603 North Locust

Elder Porphyrios

2010-09-10T09:37:00.011-05:00

I recently began reading a beautiful book about an Orthodox saint of modern times - Wounded by Love: the Life and Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios (1). By the grace of God, the Orthodox church has seen an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in several saintly men and women of the latter half of the last century. In their knowledge of the Scriptures and their miracles, many of them rival the saints of the apostolic age and the desert fathers of early monasticism. Among them are Elder Cleopa of Romania, Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, and Elder Sophronios of Essex. Elder Porphyrios, another of this number, was a monk on Mount Athos, but because of illness he spent most of his life as a priest at the Polyclinic hospital in Athens, Greece. When he was still quite young, around 16 or 17, he received a gift from God, the gift of clear sight. This gift enabled him not only to see distant objects as though they were right in front of him, but also to see into the souls of those people whom he encountered as a priest for confession. The passage in which he describes the initial effects of this gift is quite beautiful, and so I quote it below. The footnotes at the bottom are my own.

The gift of clear sight, as I have told you, was something I had never desired. Nor, when I received it, did I attempt to increase it or cultivate it. I gave no importance to it. Neither have I ever asked, nor do I ask God, to reveal something to me, because I believe that it is counter to His will. But after the experience with Old Demas (2) I changed completely. My life became all joy and exaltation. I lived among the stars, in infinity, in heaven. I wasn't like that previously.

From the moment I experienced the grace of God all the gifts were multiplied. I became sharp-witted (3). I learned the Trinitarian canons, the Canon of Jesus and other canons (4). Simply on their being read and sung in the church I learned them by heart. I recited the Psalter by heart. I took care with some Psalms that have similar words so that I didn't mix them up. I genuinely changed. I 'saw' lots of things, but I didn't speak, that is, I wasn't given the right to say anything. I wasn't 'informed' to speak. I saw everything. I registered everything. I knew everything. From my joy I no longer walked on the earth. My sense of smell was opened and I smelled everything, my eyes were opened and my ears were opened. I recognized things from far away. I distinguished the animals and the birds. From the sound of the call I knew if it was a blackbird or a sparrow, a finch or a nightingale, a robin or a thrush. I recognized all the birds by their song. At night and at dawn I delighted in the chorus of nightingales and blackbirds, all of them . . .

I became another, a new, a different person. I turned everything I saw into prayer. I referred it to myself. Why does the bird sing and glorify its Maker? I wanted to do the same. The same with the flowers: I recognized the flowers by their fragrances and I smelled them when I was half an hour away. I observed the grasses, the trees, the water, the rocks. I spoke with the rocks. The rocks have seen so much! I asked them and they told me all the secrets of Kavsokalyvia (5). And I was filled with emotion and contrition. I saw everything with the grace of God. I saw, but I didn't speak. I often went into the forest. I was greatly enthused by walking amidst the stones and the rushes, the thickets and the tall trees.

(1) Limni, Evia, Greece: 2005, Denise Harvey (Publisher): pp. 30-1.

(2) Old Demas was a saintly Russian monk on Mount Athos with whom Elder Poryphyrios had a life-changing encounter.

(3) The Elder had received formal schooling only at a rudimentary level.

(4) The Canons are liturgical poems, often of a dogmatic character, sung primarily during the service of Matins.

(5) The skete on Mount Athos where the Elder lived with two older monks.

Southern Tour

2010-05-19T20:50:00.003-05:00

We are about to begin our second annual Southern Road Tour, which will commence this Friday and end sometime in mid-June. We will be in Nashville for the first two weeks of June, and would love to see any and all old friends who have a mind to come up to the Athens of the South.

The Antiquarian's Delight

2010-03-10T13:30:00.006-05:00

I have recently discovered something which will likely be of great interest to those of us who have a love for the past, who indeed feel towards our ancestors a certain sympathy of thoughts and affections which is, unfortunately, so lacking in the hurly-burly of contemporary society. It is a Book Machine (though I might as well call it a Time Machine, for Books have a way of enlivening the time in which they were written or with which they are concerned), which takes scanned books from Google's voluminous collection and binds them in a handsome paperback format. The whole process takes about 15 minutes. The standard price for non-copyrighted works is $8 at the Harvard Bookstore, which has named its machine Paige Gutenberg. I mentioned this to a friend who lives in northern Vermont, and he told me that there is a similar machine near him. Perhaps there is one near you; if not, the Harvard Bookstore does ship, I'm told.

There is an incredible wealth of older works on Google Books, which you have probably discovered already. It is very nice to know that one can hold these volumes in one's hand in book form instead of only being able to stare at them on a screen. I came up with a few ideas for authors in the non-copyright range, whose books are hard to find or sometimes expensive: GK Chesterton, Hillaire Belloc, John Henry Newman, and Sir Walter Scott. There are also many translations and secondary works by 19th Century Anglo-Catholics on the church fathers that are quite wonderful, and which are available at Google, including the Ante-Nicene Fathers Series, the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series I and II, and the Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, Anterior to the Division Between East and West. One might consider as well older translations of classic works, such as Chapman's Homer (or Pope's), Hobbes' Thucydides, or Jowett's translations of Plato and Aristotle. Just a few ideas to start.

Good, cheap editions of older works can be a great incentive for following the advice of C.S. Lewis in his introduction to St. Athanasius' On the Incarnation: "The only pallative [to the errors of our age] is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can only be done by reading old books." If you have anything excellent you've discovered on Google Books, let me know. I could use some ideas from people with different interests and preoccupations, such as folklore (JE), history (KE), poetry (ER), fiction (JR,MR), aesthetics (SB), and music (JB) - and feel free to ignore these easy classifications of your interests.

Happy New Year

2010-01-01T22:58:00.001-05:00

New Developements

2010-01-01T12:10:00.004-05:00

I have been following a couple of interesting developments in the area of Christian education which Locust Street patrons might also find intriguing.

The first is a new Center for Early Christian Studies opening at Wheaton College, arguably the best evangelical school in the country. It aims to bring evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox together to study the fathers of the early church. Funded by Greek Orthodox alumni of Wheaton, run by a Greek evangelical from Athens, the Center seems serious about their ecumenical vision. Their first speaker was Robert Louis Wilken, a Catholic patristics scholar who recently retired from the University of Virginia. I think this is one more piece of evidence that evangelicals are showing interest in Christian history and in the writings of the fathers in particular. Seeing the dead ends of the historical-critical method of Biblical interpretation, evangelicals are discovering the insights of patristic exegesis of Scripture, which is modeled on the interpretation of the Old Testament that we find in the Apostolic writings of the New Testament. Interestingly, Faulkner College is also showing interest in the Fathers: see the website for their Patristics Project.

The second is the planned C.S. Lewis College, which hopes to open in nearby Northfield, MA, in a couple of years. The founders are describing it as a great books college based on mere Christianity, welcoming faithful protestants, Orthodox and Catholics to come together over a curriculum of foundational primary texts. The professors will be 'fellows' on the Oxford model, with great involvement in the college outside of class. The C.S. Lewis foundation, funded by the retailer Hobby Lobby, has just purchased the beautiful Northfield Mt Herman campus, formerly an independent secondary school.

Here's wishing all patrons a Healthy and Happy 2010!

On the Incarnation

2009-12-29T17:07:00.003-05:00

Today I finished my third annual reading of St. Athanasius’ De Incarnatione, and I decided, despite the lateness of the entry, to bring you a few golden nuggets from this wonderful church father as a humble Christmas gift. Lest you protest that Christmas is over, I’ll remind you that there are 12 days of Nativity feasting given to us by Christian tradition between the Birth on December 25th and the Baptism of Christ on January 6th. In fact, Theophany was the greater holy day for most of Christian history, as it continues to be in Roman Catholic and Orthodox countries.

In my reading this year, two passages stuck out as being of particular interest. In the first, St. Athanasius is answering the question ‘why didn’t Christ choose an honourable death for himself instead of an ignoble death on the cross? ‘ For an educated Greek or Roman of his day, suicide might have been the most ‘honorable death’ imaginable, being an act of free will rather than necessity (see Sophocles’ Ajax). St. Athanasius’ reply is as follows:

Death came to His body, therefore, not from Himself but from enemy action, in order that the Saviour might utterly abolish death in whatever form they offered it to Him. A generous wrestler, virile and strong, does not himself choose his antagonists, lest it should be thought that of some of them he is afraid. Rather, he lets the spectators choose them, and that all the more if these are hostile, so that he may overthrow whomsoever they match against him and thus vindicate his superior strength. Even so was it with Christ. (§ 24)

Christ, the wrestler in the figure, accepted death from His enemies in whatever form it arrived, to show his strength over any kind of death. This wonderful image helps cleanse our minds of the one-sided view of Christ as a passive victim on the cross. He is not simply passive but awaits death like a strong and virile wrestler awaits his opponent, not fearing its supposed might.

The second passage is the last one in the book. In his final words to Macarius, the friend to whom Athanasius dedicates his treatise, he advises Macarius to search the Scriptures to see whether what he has said is true. Then he writes,

Anyone who wants to look at sunlight naturally wipes his eye clear first, in order to make, at any rate, some approximation to the purity of that on which he looks; and a person wishing to see a city or country goes to the place in order to do so. Similarly anyone who wishes to understand the mind of the sacred writers must first cleanse his own life, and approach the saints by copying their deeds. (§ 57)

The Gospel is a stumbling block to the tenured academics at big universities for this very reason: it makes a demand on us that is not simply intellectual. It teaches that the life one lives will clarify or distort one’s intellectual vision, that thought is not separate from the moral life. To see the ultimate truths requires the greatest attention to inner purity. Would academics still be reading Michel Foucault or Paul de Man if they understood this?

Here’s wishing all Locust Street patrons a Merry Christmas for the remaining days of the feast. I hope this year will smile on our meeting face to face somewhere, sometime soon.

St. Lucia of Syracuse

2009-12-13T16:23:00.009-05:00

Today Santa Lucia of Syracuse is celebrated around the world. At Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church here in Boston, we remembered her with a festival of light and music after Divine Liturgy. Our Lucia was quite happy to hear her name sung by everyone. Following are St. Lucia's life and the Troparion for her feast:

Life:

Saint Lucy was born in Syracuse, Sicily during the reign of Diocletian. She distributed her wealth to the poor, and made a vow of virginity. Since she refused to marry him, a rejected suitor denounced her to the prefect Paschasius as a Christian, and she was arrested. She was sentenced to be defiled in a brothel, but with God's help she preserved her purity.

Then the pagans attempted to burn her alive, but she was not harmed by the fire. Finally, she was killed by a sword thrust to the throat.

The name Lucy (Lucia) is derived for the Latin word for light (lux), and so she is often invoked for afflictions of the eyes. There is a tradition that she was blinded by her torturers, and the church of San Giovanni Maggiore in Naples even claims to possess her eyes.

