes future Cy Young winner Anthony Reyes.

The other school project this week was for Intro to Counseling. Basically we were required to interview three friends for an hour each about their life histories. The main thing I learned through this process was that I have a hard time with silence in a conversation. Instead of allowing the person talking to fill the silence on their own, I tend to quickly fill it with a question. Good to know.

believing and belonging

2006-02-24T23:56:00.000-08:00

Michael Polanyi, in Personal Knowledge, makes this claim:

Every mental process by which man surpasses the animals is rooted in the early apprenticeship by which the child acquires the idiom of its native community and eventually absorbs the whole cultural heritage to which it succeeds. Great pioneers may modify this idiom by their own efforts, but even their outlook will remain predominately determined by the time and place of their origin. Our believing is conditioned at its source by our belonging.

Rather than something to be avoided, Polanyi argues that this rootedness for our knowledge is a reality which we must embrace in order to come to any knowledge of the world. We are shaped by the community into which we are born, he says, and this is not a hindrance, but an essential aid to our understanding of reality.

The implications of all this for Deuteronomy are thus: Moses understands that the people of Israel will be shaped by the story of their community. He knows the believing of the new Israelite generation will be formed by their belonging to the community narrative to which they are a part. And so he places that narrative before them, not leaving that story to chance, but rather authoritatively crafting the story of Israel, the story that begins with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and continues into the house of slavery in Egypt and culminates in the mighty acts of Yahweh as he brings Israel out of the hands of their oppressors and into the intimate covenant relationship with himself. This is your story, Moses says to Israel. This is the belonging that must shape your believing. You did not leave Egypt because of your righteousness or your strength--but because you belonged to a larger story, one that stretches back to the beginning of the world, and it is this story that tells the true narrative of the world and your place within that larger frame. Your believing must be shaped always by your belonging--and this story is that to which you belong.

good reading

2006-02-22T20:33:00.000-08:00

Greg Orr, The Making of Poems--Greg was a professor of mine at UVA, and this is a great little essay that he wrote for NPR on poetry.

Jeffery Goldberg, The Believer--Interesting article published in my lastest hard copy of the New Yorker on Michael Gerson, an evangelical speech writer for George Bush. Though I don't agree with all of Gerson's politics, his life seems to be a wonderful example of some of the ways a Christian engaged in culture might well act. Some quotes:

Gerson knows that he is an enigma to the liberal
establishment of Washington. He is a churchgoing, anti-gay-marriage, pro-life supply-sider who believes absolutely in the corporeality of Jesus’ resurrection. He is also supremely loyal to an ideological President in a city that tends to grant only posthumous approbation to ideologues, particularly conservative ones. Yet among his role models he counts Martin Luther King, Jr., and the radical evangelical abolitionists of the nineteenth century, and his chief vocational preoccupation is the battle against infectious disease in Africa.

And Gerson at a presidential speech writer's dinner:

At a Welliver dinner, the remarks of ex-speechwriters tend toward carefully calibrated irreverence; current speechwriters aren’t expected to gripe or to disclose confidences. But at the 2002 event, Gerson spoke with immoderate earnestness. According to several people who attended, Safire asked Gerson to tell the group something it didn’t know about Bush. Gerson, in a quavering voice, responded with a story that left some of his audience nonplussed. He described a call that he got moments after Bush finished addressing a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001. Bush thanked Gerson for his work on the speech, to which Gerson replied, “Mr. President, this is why God wants you here.” Gerson then related Bush’s response, as evidence of his thoughtfulness. “The President said, ‘No, this is why God wants us here.’”

An uncomfortable silence filled the room, and then one of Bill Clinton’s speechwriters said, in a stage whisper, “God must really hate Al Gore."

Gina Ochsner, Thicker Than Water--One of the best short stories I've read in the New Yorker in the last year. Really worth reading.

church planting reflections

2006-02-21T11:37:00.000-08:00

I've taken down my MNA church planting reflections simply because I didn't want someone to read me out of context and feel as though I was saying things that I didn't mean. If you're someone who knows me and you want a copy of my reflections, feel free to leave a comment or email me (email link is in bottom of the sidebar).

church planting?