Troparion:

Adorned with the radiant robe of virginity,
Thou wast betrothed to Christ the Lifegiver,
And didst disdain all mortal love.
Therefore thou didst bring to the Lord as a bridal gift
the streams of thy martyr's blood.
Intercede with him for us all, O Virgin Martyr Lucia.

(icon from the wonderful website of Aidan Hart)

St Nicholas Day

2009-12-06T13:15:00.004-05:00

Happy Birthday Mr Gaiman

2009-11-10T16:09:00.003-05:00

Put The Graveyard Book on your list. Even if you don't have time for it right now, the next time you're in a bookstore pick it up for the illustrations.

More XKCD

2009-11-10T15:38:00.005-05:00

Stitchpunk

2009-09-10T22:28:00.001-05:00

I really like animation for two reasons: 1) the director has the ability to construct every frame, 2) it is really hard to tell a good children's story. Both of these things take an extraordinary imagination, which can make for really great film.

Shane Acker makes a good attempt in 9. He certainly has imagination. The post-apocalyptic world is stunning, and its few characters are compelling. The technology is interesting, the chases are thrilling, and the escapes are narrow enough to be satisfying. The film will inspire a host of young boys who have not yet given up make-believe games to new adventures in the backyard. But when I turn away from nostalgia, it is easy to see that the plot is not tight as it could be, and dialogue too often falls flat, primarily because the characters' motivations are a bit predictable. Still, none of this kept me from enjoying the movie.

You can find reviews at Metacritic, but the best one is at the Onion's A.V. Club, which has the wonderful word humunculus. The reviewer at Slate, who posted today, also thought so.

Even if you don't see the feature film, Acker's original short is pretty good.

On the Set

2009-09-03T23:14:00.005-05:00

The upcoming Fantastic Mr. Fox makes five Wes Anderson films for the wonderfully deadpan Bill Murray. The workload is obviously taking its toll.

2009-08-18T11:52:00.001-05:00

That lout Everett Reed, who has managed to totally disuade anyone else from posting on the blog, has also recently wormed his way into becoming an administrator on the blog. Kelly and I'll do a big post soon on the CSC at Lipscomb.
JKE

Happy Birthday Father Hopkins

2009-07-28T20:10:00.003-05:00

Glory be to God for dappled things –

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

O Frabjous Day!

2009-07-25T12:48:00.002-05:00

Johnny Depp has taken up yet another top hat for director Tim Burton. Alice in Wonderland, their seventh collaboration, incorporates live action, motion capture, and stop animation. Vanity Fair and Wired have a few production pictures, and the first teaser trailer debuted just a few days ago at Comic Con. In addition to the standard format, it will be released in IMAX 3-D so Burton's imagination can be both ridiculously large and incredibly close.

Which reminds me -- Jonathan, Melody, and I saw Coraline in 3-D on a snowy day in Ann Arbor this past winter. It is now available on DVD. Put it in your Netflix cue.

Today at the Writers' Conference

2009-07-23T20:51:00.004-05:00

This morning Melody and I drove up to Sewanee to hear a panel on publishing with editors Kathy Pories of Algonquin, Elizabeth Schmitz of Grove/Atlantic, and Gary Fisketjon of Knopf. They were all very gracious, but I was especially pleased to speak with Mr Fisketjon for a moment after the panel broke up. He has been McCarthy's editor since Albert Erskine retired from Random House, but I also learned that he fought for Suttree to be included in a little line of paperbacks he launched in the eighties called Vintage Contemporaries. He says that he treats a McCarthy manuscript just like all the others, estimating he reads approximately five pages an hour. What a job.

Also, I must say that my lady loves me. Today is her birthday. And what does she want to do? Go see people she has never heard of talk about books.

Afterwards, we went swimming at the reservoir just off campus. Then we came home for an amazing birthday cake Melody baked for herself yesterday because I was trying to finish a paper.

Happy 110 Papa

2009-07-21T10:03:00.003-05:00

Today in 1899 Hemingway was born in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. To commemorate the occasion, Scribner, now a division of Simon and Schuster, is reissuing his works with newly designed covers. Most notably, A Movable Feast is being in offered in what is billed as "the restored edition." NPR and NYT have articles. UPDATE: longer review in WSJ.

Happy Birthday Mr McCarthy

2009-07-20T06:00:00.001-05:00

Today in 1933 Charles McCarthy Jr. was born in Providence, Rhode Island, but just a few years later the family moved to Knoxville where his father worked as a lawyer for TVA. Some sources say that Cormac (a legendary high king of Ireland, as found in the Annals of Clonmacnoise) was used as a nickname within the family, others indicate that his name was legally changed. He currently lives north of Sante Fe.

As of May of this year, the Cormac McCarthy Papers are open for research at the Alkek Library of Texas State University . Road trip, anyone?

Comics

2009-05-01T08:20:00.007-05:00

XKCD: Tag Combination

Since the retirement of Calvin and Hobbes, XKCD is undisputedly the best comic available. You can find the original music here, here, and here, and a cover here. I knew my limited knowledge of Eighties power pop would come in handy someday.

Happy Birthday, Again

2009-04-30T08:58:00.004-05:00

In 1945 Annie Dillard was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was surprised to see she has now added some of her own artwork to her homepage, which she seems to maintain herself. I particularly like the one above.

Also, in 1888 John Crowe Ransom was born in Pulaski, Tennessee. For all his theoretical shortcomings, I still enjoy his criticism. He unabashedly believes in literature. As he says in one his most famous essays, "criticism is the attempt to define and enjoy the aesthetic or characteristic values of literature." In terms of recent criticism, there is much is to said for the notion of enjoyment.

Happy Birthday Miss Lee

2009-04-28T08:19:00.005-05:00

Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Today, in 1926, Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, a tired old town in southern Alabama. When she was 34, Miss Lee published her only book,To Kill a Mockingbird. Quite unexpectedly, the following year it won the Pulitzer Prize.

Although I do not often mention it among my favorites, for me the novel is an important one. In high school I saw the story obliquely, as Scout does. In my third reading, once I began to consider myself an adult, I saw the story differently. As much as anything else, coming to understand Atticus Finch has helped me come to peace with the South.

But as much as I admire To Kill a Mockingbird, I also admire Miss Lee's refusal to capitalize on its success. Like Norman Maclean, it seems she has had only one significant story to tell. And that is a remarkable wisdom: to know when to speak, to know when to remain silent. Many of her more prolific contemporaries would have done well to pay more attention to the little lady from Alabama.

Gregory Dialogos

2009-03-12T06:01:00.006-05:00

Today the Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of St. Gregory the Great, Pope of Rome, or Gregory the Dialogist as he is known in the East for his Dialogues, a series of saints' lives of Italian monastics. He is considered, at least in part, the father of Christianity in England, as we discover in reading the Venereable Bede's Ecclesiastical History. He is remembered in the East primarily for his Dialogues, his Pastoral Care, and the composition of the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, which is celebrated on Wednesdays and Fridays during Lent.

Here is the passage from Bede's History which tells the story of Gregory's Roman mission to England:

"I must here relate a story which shows Gregory's deep desire for the salvation of our nation. We are told that one day some merchants who had recently arrived in Rome displayed their many wares in the crowded market-place. Among other merchandise Gregory saw some boys exposed for sale. These had fair complexions, fine-cut features, and fair hair. Looking at them with interest, he enquired what country and race they came from. 'They come from Britain,' he was told, 'where all the people have this appearance.' He then asked whether the people were Christians, or whether they were still ignorant heathens. 'They are pagans,' he was informed. 'Alas!' said Gregory with a heartfelt sigh: 'how sad that such handsome folk are still in the grasp of the Author of darkness, and that faces of such beauty conceal minds ignorant of God's grace! What is the name of this race?' 'They are called Angles,' he was told. 'That is appropriate,' he said, 'for they have angelic faces, and it is right that they should become fellow-heirs with the angels in heaven. And what is the name of their Province?' 'Deira,' was the answer. 'Good. They shall indeed be de ira saved from wrath and called to the mercy of Christ. And what is the name of their king?' he asked. 'Aella', he was told. 'Then must Alleluia be sung to the praise of God our Creator in their land,' said Gregory, making play on the name.

Approaching the Pope of the apostolic Roman see for he was not yet Pope himself Gregory begged him to send preachers of the word to the English people in Britain to convert them to Christ, and declared his own eagerness to attempt the task should the Pope see fit to direct it. But this permission was not forthcoming, for although the Pope himself was willing, the citizens of Rome would not allow Gregory to go so far away from the city. But directly Gregory succeeded to the Papacy himself, he put in hand this long cherished project and sent other missionaries in his place, assisting their work by his own prayers and encouragement. And I have thought it fitting to include this traditional story in the history of our Church."

(Text from the Medieval Sourcebook)

Prayer Request

2009-03-11T21:24:00.004-05:00

Hello all,

You probably remember my cousin Erika from Harding. Her younger brother Jonathan was also at Harding, perhaps in Jeremy and Kelly's year. He's had liver problems for the past 9 years, and just had surgery yesterday in which his wife Laura of a few months donated part of her liver to him. Please keep them both in your prayers over the next few days. As far as I can understand with my very limited medical knowledge, the experts are still not sure if he will make it 'over the hump' with the new liver. If not, he will be placed on a list to get a full liver from an organ donor should one become available in the next few days.

Will update you as I know more. All the best, T.

Speaking in Tongues

2009-02-13T15:46:00.004-05:00

This is an article in the New York Review of Books dissecting the many voices of Barack Obama, and this is a review of the article at Slate. There's nothing too spectacular in them, I just found them interesting.

Lenten Reading

2009-02-07T21:35:00.002-05:00

Lent is almost upon us, and thankfully this year Eastern and Western Lent and Easter nearly coincide. Anything particular on your reading lists for the season? It doesn't have to be 'spiritual,' though of course we'll all judge you if it's not.

Final Words

2009-01-30T15:18:00.005-05:00

Not surprisingly, Updike still has a few additions to make his catalog. Here is a poem from Endpoint, which will be published in September by Knopf.

Requiem

It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise — depths unplumbable!”

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
“I thought he died a while ago.”

For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.

RIP John Updike

2009-01-27T17:23:00.001-05:00

John Updike is dead.

A Very Merry Unbirthday to You, Mr Carroll

2009-01-27T10:28:00.005-05:00

Elizabeth Alexander

2009-01-26T09:03:00.001-05:00

Discuss.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer consider the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

2003 all over again

2008-12-31T12:36:00.002-05:00

We are in London, posting this from Computer Lab 2 in the basement of 99 Great Russell. The Labour Movement statue of the scarf-wearing man bending down to help up another man is still there. Exchange rate is a bit better this time, though.

We live in a community next to Hampstead Heath. Families and flowerboxes are much in evidence. It's bitterly cold (not as bad as Berlin in December '03, though--not cold that drives you into every corner coffeeshop.) Tonight we're meeting friends to see New Year's Eve fireworks. The rest of the faculty don't arrive until next week, so I've got plenty of time to practice walking the three miles from our flat to Great Russell until I can get here without getting lost. On Friday I will get my British Library Reader Card and begin delving into the India Office materials and missionary manuscripts. You get a free extra year of BL access if you're going for a PhD (keep that in mind, boys.)

Do any of you have Skype?

God's Birth

2008-12-24T10:48:00.006-05:00

Yesterday I began my second annual Christmas reading of St. Athanasius’s On the Incarnation. The introduction by C.S. Lewis is worth the price of the book alone – it contains a wonderful apology for reading old books as well as his most convincing account of ‘Mere Christianity.’ This latter teaching of Lewis’ is often misunderstood, taken for an invisible and cultureless Christianity that is akin to American evangelicalism. What he is really speaking of, I believe, is Christianity from the perspective of the outsider. Lewis never lost the ability to view Christianity from the vantage point of an unbeliever, and it is the foundational unity of all Christians, whatever the creed, confession, or lack thereof, that is behind his ‘Mere Christianity’:

“And that brings me to yet another reason for reading them [the Christian classics]. The divisions of Christendom are undeniable and are by some of these writers most fiercely expressed. But if any man is tempted to think – as one might be tempted who read only contemporaries – that ‘Christianity’ is a word of so many meanings that it means nothing at all, he can learn beyond all doubt, by stepping out of his own century, that this is not so. Measured against the ages “mere Christianity” is no insipid interdenominational transparency, but something positive, self-consistent, and inexhaustible.” (p. 6)

Lewis was therefore was not eradicating the divisions between the churches as theologically insignificant or meaningless, but rather ignoring them for his own spiritual benefit and ours, and particularly the benefit of the unbeliever. Polemical dialogue between Christians has a dangerous way of overtaking the believer or prospective believer who has a taste for theological reading, involving him in the niceties of schism and distracting him from the primary work of saving his own soul. Lewis knew that it’s best to leave ecclesiastical polemics to the saints, who are stronger than we and less likely to fall into errors of enthusiasm.

Which brings me to the book itself. On the Incarnation is, like many of the books in the New Testament, an adventure story, of a kingdom brought into ruin and disrepair by error and corruption and a Great Ruler who is troubled by the state of his realm. Driven to extreme measures by the condition of his people, he sends his son as viceroy. A suffering savior, a dying king, he rises triumphant from his battle with death to lead his kingdom into a promised land:

"For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word's indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all. You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled, and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be." (p. 35)

“God became man, so that man might become god.” It is this dictum, so prominent in the early church, which St. Athanasius expresses with such immediacy. What Christ offers is not a clean slate but a transformation. St. Augustine speaks of this as “restoring the incorruption of the body.” It is Eden we are after, and Christ has cut a way back through the thick undergrowth of our sin and corruption, allowing us to follow after.

This is what’s so thrilling about Christmas: the divine rescue mission begins in a remote corner of the Roman Empire; the viceroy comes disguised in tatters to save his kingdom from below. Knowing the end of the story makes the beginning all the more exciting. The coming of the king, the entrance of the Son of God into the world in the womb of a virgin, is what St. Athanasius limns with such golden brightness.

Happy Birthday Mr Maclean

2008-12-23T10:18:00.003-05:00

After completing his doctorate, Maclean taught English at the University of Chicago for the rest of his career. Here he is in January of 1970 lecturing on Shakespeare. A new book from the University of Chicago Press, The Norman Maclean Reader, includes some literary criticism, unpublished writings on Custer, an interview, and a couple of shorter pieces in the vein of A River Runs Through It and his posthumous Young Men and Fire.

Why I Feel Safe In My Snobbery About Proper Language

2008-12-20T10:09:00.003-05:00

Because David Foster Wallaces agrees with me.

In this long but highly entertaining article from Harper's Magazine, David Foster Wallace discusses dictionaries, their uses, and the foibles of those who don't believe that languages should have rules.

Read it. I laughed a lot and felt intelligent while reading it. All anyone wants in the world, right?

Excerpts:

To understand this, you have only to accept the proposition that language is by its very nature public — i.e., that there can be no such thing as a Private Language[23] and then to observe the way Methodological Descriptivists seem either ignorant of this fact or oblivious to its consequences, as in for example one Charles Fries's introduction to an epigone of Webster's Third called The American College Dictionary:

A dictionary can be an "authority" only in the
sense in which a book of chemistry or of physics
or of botany can be an "authority": by the accuracy
and the completeness of its record of the observed
facts of the field examined, in accord with the latest
principles and techniques of the particular science.

This is so stupid it practically drools. An "authoritative" physics text presents the results of physicists' observations and physicists' theories about those observations. If a physics textbook operated on Descriptivist principles, the fact that some Americans believe that electricity flows better downhill (based on the observed fact that power lines tend to run high above the homes they serve) would require the Electricity Flows Better Downhill Theory to be included as a "valid" theory in the textbook — just as, for Dr. Fries, if some Americans use infer for imply, the use becomes an ipso facto "valid" part of the language. Structural linguists like Gove and Fries are not, finally, scientists but census-takers who happen to misconstrue the importance of "observed facts." It isn't scientific phenomena they're tabulating but rather a set of human behaviors, and a lot of human behaviors are — to be blunt — moronic. Try, for instance, to imagine an "authoritative" ethics textbook whose principles were based on what most people actually do.

and

Take, for example, the Descriptivism claim that so-called correct English usages such as brought rather than brung and felt rather than feeled are arbitrary and restrictive and unfair and are supported only by custom and are (like irregular verbs in general) archaic and incommodious and an all-around pain in the ass. Let us concede for the moment that these objections are 100 percent reasonable. Then let's talk about pants. Trousers, slacks. I suggest to you that having the "correct" subthoracic clothing for U.S. males be pants instead of skirts is arbitrary (lots of other cultures let men wear skirts), restrictive and unfair (U.S. females get to wear pants), based solely on archaic custom (I think it's got something to do with certain traditions about gender and leg position, the same reasons girls' bikes don't have a crossbar), and in certain ways not only incommodious but illogical (skirts are more comfortable than pants; pants ride up; pants are hot; pants can squish the genitals and reduce fertility; over time pants chafe and erode irregular sections of men's leg hair and give older men hideous half-denuded legs, etc. etc.). Let us grant — as a thought experiment if nothing else — that these are all reasonable and compelling objections to pants as an androsartorial norm. Let us in fact in our minds and hearts say yes — shout yes — to the skirt, the kilt, the toga, the sarong, the jupe. Let us dream of or even in our spare time work toward an America where nobody lays any arbitrary sumptuary prescriptions on anyone else and we can all go around as comfortable and aerated and unchafed and unsquished and motile as we want.

And yet the fact remains that, in the broad cultural mainstream of millennial America, men do not wear skirts. If you, the reader, are a U.S. male, and even if you share my personal objections to pants and dream as I do of a cool and genitally unsquishy American Tomorrow, the odds are still 99.9 percent that in 100 percent of public situations you wear pants/slacks/shorts/trunks. More to the point, if you are a U.S. male and also have a U.S. male child, and if that child were to come to you one evening and announce his desire/intention to wear a skirt rather than pants to school the next day, I am 100-percent confident that you are going to discourage him from doing so. Strongly discourage him. You could be a Molotov-tossing anti-pants radical or a kilt manufacturer or Steven Pinker himself — you're going to stand over your kid and be prescriptive about an arbitrary, archaic, uncomfortable, and inconsequentially decorative piece of clothing. Why? Well, because in modern America any little boy who comes to school in a skirt (even, say, a modest all-season midi) is going to get stared at and shunned and beaten up and called a Total Geekoid by a whole lot of people whose approval and acceptance are important to him. In our culture, in other words, a boy who wears a skirt is Making a Statement that is going to have all kinds of gruesome social and emotional consequences.

You see where this is going.

Happy Holidays from the North Locust Boys!

2008-12-08T18:47:00.002-05:00

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

R.I.P. Hootenanny

2008-11-17T15:12:00.002-05:00

It appears that the word "hootenanny" is one of several that were struck from the dictionary last year. We will now have to call them something else.

Such as "acoustic music/song-singing get-together on a porch in Arkansas that was amazing fun until Jeremy picked up his banjo and ruined it but then the pipes and whisky made up for it once he stopped."

Or maybe something a little shorter. I think "front porch shindig" might do.

Better suggestions?

An Almost Mugging

2008-11-14T12:08:00.002-05:00

As you may or may not know, my youngest brother David is in Italy for the semester. A few days ago he was at the train station in Sienna, and he was headed to the W.C. before he got on the train. On his way to the W.C., someone grabbed him violently and started shaking him, at which point David freaked out because he thought the Gypsies were coming to kill him. Then, just when he was getting ready to fight for his life, his attacker started laughing hysterically and released him. When David turned around he was shocked to see the Ruskie. Apparently, the Ruskie's job is in a slow period so he's in Italy for a month. David is showing him around Florence today.

Hybrids

2008-11-14T09:56:00.002-05:00

Not the cars. Here's a thought, though: take one part of a story, and insert it in another.

Examples:
Clyde from An American Tragedy goes to England, and meets Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice. She gets pregnant, and he pushes her out of a canoe to her drowning death.

Captain Ahab visits Mary Austin in Land of Little Rain. They wander the desert together, and Ahab attempts to destroy the Grand Canyon by filling it in. He dies flinging himself into it. Alternate: Moby Dick visits Mary Austin in Land of Little Rain and dies promptly, filling the desert with the smell of a rotting albino whale corpse.

A slight shift:
Environmentalists and Pentecostals exchange epistemologies. Pentecostals oppose dancing because there is a global shortage of it, and it is contributing to climate change. Environmentalists oppose SUVs because God might.

Any more ideas?

Happy Birthday Mr Stevenson

2008-11-13T16:42:00.004-05:00

I do not remember when I first read Treasure Island. What I remember is rediscovering it. One day at my grandmother's house when I was ten or twelve I uncovered a set of books while nosing about. There were several classic titles in the set, but I immediately seized Treasure Island because I had read it before.

When I opened it, however, I remember that I felt cheated. This edition was full of wonderful, colorful illustrations. Nothing at all like the poor line drawings in the book I had checked out from the library. But not only were they wonderfully done, as I reread the the story that afternoon, I discovered they were accurately done. They depicted the scene as it was actually written.

This simple fact commanded a tremendous respect from me as a young boy. I felt that Mr Wyeth, in contrast to most illustrators, was doing his job. He was painting the image that Mr Stevenson had imagined when he wrote the story. His illustrations didn't fight my imagination; they complemented it.