2006-02-18T23:08:00.000-08:00

Ami and I submitted ourselves this weekend to a readiness assessment seminar for church planting in the PCA. Overall, I felt like the weekend (really about 2 hours friday night and 6 on saturday) was going fine until we had our exit interview and discovered that the time the assessment folks had spent with us had led them to believe that we weren't cut out to be church planters. Without saying too much, this was a hard pill for me to swallow, especially because it was so unexpected and came right at the moment of most vulnerability. After about three hours of devastation, I think I'm beginning to move toward a more balanced perspective on the whole thing. Ultimately the information they had to make this kind of judgement was limited, and it's not definitive at all. This isn't the end of the world, and MNA doesn't really control how presbyteries and churches in the PCA choose to plant new churches. Who knows what God might have in store for us. MNA's opinion is only an opinion, and a very cursory one at that (which they would freely admit). But I won't pretend that it doesn't still hurt like hell.

little credo

2006-02-17T21:34:00.000-08:00

After meeting with my ind. study prof today, I think we're moving toward having a more definite idea of what my thesis will be. The broad question that I'd like to ask is how OT narrative works on us/is authoritative for us (us being the church) in non-propositional ways--especially employing Polanyi's ideas regarding tacit knowledge and Wright's play/act idea of Scripture that he discusses in New Testament People of God. The problem is, that question is potentially too broad, given that the paper is only 30 pages, and my own propensity to overstate my "insights" and deal too much with abstractions.

The tack that we came up with together is examining how the Genesis/Exodus narrative (primarily Exodus) is used in Deuteronomy to shape Israel in preparation for their life in the promised land and then build toward implications for the church today (hopefully bringing in Polanyi and Wright at that point). One of the texts that I'd like to look at in that study is Deut. 26:5-9, what some scholars call the "little credo".

Here the text in the ESV (with 26:1-4 added for context):

26:1 “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance and have taken possession of it and live in it, 2 you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from your land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket, and you shall go to the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name to dwell there. 3 And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him, ‘I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our fathers to give us.’ 4 Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God.

5 “And you shall make response before the Lord your God, ‘A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. 6 And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. 7 Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8 And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, [1] with signs and wonders. 9 And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.'"

What I find interesting about this passage is not only how the Exodus story is so concisely told, but also Yahweh's intention in creating this ritual of story recital for the Israelites to participate in. In a sense, this is what we do in worship when we as the church recite the nicene or apostle's creed.

A couple quick comments about Yahweh's potential intent with this ritual:

1) To remind the later generations of Israelites that these events actually did happen--that is to name and uphold the reality of the exodus story

2) To place the Israelite himself in the stream of that story--to self-consciously "inherit" the exodus narrative and see himself as intrinsically related to it.

3) To link that story with worship--in a sense, the worship ritual interprets the story (and the story contextualizes the ritual).

Valentine's Day Poem (for ami)

2006-02-14T16:41:00.000-08:00

There are bindings

There are bindings we may never untie.
Your belly will swell with our children,
will slim and swell, slim again.

Your hair I find, brown, in our bed,
stuck on my skin, will lighten.

Our rings, polished gold, will dull.

Then, when even the secret poems
on their hidden curves fade, reaching,
I find—there, in midair—your hand, in mine.

In accordance with the Scriptures...

2006-02-13T11:48:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts motivated by N.T. Wright's "The Last Word," where the Bishop writes,

"When Paul says, quoting an earlier and widely used summary of the Christian message, 'The Messiah died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures...and was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3-4), he does not mean that he and his friends can find one or two proof-texts to back up their claim, but rather that these events have come as the climax to the long and winding narrative of Israel's scriptures" (48).

If Paul rightly saw the death and (perhaps more centrally) the resurrection of Jesus as the telos of God's story in the world recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, then this begs an obvious question--what does it mean for us to live today, as the church, in accordance with the scriptures? Jesus' death and resurrection were the end and goal of the Old Testament story, but the story has now been altered forever by his life and work, and he has left us as his witnesses, as the ones (with his Spirit as our guide) who will finish the story begun in Genesis 1. As Wright points out, it means far more than finding prophetic proof-texts for our vocational calling as the people of God, but rather something more like immersing ourselves in God's story of the world, allowing it to rule our lives in devotion and worship such that our habits and affections become modified until they begin to merge with the trajectory of the story thus far. This is what it means to live "in accordance with the Scriptures": to allow the story to shape us, to find its narrative stream and place ourselves in the middle of its plot. And so, when I teach the book of Joshua I try to show him not so much as our model as our ancestor, a fellow actor in the same play overseen by the same director, and our goal ought not to be to mimic his lines as much as decipher in what direction his chapter in the larger story points us.

(Apologies to Wright for ripping off his play/act metaphor for Scripture).