In reading the story, I knew that Jim climbed up into the rigging and Israel Hands was after him. I knew also that Jim had two pistols and Israel Hands had a knife called a dirk. But the rest of the image was fuzzy. I had never seen a tall ship. I didn't really know how to picture it in my mind's eye. But once I saw Mr Wyeth's illustration, I knew. And I feared for Jim more than ever, for he was truly in a precarious position. I could see it.

Of course, Jim escapes, but it still bothers me whenever I see him with just one pistol. That's not the way the story goes. Any fool who can read knows that.

Lately

2008-11-06T17:00:00.001-05:00

I have been tinkering with this mix for over a year now. It began as a simple compilation for country driving, an excuse to put a couple of songs about Elvis on the same disc. The roadtrip that originated the first draft is long past, but the idea has lingered with me. In my mind, it has now evolved into a strange meditation on remembering and reimagining parts of my father, my father-in-law, and my grandfather in the face of love and loss and death.

My Old Man
.... . ... . ... . ....
Volume 1
1. Main Title Theme : Bob Dylan
2. One Life Away : M. Ward
3. He Was the King : Neil Young
4. Elvis Presley Blues : Gillian Welch
5. My Winding Wheel : Ryan Adams
6. Wagon Wheel : Old Crow Medicine Show
7. The Cuckoo : Hem
8. Poison Cup : M. Ward
9. Turkey Chase : Bob Dylan
10. Harrisburg : Josh Ritter
11. Things that Scare Me : Neko Case
12. Dusty Boxcar : Gillian Welch
13. The Hardest Part : Ryan Adams
14. You Don't Make It Easy Babe : Josh Ritter
15. The Coo Coo Bird : The Be Good Tanyas
16. Trampled Rose : Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
17. Old Man : Neil Young
18. I Taught Myself How to Grow Old : Ryan Adams
19. Knockin' on Heaven's Door : Bob Dylan
. ... . ... .
Volume 2
1. To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High) : Ryan Adams
2. Chinese Translation : M. Ward
3. I've Been Everywhere : Johnny Cash
4. Rollin' and Tumblin' : Bob Dylan
5. White Freightliner Blues : Gillian Welch
6. Oh My Sweet Carolina : Ryan Adams & Emmylou Harris
7. Lawrence, KS : Josh Ritter
8. Bob Dylan's Dream : Bob Dylan
9. I Dream a Highway : Gillian Welch
10. I Hear Them All : Old Crow Medicine Show
11. I Want to Sing that Rock n' Roll : Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
12. To Go Home : M. Ward
13. Empty Hearts : Josh Ritter
14. Pearls on a String : Ryan Adams
15. Black Eyed Dog : Nick Drake
16. Dead Man : M. Ward
.... . ... . ... . ....

If you want a copy let me know. I'd be happy to send you one.

The Pooh Also Rises by Alan Coren

2008-10-27T11:58:00.003-05:00

A.A.Milne gets an Ernest Hemingway makeover in this extract from the new anthology celebrating the brilliant humorist and Times columnist, who died last year.

It snowed hard that winter. It was the winter they all went up to the Front. You could get up early in the morning, if you were not wounded and forced to lie in your bed and look at the ceiling and wonder about the thing with the women, and you could see them going up to the Front, in the snow. When they walked in the snow, they left tracks, and after they had gone the snow would come down again and pretty soon the tracks would not be there any more. That is the way it is with snow. Pooh did not go up to the Front that winter. Nor did he lie in bed and look at the ceiling, although last winter he had lain in bed and looked up at the ceiling, because that was the winter he had gone up to the Front and got his wound. It had snowed that winter, too.

This winter he could walk around. It was one of those wounds that left you able to walk around. It was one of those wounds that did not leave you much more.

Pooh got up and he went out into the snow and he went to see Piglet. Piglet had been one of the great ones, once. Piglet had been one of the poujadas, one of the endarillos, one of the nogales. He had been one of the greatest nogales there had ever been, but he was not one of the greatest nogales any more. He did not go up to the Front, either.

Piglet was sitting at his usual table, looking at an empty glass of enjarda.

‘I thought you were out,' said Pooh.

‘No,' said Piglet. ‘I was not out.'

‘You were thinking about the wound?' said Pooh.

‘No,' said Piglet. ‘I was not thinking about the wound. I do not think about the wound very much, any more.'

They watched them going up to the Front, in the snow.

‘We could go and see Eeyore,' said Pooh.

‘Yes,' said Piglet. ‘We could go and see Eeyore.'

They went out into the snow.

‘Do you hear the guns?' said Pooh.

‘Yes,' said Piglet. ‘I hear the guns.'

When they got to Eeyore's house, he was looking at an empty glass of ortega. They used to make ortega by taking the new orreros out of the ground very early in the morning, before the dew had dried, and crushing them between the mantemagni, but they did not make it that way any more. Not since the fighting up at the Front.

‘Do you hear the guns?' said Eeyore.

‘Yes,' said Pooh. ‘I hear the guns.'

‘It is still snowing,' said Piglet.

‘Yes,' said Eeyore. ‘That is the way it is.'

‘That is the way it is,' said Pooh.

Rural Reading

2008-10-16T19:45:00.004-05:00

Yesterday morning, as I was reading up on the recent Nobel Laureate, I noticed that one of his books that had actually been translated into English was printed by David Godine, a small, fiercely independent publisher based in Boston. They consistently keep a clever list of vaguely obscure works in handsome, durable editions. Once I saw the book's cover, I remembered that we stocked it at the SJC Bookstore, which in turn made me recall several titles by the same publisher which we did not stock. In our move, however, I completely forgot about them. So, in the late afternoon rain I went downtown to the Ann Arbor Public Library and checked out First Person Rural, a collection of essays by "sometime farmer" Noel Perrin. Although they were written for a couple of country magazines and the New Yorker in the seventies, they still offer sound farming advice for the uninitiated.

This morning, after I fixed Melody's lunch and she left for work, I sat down with the rest of the coffee and read the whole thing through by noon. As Mr Perrin extolled the various pleasures of agrarian life, I laughed out loud more than once. For example, he opens "Buying a Chainsaw," with this paragraph: "If I were to move to an old-fashioned farm, everything quaint and hand made like a scene from Old Sturbridge Village, and could bring just one piece of modern machinery with me, I wouldn't hesitate a second. I'd bring my chainsaw. It's noisy, it's dangerous, it pollutes the air -- and I love it." He then goes on to describe what constitutes a good saw, how to buy one, and why you inevitably need a good serviceman. I probably like the essay as much as I do because it reminds me of other amateur farmers I know, perhaps especially Dr Garner. The next essay, however, is even better. He describes how, after much trial and error, he arrived at the perfect fencepost. This is what he suggests:

First learn to recognize all the trees you have. If you don't already know how to chainsaw, learn to. Then start looking for stands of young trees that need thinning. In the absence of cedar, wild cherry or tamarack is best, though both hemlock and white pine will do. ... If you're smart, you will have cut all these posts where you can get pretty close to them with a pickup truck, which you now drive out there. Bring your wife (or husband, or unsuspecting houseguest) and an extra pair of ear protectors. Open the tailgate and load the first three or four posts in the back of the truck. While he or she holds the first post steady, you sharpen it with your chain saw. This amounts to cutting a slice off each side the full length of the chain saw blade, getting the victim in the back of the truck to turn the post 90 degrees, and cutting off two more slices. The whole procedure takes less than a minute. It leaves, incidentally, a pile of fluffy shavings, which children find irresistible.

Of course, now that I know how to make a fencepost, all I need is some land and a little livestock.

Wild trampings and the Great Tim Ernst

2008-09-27T13:52:00.003-05:00

Some of us know Tim Ernst as that great wild thing of Arkansas' Ozarks. The man who steps from mountain top to mountain top, photographing marvelous things and writing the finest trail guides yet to be written in the English language. The man who puts mile markers on trails, and lets you know, in tenths of miles, how far it is to the next reliable water source.

And the area of the country his trail goes through is without a doubt one of the finest, and the trail one of the least traveled in America. At any rate, National Geographic just published a writeup on the Ozark Highlands Trail, and you can read it all here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/10/ozark-trail/white-text

A Thesis Waiting to Be Written

2008-09-24T17:56:00.003-05:00

This is primarily aimed at Jeremy, for whom it is most appropriate. A few days ago we were listening to Gillian Welch's album Revival in the car on the way to church. I was reflecting on the fact that Welch's songs, despite their recent origin, fit so well into the tradition of American folk songs. One of the primary reasons for this, I concluded, was that they treat the afterlife (Heaven, particularly) well and often as a subject of hope. For example, from Orphan Girl: "When he calls me, I will be able, to see my family, at God's table / I'll see my mother, my father, my sister, my brother / I'll be an orphan no more." That this is a vital and healthy longing, mostly forgotten by our society, is what I'll contend. Why it's presence in the tradition of American folk music? One could say that it was simply the poverty and deprivation in which much of these songs were written. But that doesn't answer the question of why these songs still ring true, still touch us at a profound level. Perhaps it's because they feed some spiritual hunger in us that ultimately cannot be dismissed. These songs lack busyness, they order our perspective, and place us under the aspect of eternity, where our longings are most deeply stirred. "I will know my Savior, when I come to him / By the marks where the nails have been."

Being For the Benefit of Mr. Byte

2008-09-09T10:56:00.003-05:00

I don't know whether any of you heard this, but Google has announced that it will scan and make publicly available the archives of most newspapers world-wide, beginning with The New York Times and The Washington Post and ending, this side of the Atlantic, with America's oldest still in-print newspaper, the The Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph (started in 1764). The scans will basically replace microfilm, you can access them for free from anywhere, and they'll be searchable.

At the risk of offending my Luddite fan base, I think this is a good thing, much like Google's earlier project of digitizing books.

Personally, I hate reading books on computers and am not at all a fan of e-books and the like. Count on me to buy the hard copy as long as they still make them. But the book project had an unintended consequence that really brought home to me the value of this kind of thing.

When Google started their book scanning project, they scanned pretty much all books they could find. This created a big uproar in publishing because authors obviously wanted to be paid for their work, and Google's offering is free. The publishers won. Because of copyright laws, Google can't make the full text of any book available that are still under copyright protection. Right now that would be anything published after 1933 and/or anything that writers who published before then renewed the copyrights on.

And here come the good news: Instead, Google has been focusing on scanning old books, especially from the 19th century into the 19-teens. And that means that for my academic projects, which delve back into major sources from the 1750s through 1890s that maybe three libraries in the world have a copy of and that I could never get my hands on without traveling to Prague or Budapest or London or or Vienna or Berlin (I know, darn) or at least Cambdrige, Mass., I now have the option of reading those books... on my laptop, thirty seconds after I found out I needed to look at them.

And that, my friends, even with its regrettable side-effects and limitations, is pretty darn great.

Chick Lit Forever!