The short story

2006-02-12T22:38:00.000-08:00

These days are full of small joys. Cael is growing quicker than I could have predicted, and it's difficult to grasp the moments of his life that I now know are slipping away. It's a strange love that I have for him--Ami seems to have figured out that part of parenting a lot better than I have. I love him and enjoy him, but the euphoria of the early days have worn off, and our relationship just seems "normal." Perhaps that's natural. I'm not sure. None of this is anything I know or understand.

Classes continue to go well. I feel like I'm studying less this spring than I ever have and probably thinking more. Part of that is because I've learned enough to begin really thinking about the Bible on my own, and part of it is because I'm just moving away from being as invested in the classroom learning style as I have been in the past. Grades are beginning to mean a lot less. I'd much rather read and think and write than have a professor try to indoctrinate me into his point of view on a subject and then be tested on how well I regurgitate it back to him. Not that that's completely the model of instruction at Covenant, but then again, it sort of is.

Lately reading Peter Enns' book "Inspiration and Incarnation," as well as a lot of other reading I've done for an Independent study on Old Testament narrative has raised a lot of questions in my mind about genre and nature of the Bible itself. I'm really struggling to understand how I'm supposed to really cooperate with the text on its own terms and not get swallowed up into a whirlstorm of questions and unrealized assumptions that I then suddenly begin to wonder about. The short story is this: Enns tries to use the catagory of "myth" for Genesis, and there's a sense in which I'm comfortable with that, and another I'm not, and there's another part of me that wonders if I should be comfortable with it at all. I'm still working through the details of my wonderings.

In all, the reading I've done for the study on narrative has been excellent, and I'm now working toward a thesis question I'll try to answer in a longish (30 page) paper for the rest of the semester.

Books I've read so far for the study:

G. Wenham, "Story as Torah"
R. Alter, "Art of Biblical Narrative"
M. Sternberg, "Poetics of Biblical Narrative"
P. Enns, "Inspiration and Incarnation"
V. Long, "Art of the Biblical History"
R. Parry, "Old Testament Story and Christian Ethics"
Parts of others...

Longing to Know, by Esther Meek

2006-02-10T11:09:00.000-08:00

WritersRead update: I've just reviewed a book by Esther Meek on epistemology called, "Longing to Know."

More movie comments

2006-02-04T15:47:00.000-08:00

The semester just starting to pick up, but things aren't busy enough that Ami and I can't still hang out a good bit. Lately we've watched two interesting (and very different) movies. The first was the new Willy Wonka movie. I've never seen the first one, so I really can't compare the two (and didn't have huge expectations for it, either), but I ended up really enjoying it. It's directed by Tim Burton and Willy is played by Johnny Depp, which is really the perfect combination for this kind of movie. We saw the two of them team up on the Legend of Sleepy Hollow sometime in the last year, but Willy Wonka is a lot better. Overall, the movie was a lot of fun--good script, good acting, good music (and pretty family friendly, too). The other movie we watched recently was In America, which was released a few years ago. It's about an Irish family (mom and dad, two young daughters) who moves to America and tries to make it in New York as well as grieve for the recent death of their son. Again, a very well acted and directed movie. The movie centers on the struggles of Johnny, the Irish father, to let go of his son...as a new father with my own son, watching this was a lot more difficult than it would have been a year ago. Anyhow, both movies are highly recommended.

It's not like I've ever watched the Oscars much before now, but I'm making a point not to anymore, especially after the nominations this year. What's really sickened me about it before is how it's just a chance for all the hollywood celebrities who already think they're the center of the universe sit around and tell each other how wonderful and talented and profound they are and this year they'll be doing that as well as bending over backwards to say how wonderful and profound a movie about men who destroy the lives of their wives and families because they just can't stop having sex together is. Thanks but no thanks. I'm a pretty open-minded guy when it comes to movies (heck, when Ami was gone in VA, I watched "Angels in America" and enjoyed it), and I'm sure Brokeback Mtn. is a well-done movie, but I can't stomach sitting around and being told how wonderful it is, what a great love story it is, etc. If Brokeback was being promoted as a movie about the awful effects of sin on people and the consequences for indulging your lusts, then I probably wouldn't mind even seeing it. That's actually why I liked Angels in America. But everything I've heard about it so far is that it's supposed to be a "love" story, and it's certainly not that.

Dumb post

2006-01-30T08:02:00.000-08:00

Mr. Shookfoil has "tagged" me. So now I have to fill out this dumb little quiz or I'll have bad karma. And who wants bad karma? Should be fun.