2008-09-09T10:28:00.004-05:00

Don't worry. I still hate romance novels. I still disdain fem lit. I still think Darcy is a girl, and Bridget Jones would have done better if she had kept her diary to herself. And I only read Gossip Girl so I can be ahead of the T.V. show... And you know why? It's not because I'm a chauvinist. I mean, not only. It's because George Eliot herself said I should, and I don't dare disagree with her.

Her essay "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" is hilarious, and it still applies to almost every book in the genre, as well as most movies of the romantic comedy variety. Nobody who endeavors to teach, critique, or even chat about scribblings by the decorative sex can afford not to have read it. So do. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll wish it weren't so true. And you can blame your prejudices on me. Best of all worlds.

Another Reason for English Major Happiness

2008-08-02T14:24:00.007-05:00

I discovered Penguin's new series, Great Books for Boys, while browsing in the local bookstore today. Excellent covers and excellent books. It's also nice to see books geared directly for boys that are of the old school adventuring variety. I'm sure girls would enjoy them too.

Education and Class-ism

2008-07-28T10:21:00.002-05:00

I don't know which is more disheartening: the fact that the author thought this article was necessary, the fact that he just now figured this out, or the fact that he still comes across as pompous (one of the good things about going to a 'mediocre school' "is that it teaches you to relate to stupid people"). I often felt like people at our beloved alma matter acted like they were above "working class" people, and I'm positive that some of Jennie's colleagues at Rutgers thought they were better than people with less scholarly education. One of things I'm most grateful for in my life is that I'm equally at ease among blue collar, white collar, no collar people, etc... (I'm not so at ease among billionaires, but I don't run into them that often). I count that as some of the best education I ever received.

Happy Birthday Mr. Hopkins

2008-07-28T09:53:00.003-05:00

Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.

Lullaby for Lucia

2008-07-23T00:15:00.005-05:00

Fleet Foxes
"White Winter Hymnal"

Just a little older than Lucia, the five-piece Fleet Foxes released their first full-length album on the 3rd of June, but they have already become the critics' little darlings with their self-styled "baroque harmonic pop." If you like this particular track, download it at Pitchfork. The video, which is at least as clever as the melody, is directed by the lead vocalist's brother, Sean. Oh, and thanks to Lauren, who found it first.

Sweet dreams, little one.

The Current Face of Film

2008-07-21T21:47:00.010-05:00

See them both. Really.

More Happiness

2008-07-14T19:54:00.002-05:00

Today I left the library with nearly four feet of books. Free books.

This morning one of my professors had arranged for us to meet in one of the smart classrooms on the library's lower level. After class, as I came up the stairs, I stumbled upon a long table just as two young aides were beginning to set out several carts of books. Apparently just leftover donations, most of the books had never even been cataloged. And they were just giving them away. I was particularly pleased to pick up The Poetry of Robert Frost, a complete collection of all eleven books, and the Selected Poems of John Crowe Ransom. Also, a couple in my stack bear a surname quite important to the literary history of Sewanee, and I wonder if they once belonged to a certain Andrew Lytle.

English Major Happiness

2008-07-08T10:32:00.003-05:00

OK, I should not admit to getting too excited about these things. But I think the new Penguin book cover for Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is awesome. (This is the front cover, not the spine.)

Lucia

2008-07-07T11:10:00.010-05:00

Announcing the birth of Lucia Hopkins Carr
Born July 1, 2008 at 8.30 pm,
Weighing 8.05 lbs, 19 inches long.

Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers!

We arrived at the hospital last Monday for a routine sonogram, and quickly found out that the amniotic fluids surrounding the baby were dangerously low. After some attempts to induce labor, the midwife decided that a C-section was the only possibility for a healthy baby. She was right, as we found out afterwards, though at the time it was quite a blow to our hopes for a natural labor. Thankfully, both mother and baby (and father) are all happy and healthy and enjoying their new life together at home. Please continue to keep Lydia in your prayers for a quick recovery from a pretty major operation.

The Need of Being Versed in Country Things

2008-06-18T20:18:00.003-05:00

I take the old way to the Mountain. Instead of following Hwy 72 all the way to I-24, some twenty miles out of town, after crossing Crow Creek, I turn onto AL-117, a forgotten two-lane road that runs more or less north through the open hollows that lie between the small arms of Summers Top and Warren Peak. There are some corn fields and some cows, a couple of tiny towns, but mostly just the rolling hills of north Alabama that really are indistinguishable from middle Tennessee. For me, this where the drive begins. Seeing the countryside unfurl before me as I take the sharp turns is tremendously satisfying. At the state line AL-117 becomes TN-56, and I cross a second set of railroad tracks. The road is flat here, and it winds wide around the base of the mountain. On the way home the other night, when the moon was almost full, I saw a field on fire. It was a bright, smoky line some 100 yards long. My dad guesses that the owner was burning off the weeds and their seeds before he puts in beans sometime in July. Several miles later, I pass No Business Rd, which according to my map, dead ends in Crabtree Hollow. Shortly after this the road begins to climb, and once I crest the Mountain, I turn onto Hwy 41, less than a mile from the campus. In the mornings, the drive has become something of a ritual for me. And, after a week of reading Frost, I have these lines in my head:

Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

Something old, something new

2008-05-16T16:47:00.009-05:00

Praising it New, an anthology of that loose collection of belletrists, poets and professors called the 'New Critics,' arrived on bookstore shelves less than a week ago. Its arrival was preceded by a couple of positive reviews, one in the Chronicle Review (nod to Mr. Reed, who posted it on our favorite organ of social networking) and another in last month’s New Criterion. There seems to be a general feeling that the time has come for a re-appraisal of the New Critics, needed particularly in today's steadily declining English departments.

As Harding English graduates, I think we have a somewhat different perspective on the New Critics than our graduate colleagues who attended mainstream colleges and universities. Although we've learned as a matter of academic history that the New Critics lost their prominence to the Theorists back in the 60's and 70's, to us it just seems like a few years ago that they were the kings of literary criticism. On the whole, our department, like a quiet few left in the country, held the same basic assumptions as the New Critics about how to discuss literature: close textual examination and explication, with aesthetic and moral concerns in the forefront. This seemed to be changing as we were graduating, and I don’t doubt that within the coming years the predominance of New Criticism at Harding will fade out, replaced by different preoccupations. But, by and large, we were the unknowing exception to the rule of most American English departments, who were busy fleshing out a Critical Theory based on ideas from French continental philosophy and American cultural movements in identity politics.

Does the fade-out of New Criticism that is happening at Harding have to happen? Are those voices locked inevitably in the past, and were we merely playing an intellectual game by taking their ideas seriously? Praising it New, simply by its appearance at this critical time when Theory seems to have reached the limits of its predominance (see also the recent collection of essays Theory’s Empire), offers a justification for answering these questions with a qualified ‘No.’ If we accept this, then the question becomes ‘where do we go from here?’ A kind of fossilized New Criticism seems unsatisfactory, attempting to keep itself alive without support from any except a few English departments in the country. An unreflective acceptance of Critical Theory is also problematic, particularly when it assumes the irrelevance of the ideas developed by the New Critics. Is there a way to bring the New Critics back into the larger conversation of an English Studies dominated by Critical Theory, holding back the tide long enough for something like a debate on equal terms about fundamental questions in the study of literature? If so, how?

References:
Praising it New
What We Owe the New Critics
Grammars of a Possible World
Theory's Empire

Happy Birthday Annie

2008-04-30T18:43:00.004-05:00

The presence of God:
he picked me up
and swung me like a bell.
I saw the trees
on fire, I rang
a hundred prayers of praise.

from "Tickets for a Prayer Wheel," 1974

...

Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split.

from Holy the Firm, 1977

Reviews of several books, including a review of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Eudora Welty, in the New York Times, and a short interview on NPR about her most recent novel, The Maytrees.

Psalm 3

2008-04-26T16:33:00.002-05:00

Friends,

This week Lydia and I are up in Vermont for Holy Week. We have been going to lots of services, and I am slowly getting into the rhythm of liturgical life. One of the constants that I listen for is the use of the Psalms. Certain 'fixed Psalms' are used in each different service, and act as an entryway into the liturgy. At Matins services, we begin with the 'six Psalms' - Psalms 3, 38, 63, 88, 103, and 143. The first, Psalm 3, has been running through my mind a lot, particularly this week. You are all in my thoughts as Pascha approaches. Whether or not you've already celebrated Easter, have a glorious Resurrection Day.

Psalm 3

A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.

Lord, how are they increased that trouble me!
many are they that rise up against me.

Many there be which say of my soul,
There is no help for him in God. Selah.

But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me;
my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.

I cried unto the Lord with my voice,
and he heard me out of his holy hill. Selah.

I laid me down and slept; I awaked;
for the Lord sustained me.

I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people,
that have set themselves against me round about.

Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God:
for thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone;

thou has broken the teeth of the ungodly.
Salvation belongeth unto the Lord:
thy blessing is upon the people. Selah.

Backpacking pictures

2008-04-20T14:38:00.005-05:00

Photographs from our spring break trip are finally off our camera and on the computer, so I thought I'd post some. Note the weather. The fact that I am out in it should impress upon everyone what a good recreational companion-wife I am. I have since sworn never to go backpacking in subfreezing temperatures again.

Don and Julia drove us to the trailhead. When we got out, it was snowing horizontally. I tried to appear to be happy anyway.

This picture is from the next day. It had stopped snowing, but it was still too cold to sleep that night. Also that night, we unfortunately shared a shelter with a snoring woman named Newt. We were afraid she might shake down the mountain. I couldn't feel my feet at all that night. The kid with Jeremy in this picture is from church. We were standing on Big Cedar, on our way to Blood Mountain, where we camped that night. Blood Mountain is the highest point on the Georgia AT.

When we're in Arkansas in a couple of weeks, we want to climb Petit Jean and Sugarloaf again, for old times' sake. Jonathan, are you up for it?

Congratulations Bob

2008-04-08T19:55:00.000-05:00

Citing his "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power," Bob Dylan received a Special Citation in this year's Pulitzer Prizes. Within the last several years the Board has apparently been expanding the scope the music prize through posthumously awarding the same distinction to George Gershwin in 1997, Duke Ellington in 1998, Thelonious Monk in 2006, and John Coltrane in 2007. Dylan, however, appears to be the first not to have worked in jazz.

Anyone recognize the names below? Apparently we have them to thank.

Music Jurors, 2008 Pulitzer Prizes

Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of African-American Music and Department Chair, Music Department, Harvard University

Dwight Andrews, Composer and Associate Professor, music theory and jazz studies, Emory University

Steven Blier, faculty member, Juilliard, and Artistic Director and Co-Founder, New York Festival of Song, New York City

Tim Page, Music Critic, The Washington Post

Steven Stucky, Composer and Given Foundation Professor of Composition, Cornell University

Gentrification

2008-03-31T11:50:00.002-05:00

I don't know how many of you deal with gentrification from day to day. My guess would be that it's not something Jeremy and Kelly have to think about too much (I could be wrong), but for those of us in more urban areas it's often a reality of life. So enjoy this little article.

Harding Graduation (5/9)

2008-03-25T11:35:00.001-05:00

Will any of you attend?

AT

2008-03-14T11:17:00.003-05:00

So, we've been on the trail. Good trip, overall, I think, on the grounds that every day spent hiking is a good day. It was 23 degrees with horizontal snow when we got out of the car, and our friend had a little trouble making the miles. Once we decided that we weren't going to get it all done, the trip got better. The first night we camped in a little gap, behind some evergreens, which blocked most of the wind for us. We awoke to the sounds of something running around our tent. Turned out to be a couple of Rottweilers pulling our food bag down and eating most of the contents. They looked like this:

The beasts consumed: 2 pounds beef jerky, 1 pound summer sausage, 1 pound cheddar cheese, 1 plastic wrapper that had been on last night's sausage, 1/2 gallon bag of trail mix, several packets of oatmeal, and 7-8 foil-wrapped granola bars,* including the foil. They turned their noses up at pepper jack cheese, and this freaky jerky that Kelly likes. I sang the final verse of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" at them, as they retreated.

As always, we met a lot of good people on the trail, and, as occurs somewhat more infrequently, we met a girl who snored so loudly I feared that the entire mountain would give way. We shared a shelter with her, not knowing this to be true. We got off the trail a little bit early, in part because the bulk of our food had succumbed to the beasts, and in part because the miles just weren't going to get done. I'll post some more photos here in a bit.

*I made these bars in an attempt to not need to make coffee while hiking. They contained: oats, honey, chocolate, and lots of coffee beans. Enough, at least, to set me up for a whole day.

LibraryThing

2008-03-05T19:38:00.006-05:00

Aside from certain exceptions, most of us have a lot of books. And most of us organize them. When I helped Taylor move some things into the dorm at the College last summer, I noticed that he tended keep his series paperbacks arranged by publisher: Oxford's World Classics, Penguin Classics, etc. More recently they have been contently intermingled with the considerable collection of Mrs. Lydia Carr, but now strictly by alphabetical order. I must admit, I tend to agree. Though a certain visual appeal may be lost in having tall, handsome hardbacks next to tattered, thin paperbacks, I much prefer a book I own to have a place.* However, in contrast to Lydia, I like lots of subsections. With poetry, fiction, and drama, my books are arranged by nationality starting with the Greeks. Then I proceed alphabetically by author, except with British Isles authors, which are arranged chronologically, a habit I picked up from Anne Fadiman.

Online, it is quite different. Since September of last year, I have been cataloging my books with LibraryThing. Initially, I was interested in the site merely as a more bibliographically accurate and less commercial alternative to Amazon. As I spent more time with the site, I fell into tagging my books, and I have come to be quite impressed at how LibraryThing lets you see your books in a new light. Tag your books however you wish, and the resulting tagcloud immediately reveals quite a bit about your library. I knew, for instance, I favored the 20th century, but I didn't consciously realize how extensively. Nor did I realize just how many translations I had. But this is all old hat. The real reason I felt the need to share is because of the new feature, LibraryThing Local. As you can see in the previous link, old Arkansas is a little bare. But try Chicago or New York, and it's a different story. I think trips into the city just got a little more bookish.

*Footnote: [Strangely, this tendency hardly holds for books I borrow. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I have stacks of library books throughout the house. But even books from friends migrate from the couch to the armchair and back. Also, having a static place tends to be less true as the particular book departs from literature. My philosophy, theology, and reference books have a particular shelf but less consistent order. History books are often tucked away in the same leftover corners. Sorry, Kelly.]

UPDATE: 5pm March 15
LibraryThing Local exceeds 20, ooo venues. 6812 bookstores. 12721 libraries.

I love Hippies!

2008-03-04T12:46:00.005-05:00

Aren't hippies great? They want to save the earth so badly that they even put marijuana out for the recycling. In the comments leave your best guess at the conversation that led to putting pot on the curb.

St. Augustine on Interpretation

2008-02-17T17:05:00.007-05:00

Biblical controversialists seem to forget that many of the interpretive thickets they find themselves in were assailed long ago by the Church Fathers. In reading through the Slate.com Hot Document that Steven posted, I was reminded of some passages that I came across in reading City of God recently for tutorial. St. Augustine is helpful because he knows the scriptures thoroughly, and he has thought long and deeply about some of the most difficult passages in the Old and New Testaments. He helps us step outside the narrow confines of current debates, presenting a way of interpreting scripture that accounts for both historical and prophetic matter. Following are a few salient quotes that I marked in my reading.

On the creation of the world in Genesis:
“The world was in fact made with time, if at the time of its creation change and motion came into existence. This is clearly the situation in the order of the first six or seven days, in which morning and evening are named, until God’s creation was finished on the sixth day, and on the seventh day God’s rest is emphasized as something conveying a mystical meaning. What kind of days these are is difficult or even impossible for us to imagine, to say nothing of describing them.” (XI.6)

On the obscurity of Scripture:
“There is something to be gained from the obscurity of the inspired discourses of Scripture. The differing interpretations produce many truths and bring them to the light of knowledge; and the meaning of an obscure passage may be established either by the plain evidence of the facts, or by other passages of less difficulty. Sometimes the variety of suggestions leads to the discovery of the meaning of the writer; sometimes this meaning remains obscure, but the discussion of the difficulties is the occasion for the statement of some other truths.” (XI.19)

On Allegory as the authoritative method of interpreting the Old Testament (after quoting from Galatians 4.21-25, in which Hagar and Sarah are taken as figures for the Old and New Covenants):
“This manner of interpretation, which comes down to us with apostolic authority, reveals to us how we are to understand the Scriptures of the two covenants, the old and the new.” (XV.2)

On historical truth in Genesis:
“My present duty, as it seems to me, is to defend the historical truth of the scripture account, in case it may seem incredible that a city should have been built by one man at a time when there were apparently only four men in existence on the earth – or rather three men, after Cain had killed his brother.” (XV.8)

On the interplay of historical and prophetic meanings in Scripture:
“These hidden meanings of inspired Scripture we track down as best we can, with varying degrees of success; and yet we all hold confidently to the firm belief that these historical events and the narrative of them have always some foreshadowing of things to come, and are always to be interpreted with reference to Christ and his Church, which is the City of God . . . To be sure, we must not suppose that all the events in the narrative are symbolical; but those which have no symbolism are interwoven in the story for the sake of those which have this further significance. ” (XVI.2)

Peer Review

2008-02-13T16:17:00.002-05:00

We, the contributors to this blog, are all Christians (some more liberal than others) and some of us are scholars or aspiring scholars. So take a look at Slate's hot document for today and post your thoughts. Maybe we can get a heated argument going. That would warm things up for me in the cold and dreary northeast. I seriously doubt it will start an argument, I just think it's interesting and I haven't posted in a long time.

Shall We Gather?

2008-02-10T14:14:00.000-05:00

Our spring break is March 7-16. Do we want to try to get together during this time, or wait until the summer? Where? (We probably will not be driving to Annapolis again this year, so that's out for us.) Let's share some thoughts. If no North Locust Conference strikes back, Jeremy and I will probably do the Georgia section of the AT and work on papers.

So, there's the question. Discuss.

Ash Wednesday

2008-02-06T20:52:00.000-05:00

...

Abbot Pambo questioned Abbot Anthony saying: What ought I do? And the elder replied: Have no confidence in your own virtuousness. Do not worry about a thing once it has been done. Control your tongue and your belly.

...

A brother asked one of the elders: What good thing shall I do, and have life thereby? The old man replied: God alone knows what is good. However, I have heard it said that someone inquired of Father Abbot Nisteros the great, the friend of Abbot Anthony, asking: What good works shall I do? and that he replied: Not all works are alike. For Scripture says that Abraham was hospitable and God was with him. Elias loved solitary prayer, and God was with him. And David was humble, and God was with him. Therefore, whatever you see your soul to desire according to God, do that thing, and you shall keep your heart safe.

...

Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, my meditation and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts: now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why not be totally changed into fire?

...

from The Wisdom of the Desert
translated by Thomas Merton

Typography

2008-02-05T20:04:00.001-05:00

After a long day at the Bookstore I was happy to find the new catalog from Hoefler & Frere-Jones in my mailbox. When we got our Mac nearly three years ago I immediately fell in love with Hoefler Text, which the company designed exclusively for Apple in 1991. Beautifully old-fashioned, it even has text figures. (You know, the numbers that ascend and descend below the line in all the dusty, old hardbacks you read as a kid. Georgia, our current typeface, does this too, though not nearly so well.) Anyway, by extension, I also fell in love with H&FJ. They are slowly increasing my appreciation for modern design. Their newest one is a well-balanced slab-serif called Archer. But after seeing the catalog my new favorite is Requiem. Billed as "a true renaissance letter," I think they are quite right. Ah! old-fashioned as ever.

budget cuts and bad morale in Florida universities

2008-01-28T14:34:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure to what extent people outside of Florida are aware of our ongoing state financial crisis. Though one of the wealthiest states in the union, Floridians don't pay a lot in taxes, and under the current (Republican Charlie Crist) and previous (Republican Jeb Bush)
administrations, that trend has continued. What money the state does collect is poorly allocated; Florida education and especially universties are severely underfunded. For us personally, all of this is suddenly beginning to hit the fan.

The university system is being required to give millions of budgeted dollars back to the state. All hiring lines for new professors have been frozen, leaving key positions unfilled. Jeremy is no longer allowed to print syllabi; his department can't afford the ink and paper. There's talk of tenured professors being laid off, and of graduate funding dropping while class sizes swell into the hundreds. Morale in my department among both professors and graduate students is as low as I've ever seen it.

And, one of my favorite professors here, a Caribbeanist called Matt Childs, is leaving for better pay and better research opportunities in South Carolina, a state that is, incidentally, much poorer than Florida, but chooses to a reasonable amount of its budget on education. The key reason behind his going: a Florida law that won't allow any state worker to travel to a "terrorist state." He's a historian of Cuba and cannot do his research.

Read more about it here. http://www.sptimes.com/2008/01/23/State/State_universities_fe.shtml

Public Domain Books on the Cheap

2008-01-11T12:42:00.000-05:00

For those who might be interested: Public Domain Reprints offers a cheap-ish and easy way to get physical copies of hard to find/expensive public domain books you might need or want. I've been trying not to buy books since I have access to good libraries and I feel like I should use those resources first, but if you like to own the books you read this could be an extremely helpful resource. Let me know what you think of it. Also, Librivox is good for public domain audiobooks. I think I've shared Librivox with some of you before, I just wanted to put my recommendation out there for the world to see.