4 jobs I have had:

-Ninja fighter during the cold war
-Camp Counselor in Brookneal, VA
-Staff Writer for The Rutherford Institute in Charlottesville, VA
-Bookstore jack of all trades in St. Louis, MO.

4 movies I could watch over and over
-O Brother, Where Art Thou?
-Napoleon Dynamite
-Brokeback Mountain
-Elf

4 books I could read over and over
-Genesis
-House at Pooh Corner
-The Odyssey
-PCA Book of Church Order

4 musicians I don't get tired of:
-Bob Dylan
-Mark Heard
-Johnny Cash
-Neil Diamond

4 places I have lived
-Charlottesville, VA
-Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
-Banbridge, Northern Ireland
-Research Station, Antarctica

4 tv shows I watch
-The Simpsons
-E! Tonight
-24
-Lost

4 places I have been on vacation
-I don't feel like answering this one.

4 websites I visit daily
-Viva El Birdoes
-NY Times
-Gmail
-Covenant Library catalog

4 favorite foods
-Pulled Pork BBQ
-BBQ Ribs
-New York Strip Steak
-A nice rare burger

4 places I'd like to be right now
-That cool research station in Antarctica
-In the treehouse at Camp Hat Creek
-In the smoking room/library/study in the house I'm going to own someday
-Busch Stadium (if it was a summer night with the Cards in town)

4 bloggers I'm tagging
-Jordan
-John
-Ruth
-Jared

me and you and everyone we know

2006-01-24T21:23:00.000-08:00

Ami and I just got done watching a movie on my ibook in bed. We watched it in bed because I broke the dvd player last week by (accidently) putting in two dvds at once, which wouldn't at first seem like that major a thing, but it jammed up the disc player and we had to pry it open to get the dvds out. One was a library disc, so we definitely had to get that one out, as we know personal experience that the St. Louis library system charges you $30 if you lose or destroy one of their dvds. We know this because Rolen made "Ron Burgundy: Anchorman" into a chew toy a couple months ago. (On another note, this is a great example for why the government shouldn't run anything--I mean, $30 to replace a dvd you could get for $8 at blockbuster? Absurd). So anyway, you can imagine my sense of desperation as a I tried to get the library dvd out of the dvd player and how I might have ended up destroying the player in the process. The movie we watched on the ibook was "Me and You and Everyone We Know", which turned out to be a great movie--very funny and random and sort of poetic, just how I like movies. (Though there are a few objectionable scenes). The funniest scene was about poop and IM and some miscommunication, and that definitely qualifies as random. If you've seen it, you know what I mean. Ami didn't think it was as funny as I did. It really was a great movie-beautifully filmed and hinting toward the difficulty and possibility of human relationship. Definitely the independent movie of the year, if you're into independent movies.

Writers Read

2006-01-21T09:25:00.000-08:00

I've recently gotten involved with a group blog effort of various Christians (most of whom have some connection to Covenant Seminary) to basically post critical reviews of books we're reading. It's a diverse group of writers (notably including Sean Lucas and Jeremy Huggins) and should be fun. Come have a look.

#4

2006-01-20T22:58:00.000-08:00

This is the piece that I gave Ami for Christmas. It was done by one of our good friends here at Covenant, John Early. We like it a lot.

random thoughts

2006-01-20T22:52:00.000-08:00

The new season of 24 started this weekend, so Ami and I have a second tv show to keep up with. Jack Bauer is back to his old tricks, and it looks like the country needs saving again...Thank goodness someone's on the job.

I listened to a good bit of the Sam Alito hearings last week at work, and while I'll never be a card-carrying member of the GOP, the performance of the Democrats on the committee was just embarrassing. They were like some pathetic kid who still can't believe they lost the election a year ago, still can't believe W gets to nominate judges whose bias he likes, just like every other president whose party owns a senatorial majority. (Now, I don't like W either, but the man is the president--and I do like Alito and Roberts).

I'm back on the Denver Broncos bandwagon for the first time since Elway retired, looking for a Denver-Carolina Super Bowl.