A finished guitar

2007-12-24T18:29:00.000-05:00

Breaking the record for posts in a day, I present to you the finished guitar. In progress since late April, I am glad to see it done, and ready to be working on another one.

A Few More Christmas-ish Things

2007-12-24T13:08:00.000-05:00

Here's a small grab-bag of Christmas reading and listening that Locust Street patrons might enjoy as a companion to Kelly's music list:

"A Child's Christmas in Wales", read aloud by Dylan Thomas himself. Memories of a Welsh yuletide that abound with rumbling uncles ("there are always uncles"), quiet, brittle aunts who drink too much port only once a year; snowballs, cats, and candy cigarettes.

"A Christmas Carol", by one Sir Dickens. I don't know if this read-aloud version is any good, but others are probably available. We listened to this on the road up to Vermont, and I was struck again by its penetrating wisdom and homely mystery. If you're so inclined, also look at Anthony Esolen on the tale.

A Patristic account of the Incarnation, which is what we (nearly ostensibly) celebrate around this time of year: De Incarnatione, by Athanasius, which admirably relates the comedy and triumph ushered in at Christmas. God is here described as a Divine Infiltrator, quietly working beyond the radars of power to rescue man from the corruption of death occasioned by his involvement with sin.

A couple of short essays on Christmas and Advent: Anthony Esolen (again) and Richard John Neuhaus on the antidote to the nostalgia-laced Christmas that Dylan Thomas tends toward: the constant renewal that it contains within it. Neuhaus says, "It is not a matter of revving ourselves up to experience again the wonder of the Christ Mass. There is no point in trying to recapitulate Christmas as you knew it when you were, say, seven years old. That way lies sentimentalities unbounded." It is not that Memory itself is the fount of unbounded sentimentality, but rather the desire to revive innocence falsely, by living only in Memory. Because Memory, despite her palatial expanse, needs a fire from outside its subjective gaze. Which is the invasion of Christ at Christmas. That's why it will not fade, for all the tawdry depression of shopping malls and haggard faces. To paraphrase Hopkins, "And for all this, Christmas is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things."

Merry Christmas!

Christmas music

2007-12-24T12:16:00.000-05:00

Dear Everett and everyone else,

This may be too late to do you much good for this year, but here's a start on next year's lineup of holiday tunes. Karie, my sister, asserts, "We figure we're pretty much the most knowledgable experts around" on this topic. Listen and learn.

Christmas albums we recommend:

Michael W. Smith's two seasonal albums, It's A Wonderful Christmas and Christmastime. Despite my feelings about the quality of Christian music in general, these are both worthy offerings.

Loreena McKennitt, To Drive the Cold Winter Away. Her haunting soprano brings old European carols to life.

Mannheim Steamroller, Christmas, 1984. This is the best MS album in our opinion, particularly the track titled "Stille Nacht." Germany has given the world two wonderful things, among others: Jonathan and this song.

Amy Grant, Home for Christmas. The second of her three holiday albums, this one is our favorite with tracks like "Immanuel, God with Us," "Breath of Heaven," and some quality choral/orchestral arrangements of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" and others.

John Denver, Rocky Mountain Christmas. This was a favorite record album in both the Cross and Elliott households, and will certainly be part of our future. The best tracks are "Aspenglow" and "Christmas for Cowboys."

Emmylou Harris, The Christmas Album (Light of the Stable).

Sufjan Stevens has an enormous 5-CD set Christmas album, as well, and I haven't listened to it thoroughly, but it certainly merits consideration.

I also recommend purchasing a full recording of Handel's Messiah to enjoy especially at this time of year. I sang all three hours of it with the Tallahassee Chorus in November. Listening is not as good as singing, but still nice.

Now, here are some single track favorites:

Perry Como, "Home for the Holidays"
Louis Armstong, "Cool Yule" An absolute must!
Transiberian Orchestra, "Sarajevo"
Andy Williams, "It's the Holiday Season" Or alternatively, this may be titled "Happy Holidays"
Harry Belafonte, "Mary's Boy-Child"
Bing Crosby, "White Christmas"
Bing Crosby and David Bowie sing a medley of "Little Drummer Boy" and a song called "Peace on Earth." This is one of the last recordings Crosby did before he died.
Mariah Carey, "All I Want for Christmas Is You"
The Carpenters, "Merry Christmas, Darling"
Petula Clark, "Happiest Christmas"
Doris Day, "Toyland"
"March of the Toys" by any good orchestra
The Muppets, "We Need A Little Christmas"
Burl Ives, "Holly Jolly Christmas"
Mahalia Jackson, "Away in a Manger"
Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLaughlin, "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings"
Alabama, "Christmas in Dixie"
The Judds, "Light of the Stable"

This is not a complete list, but it's a start. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. Love, Kelly, Karie, and Jeremy

Winter Reading

2007-12-09T21:27:00.000-05:00

Hullo all,

Aside from making a baby, Lydia and I have been doing a lot of reading lately - (nearly) all of it assigned, however. For Winter Break, I've been planning a v. short reading list to enjoy during my time off. It follows:

1. Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso, trans. Anthony Esolen - a much-neglected epic poem on the First Crusade, translated by a fellow who has also done Dante's Commedia and Lucrecius' De Rerum Natura.

2. Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin - This was a gift from Lydia to me of one of her fave novels about an Italian in the First World War. I've read a bit of it so far, and the style is pleasantly intriguing. It's neither realism nor magic realism, but something in between. The narration moves from satire to lyricism often and adeptly.

3. Elements of Faith by Christos Yannaras - Some Orthodox theology to round out the list. This is a so-far interesting and slightly dense introduction to the church by a philosophy professor at the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences (for Greek readers, of whose number I do not count myself a part).

Any hopes/suggestions for winter reading from the rest of N Locust?

BTW, we will be in Searcy for a day and a half or so right after graduation if anyone will be near. We will necessarily be with family most of the time, but perhaps we can meet up for some Bobby's or Mexican food (oh, the plethora of dining options in that town!).

Merlefest

2007-12-08T20:14:00.000-05:00

That's right, Merlefest, 2008. Kelly and I will be there this year as volunteers. So named for Merle Watson, son of Doc Watson. We found the ticket price hard to swallow, but you get in free if you volunteer. Tail end of April. Doc's playing, all four nights. Old Crow Medicine Show, Ralph Stanley, many others. So those of you who want to see Doc Watson, and camp with us in western North Carolina, volunteer for the fest, unless you're wealthy enough to pay for the ticket. Many's the time I remember Reinhardt hoping to see Doc before he shuffled off this mortal coil. "Oh, that mine ears might hear the melodious strains of his Gallagher 6 string, before he plays before God himself." So Reinhardt, will you join us for four glorious days of Appalachian music? Can you refuse Ralph Stanley and his Clinch Mountain Boys? See you in Wilkesboro, friends, see you in Wilkesboro.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T11:17:00.000-05:00

I hope you all have a lovely holiday. Here in Marietta, the leaves have come up trumps and provided an appropriate spectacle, matched only by the number of dishes set out on the counter for feasting.

At home, Jeremy and I added a pumpkin, several apples, and a blue wine bottle to our moose antler to create a cornucopia. If I had a picture of it, I'd add it to the post, but since I do not, here instead is a photograph of something I'm thankful for:

Expecting . . .

2007-11-17T10:34:00.000-05:00

Hello all,

I'd like to announce that Lydia and I are expecting an baby, who (Lord willing) should arrive sometime this summer - probably latish June. I'm arguing for (if it's a man child) Constantine Barrow Carr, and we both agree that Sophia is a good girl's name. I think the boy's name should come from one of the Christian Emperors, but Lydia is somewhat skeptical. However, we will take suggestions if you have any.

What I've been up to

2007-11-17T10:29:00.000-05:00

So most of you have probably been thinking, "With this whole Barry Bonds indictment thing and all, I know Jeremy has been doing some work on Stetson Kennedy, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ntozake Shange, but what has he been doing to distract himself from that? How has he been avoiding work? " Well, friends, here's your answer:

That's a guitar neck to the right, a set of bent sides stuck in that mold, and a hand plane I've been restoring to make it all easier. I've got the top of the guitar mostly done as well, and the back is close. From here, it's mostly assembly and finish work. I'm hoping to have it done in December. And I hope that ya'll have a wonderful (or wunderbar, as Jonathan might say) Thanksgiving.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

2007-11-09T11:01:00.000-05:00

Today, in 1953, Dylan Thomas died at St Vincent Hospital in New York City. He was only 39. There are several of his poems at the Poetry Foundation, and there are a couple of readings at the Poetry Archive. I love the contrast in the following poems.
... ... ...

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
- John Donne

... ... ...

And death shall have no dominion.

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.

Under the windings of the sea

They lying long shall not die windily;

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,

Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;

Faith in their hands shall snap in two,

And the unicorn evils run them through;

Split all ends up they shan’t crack;

And death shall have no dominion.

No more may gulls cry at their ears

Or waves break loud on the seashores;

Where blew a flower may a flower no more

Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

Though they be mad and dead as nails,

Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;

Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,

And death shall have no dominion.
- Dylan Thomas

Two Poems: Norman MacCaig

2007-10-10T18:49:00.000-05:00

Many of you know that I have taken a job at the St. John's College Bookstore. In my few weeks there I have had a number of things recommended to me, but this is the best so far: a Scottish poet named Norman MacCaig (1910-1996). He is well known in Scotland, though he won only one award, the Queen's Medal for Poetry. He was trained as a classicist at the University of Edinburgh and taught throughout his life. Like Heaney, his themes are rural and local, but his diction tends to be simpler, less allusive. These are everyday poems. But after my initial readings they seem to bear up under close inspection. Notice the half rhymes in this first one. And I love the final question.

After

Let's choose a pretty word, say, evening,
And climb through it into the past,
Or stand on a towering If, surveying
The rosy kingdoms we have lost.

From every corner creep a thousand
Boredoms saying, Greet us. We're life.
Let's round the sunset up and milk it
Into a jug and drink it off.

Or in the hawthorn let us tangle
Our dreary look like gossamer
To shudder with that sparrow's chirping
And when the dew falls be on fire.

Or drag the distance home and chain it
There in the corner of the room
To charm us with its savage howling
And beg for fragments of our dream.

There's a clue somewhere. Can you find it?
Can you say over and over again
"Love," till its incantation makes us
Forget how much we are alone?
... .... ...

In his later years, MacCaig wrote in a looser line. The images remain controlled, concrete, and lucid. The landscape still figures prominently, but it is distant now, abstracted and measured by the memory of an old man. Somewhere within the last lines of this poem are why I read poetry.

Notations of Ten Summer Minutes

A boy skips flat stones out to sea - each does fine
till a small wave meets it head on and swallows it.
The boy will do the same.

The schoolmaster stands looking out of the window
with one Latin eye and one Greek one.
A boat rounds the point in Gaelic.

Out of the shop comes a stream
of Omo, Weetabix, BiSoDol tablets and a man
with a pocket shaped like a whisky bottle.