I heard some guy on the radio defending Bush's newly disclosed policy of legally/illegally (depending on who you ask) wiretapping citizen's phone conversations without a warrant by claiming "The only people that have something to fear are the ones with something to hide!" That's about the most naive political statement I've ever heard. Try telling that to the Japanese Americans rounded up into internment camps during WWII. Yeah, our government's never taken advantage of its power over anybody in its history, that's for sure. there might be an argument to be made for giving the gov't the power to listen in on citizen's phone conversations, but the argument that the gov't will never abuse that power seems to be a shaky one to me. honestly, the whole thing sounds to me like GWB wants to be my male older sibling, and I would rather he was just my president, personally.

family update

2006-01-17T22:15:00.000-08:00

Ami, Cael, and I are finally getting settled back in St. Louis. Christmas was great, but it was a whirlwind--two and half weeks, lots of different beds, lots of new people holding our son. He was a champ through it all, but still it was difficult for all of us. Of course, seeing family was great, but it just underscored the difficulty of them being there and us being here. I'm not sure what the resolution for that problem is, but for now the resolution looks like this: me studying for the spring semester and working at the bookstore, and hanging out with Ami and Cael in between. It looks pretty good from here.

One of the things I realized over break was how much I'm beginning to miss art and beauty here. Somewhere in between the theological and biblical studies I'm immersed in here, I've forgotten what it was like to read poety, much less write it. The world I inhabited at UVA seems very far away sometimes--the world where I lived and breathed beauty and poetics, spent most of my days looking for it. That's another problem that doesn't have an easy solution. I bought Ami a great painting for Christmas that was done by one of our friends here. That'll help with the art problem. And I've found some new music I like--Sufjan Stevens is my new favorite replacement for Bob Dylan on the ipod. (Don't worry, Bob, I'll be back). And I can make some resolutions to start writing again, but it's hard to believe that I'll keep it up once the semester begins. Enough of the complaints of an almost former poet.

cards roster

2005-12-14T22:49:00.000-08:00

as of now, this would seem to be the starting lineup...

c-molina
1b-pujols
2b-luna
ss-eck
3b-rolen (cross your fingers)
lf-jrod/guch
cf-jed
rf-bigbie

bench:
c-bennett
if-cruz
if-miles
of-gall
of-schumaker

rotation:
1-carp
2-mulder
3-suppan
4-marquis
5-reyes

pen:
rhp-thompson
rhp-izzy
lhp-flores
lhp-rincon

obviously there's room to grow here. a quality starting outfielder and some bullpen help would seem to be the biggest needs, and i think jocketty will pull it off. the cards management seems to be ready to give luna a shot to play everyday, and i think that's a good move. if he develops some power, he has a legitimate shot to be an above-average 5 tool player, probably not a star, but definitely a useful player, especially while he's still cheap. bigbie on the other hand does not deserve a similiar chance, but i'm afraid that might become the plan, unless jock makes something happen. on the whole, assuming rolen comes back and the rotation stays healthy, this is a 90+ win team, probably good enough to defend the division title. and any team with pujols and decent starting pitching is going to have a decent shot in the playoffs.

winter stories

2005-12-14T22:48:00.000-08:00

for a baseball fan, the winter is mainly just full of speculation about next season and memories of the year before. earlier this winter i was caught up in the a.j. burnett sweepstakes, as most cards fans were, but now, i'm mostly just a little sad about the departure of matt morris. matty-mo was the longest standing member of the team, and it'll be very hard to imagine him in a giants uniform. from a business perspective, there's no question that the cards were wise not to getting in a bidding war with the giants over matt's services--he's on the wrong side of thirty, and clearly on the decline in his career. but from a fan's perspective, there weren't many more pretty sights over the last ten years than a matt morris breaking pitch slipping into the strike zone. and now it's gone.

Red Tent

2005-10-31T10:00:00.000-08:00

I've recently been reading Red Tent, a novel by Anita Diamant that retells the events of Jacob and his wives from the perspective of Dinah, the daughter of Leah. The story is well-written, and I generally enjoy reading it, especially as it tries to recreate the "feeling" of the biblical world by filling in the gaps of the biblical narrative. But as I read the story I am struck by how little of this "feeling" the Bible attempts to convey, and how foreign its literary form and concerns are from that of the modern novel, which Red Tent is a great example of. Next to the richness of detail and emotion recorded in Red Tent, Genesis seems sparse and empty. But somehow, the biblical story also carries a great deal more weight than the modern story. Yes, we ought to read the Bible as "literature," but we have to read it on its own terms...it is not just a story, but its own kind of story.

I'm also struck by how little concerned with history the biblical story is. Where Red Tent is constantly filling in the details of the story of Jacob's marriages and providing plausible motivations for why things happened the way they did, Genesis is not much concerned with this at all, but rather shows only those actions and details which are absolutely essential to its story. So, biblical narrative is not like modern literature or modern history, but something else entirely, it seems--with its own questions and concerns.

Baseball as story

2005-10-20T20:34:00.000-07:00

I've become more and more convinced over the last year or so that the reason sports are so popular in our culture is that they provide the same kind of epic stories for us that literature once did. Though literature is still a powerful cultural force, there is rarely a single story or novel that has universal currency, and when there is, it's usually something of the Da Vinci Code/Left Behind/Harry Potter variety--that is, more entertainment than actually epic. But on the other hand, American sports have achieved an almost mythic quality--when I think of Michael Jordan or Albert Pujols, I don't really think of a person like me, but rather of a heroic character.

What provoked this post on sports and story was the ending of the St. Louis Cardinals' season last night--the narrative of their team in 2005 (a topic which deserves a seperate post when I can manage it) finally drawing to a close in a loss to the Houston Astros. As it became more and more clear that the game would likely end in a loss for St. Louis and signal the end of the season, I found myself turning down the volume of the TV and turning up the radio broadcast on KMOX. Though the action on the TV lagged about a half-second behind the description on the radio, I still found watching the game this way far more satisfying than listening to the national Fox announcers. I think the reason for this is that the radio is the primary way I follow the Cardinals during the year--since Ami and I don't have cable, I can only watch the games on the weekend, whereas most nights, I'll listen to at least part of the game on the radio. Because of this, my connection with the Cardinal narrative is not just with the Cardinals in and of themselves as they lose and win games in various ways, but it is with the narrative of the Cardinals as told by Mike Shannon. That is, I don't just love Cardinals as a thing to watch or "follow" in some kind of "objective" way, I love the story of the Cardinals as described by Mike Shannon--and there was no way I was going to allow the final chapter of the story to be told by Bob Brenly.

It's for this reason, I think, that I haven't really been sad the last two seasons even though the Cardinals narrowly missed winning the World Series both years--because it's not all about winning the ring, it's about the season being a good story, full of characters and plot and tension--everything that makes a good story a good story. This explains why people are such fervent fans of bad teams--teams like the Royals or Cubs that haven't won in generations--because they love the stories of their teams, and the potential of a new story every spring. And the best thing about baseball, as opposed to other sports, is that the story is so long, rich and deep. The baseball season lasts longer every year, and baseball history stretches far further into the past than any other American sport, meaning that the storylines developed every year have the oppertunity to expand and change, and every year's story is always held against the layered context of the story of the game itself.

On narrative

2005-10-18T15:42:00.000-07:00

This semester, the topic of study that most interests me is an independent study on Old Testament narrative that I am doing with a professor here at Covenant named Ken Harris. Basically, the question I am trying to answer is this: How did OT narratives work in their original context, and what were they intended to do in the communities they shaped? To that end I've read Wenham's Story as Torah, and Robert Alter's Art of Biblical Narrative in the last couple of weeks.

Broadly speaking (beyond just this semester's study), I am interested in how all of our lives seem to be shaped by narrative: written, heard, seen, spoken, enacted, created. I think that what we believe as humans, or our basic "world-view" can (at least in one sense among others) be defined as which story's authority we place ourselves under--an idea I stole from N.T. Wright's NTPG. Now obviously, all people believe something, and have some kind of "world-view," and so, if my thesis is right, are always placing themselves under the authority of some story. What I am interested in as a Christian is how I might be intentional about placing myself and encouraging others to place themselves under the authority of the Christian story in all its dimensions (including, but not limited to, the story of Scripture). My interest in these topics sprang originally out from pragmatic reasons--I was teaching English literature to a group of high-school students and trying to justify in my head and consequently to them why they should bother with reading and understanding stories in the first place. Because I came into the topic from that perspective, I was unaware of the amount of material that had been written on it and how in vogue this whole idea of "story" has become. Since I am just now beginning to wade through all that material, I feel like a real novice, but I at least I am beginning to realize how complex the issue is, which is likely the first step towards thinking rightly about it. I also feel like there has yet to be a real direct and practical application of all these "narrative" insights to Christian teaching and thinking--what difference does all this make for Christian spirituality? That's the question I hope I can come to some sort of conclusion to, at least for myself, if no one else.

Don't call it a comeback

2005-10-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

After spending about a year at upsaid.com I realized I could get more features back at blogspot for free instead of spending $25 a year. This will primarily be a place to post thoughts I'm have about the theological study I'm undertaking at Covenant Seminary and photos of my 10-week old son. Nothing too exciting, just something that will hopefully help me write more regularly.