Lord V. walks by with the village in his pocket.
Angus walks by
spending the village into the air.

A melodeon is wheezing a clear-throated jig
on deck of the Arcadia. On the shore hills Pan
cocks a hairy ear; and falls asleep again.

The ten minutes are up, except they aren't.
I leave the village, except I don't.
The jig fades to silence, except it doesn't.
... .... ...

Dallas wedding

2007-10-03T20:10:00.000-05:00

I hope that everyone who got sick over the weekend is better now. We're fine as yet. On a happier note, here is perhaps one of the finest photographs ever taken, shot in the park before Steven and Jennie tied the knot. Note Jonathan's characteristically handsome smirk.

Old men ought to be explorers

2007-09-26T18:07:00.000-05:00

not fare well
but fare forward, voyagers

And Happy Birthday to you too, Mr Eliot.

WF

2007-09-24T18:16:00.000-05:00

Today is the eve of a certain William Faulkner's 100th birthday. Rowan Oak is serving cake and punch.

"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. Knows remembers believes a corridor in a big long garbled cold echoing building of dark red brick sootbleakened by more chimneys than its own, set in a grassless cinder-strewnpacked compound surrounded by smoking factory purlieus and enclosed by a ten foot steel-and-wire fence like a penitentiary or a zoo, where in random erratic surges, with sparrowlike childtrebling, orphans in identical and uniform blue denim in and out of remembering but knowing constant as the bleak walls, the bleak windows where in rain soot from the yearly adjacenting chimneys streaked like black tears."

The first paragraph of chapter 6, from Light in August

Celebrate as you see fit. Everett's usually good for a suggestion.

Peace

2007-09-21T12:20:00.000-05:00

Today is the International Day of Peace as established by the United Nations. It's also supposed to be a international ceasefire day as well, but I highly doubt that the US will be participating. Please pray for peace today (and everyday). I leave you with a few quotes:

"You must be the change you want to see in the world." - Ghandi

"Peace is the only battle worth waging." - Camus

"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding." - Einstein

"They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." - Book of Isaiah

Between Weddings

2007-09-14T22:15:00.001-05:00

So we brought our camera to the wedding. Not that we thought to get a picture of either Taylor or Lydia, but we did get this one. We have resolved to avoid this sin at Steven and Jennie's wedding. See you there.

Claremont, NH

2007-09-02T13:41:00.001-05:00

So, Best Budget Inn in Claremont has rooms available for the outstanding rate of $65 a night, four people per room. That's the best I could find. Kelly and I are getting into Manchester Friday, probably camping with Jesse and Cheyenne that night, staying in a hotel with the likes of you on Saturday, and flying out Sunday night, in order to be back teaching by Monday morning. Are there plans I know nothing about? Should we go ahead and get some rooms? What nights? I know Kristen and Nate have expressed some interest in this as well.

Quotations and a Question

2007-07-27T08:05:00.000-05:00

1
Plato's world, that is to say the Western world, is primarily a world for knowledge. The ability of knowledge to reproduce in the mind what beings are in reality is called truth. Therefore truth is that which is closest to being, whereof it reproduces the traits as faithfully as the image of an object in a mirror. [...] The certainty that this integration of partial truths can always be carried further is the secret of the amazing development of Western science. Yet, admirable as it is, man's science of the universe adds nothing to its reality. [...] What such a philosophy finds difficult to understand, and even admit, is that anything new should be produced at all. There is indeed an intelligible beauty, and it is the highest of all on account of its very intelligibility. The point is that the splendor of truth is specifically different from the beauty of art.
...
At the beginning and before everything else there is being. The next best after being is truth, without which being would be for us as if it were not. On the other hand, since being is best, truth already implies the good, the love of which is the love of being. Beauty is added to the other transcendentals as a supererogatory grace, which is like the flowering of being.

The Arts of the Beautiful, Etienne Gilson

2
It is by virtue of the beautiful that we are able to acquire a lasting remembrance of the true world. This is the way of philosophy. Plato describes the beautiful as that which shines forth most clearly and draws us to itself, as the very visibility of the ideal. In the beautiful presented in nature and art, we experience this convincing illumination of truth and harmony, which compels the admission: "This is true." The important message that this story [i.e Phaedrus] has to teach is that the essence of the beautiful does not lie in some realm simply opposed to reality. On the contrary, we learn that however unexpected our encounter with beauty may be, it gives us an assurance that the truth does not lie far off and inaccessible to us, but can be encountered in the disorder of reality with all its imperfections, evils, errors, extremes, and fateful confusions. The ontological function of the beautiful is to bridge the chasm between the ideal and the real.
...
We could say that the work of art signifies an increase in being.
...
Art is only encountered in a form that resists pure conceptualization. Great art shakes us because we are always unprepared and defenseless when exposed to the overpowering impact of a compelling work. Thus the essence of the symbolic lies precisely in the fact that it is not related to an ultimate meaning that could be recuperated in intellectual terms. The symbol preserves its meaning within itself.

The Relevance of the Beautiful, Hans-Georg Gadamer

3
[W]ithin the narrative of Western philosophy, with its myth of independent reason and the power of mind to transcend the limits of language and determine the limits of possible knowledge by the agency of unaided reason, metaphysical speculation (as a purely deductive enterprise of rational reflection) proves finally to be a contradiction in terms of that narrative. [...] To put the matter differently, the unity of metaphysics is a convenient fiction, a way to exclude voices, other ways of naming the difference of being from beings or the relation of the one to the many. [...] Theology is not an art that abstracts from history toward eternity, from facts toward principles, but one that -- under pressure of the history it is called upon to interpret -- finds the sphere of its narrative expanding into ever greater dimensions of the revealed, crossing the line between the creaturely and the divine (and so that between the ontic and the ontological) because that line is already crossed, not symbolically but in fact, in the concrete person and history of Jesus.
...
The Christian understanding of beauty is analogical, in two senses: in the simple analytic sense, that whatever "beauty" means is grasped only by analogy, by constant exposure to countless instances of its advent, and through constant and continuous revision; and in the more radically ontological sense, that beauty is not some property discretely inherent in particular objects, but indwells the analogical relationship with all things, each to the other, as a measure of the dynamism of their involvement with one another. The Christian use of the word "beauty" refers most properly to a relationship of donation and transfiguration, a handing over and return of the riches of being.

The Beauty of the Infinite, David Bentley Hart

In response to a recent informal discussion concerning the famous "Ode on a Grecian Urn," I post these thoughts as a prompt for thinking about the nature of poetry and its response to the world. That is, can we equate truth and beauty?

Townhome

2007-07-01T16:04:00.001-05:00

Good looking place, eh? 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, just under 1000 square feet. We close August 3rd, so it's not actually ours yet, but we've got it under contract. We'll be doing a bit of work to it as well. Paint, floors, plants in the front, etc. For the horticulturally minded, I'm thinking camellia sinensis, while Kelly is leaning towards Prunus subhirtella. And herbs in the back, of course. I know we somehow have a poll option on this blog now, but I don't know how to manage it, and don't know if this would be a worthy topic, anyways. So, sometime a long time from now, when the place is looking good, you should come. We'll have a foldout couch in the living room, courtesy of Kelly's parents, and hopefully eventually a futon in the office. The gulf coast beckons, you cannot deny its call.

Guy Time

2007-06-29T11:11:00.000-05:00

I realize that my last few post were not of an extremely serious nature, but I am changing that today. Yesterday an article, exploring the nature of buddy movies and epic movies, made reference to the fact that these sorts of films are often on the end of homo-erotic criticism. The article is mainly about surf films, but it addresses towards the end. The author says that although these films are often criticized as homoerotic, they are instead narcissistic. There is quite a discussion about the article going on today here. I would be interested in your views on this matter. Is guy time just guy time, or is there an inherently homo-erotic nature to "time with the boys"? If there is what implications does this have on our lives and our faith. Does it change the way we view male companionship, the way we view Christ and the Apostles. I, as you know, just spent a weekend with Jonathan, and even though I think he is the most handsome guy around I don't think that there is a homo-erotic nature to our friendship. I spent Easter weekend with Taylor; I do think that his curly hair is oh so adorable. But again, is that homo-erotic. Could I be wrong? What do you think?

Spice it Up!

2007-06-28T10:59:00.000-05:00

Yo!

I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really
Really really wanna zigazig ha.

If they come to New York, I'm soooo there.

Google is Funny

2007-06-21T10:47:00.001-05:00

Earlier today I needed to verify an address in the UK so I looked it up on Google maps. I found what I needed and then, just for fun, I decided to get driving directions there from here in New Jersey. The directions were fairly normal until it said "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean entering France 3,462 mi, 29 days, 0 hours." How about that? If you get bored try typing this (answer to life the universe and everything) into Google and see what happens. Oh, Google, you make me chuckle.

I'm headed to Chicago tomorrow to live it up with Jonathan, so look for the pictures on facebook. Cheers.

The 2008 North Locust Conference: A Proposal

2007-05-31T10:50:00.000-05:00

Our week in Annapolis was so exquisite; let's not wait two more years to gather again. We have already started to think about next time, and this is what we propose:

St. George Island, on Florida's Gulf Coast. We can rent a beach house for a week or so (they will be quite affordable with all of us splitting the cost), lie about on the sand, take sunrise walks, drink sangria, and prowl around nearby Apalachicola, a wonderful coastal town that boasts the best oysters in Florida, a bookshop with wildflowers out front and a wealth of local history, literature, and photography inside, and an excellent coffee shop. There are boutiques for Melody and me to explore, too. Perhaps appropriate discussion topics would be The History of Leisure or Les Vacances: A State of Mind. Maybe Taylor could give us a critique of The Real Florida, and Jeremy could talk about Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. Jeremy will wrangle crabs and cook them, I expect. And we will sit on roofs or porches and tell each other about school and work and bills and life, and be happy.

We think all of this should happen next summer sometime, perhaps early August. When you come down for Kristen and Nate's wedding, Taylor, you can see what you think. All of the rest of you can either trust us, or come visit and see for yourselves. We will take you to Papa Joe's and buy you oysters on the halfshell, baked with butter and parmesan cheese. Resist that.

On the Road

2007-05-26T15:10:00.000-05:00

I went hard up the road to Remiremont. The night darkened. I reached Remiremont at midnight, and feeling very wakeful I pushed on up the valley under great woods of pines; and at last, diverging up a little path, I settled on a clump of trees sheltered and, as I thought, warm, and lay down there to sleep till morning; but, on the contrary, I lay awake a full hour in the fragrance and on the level carpet of the pine needles looking up through the dark branches at the waning moon, which had just risen, and thinking of how suitable were pine trees for a man to sleep under.

Passages like the one above, from the Path to Rome by Hillaire Belloc, are what make the book such a pleasurable thing to read. Reading about other peoples' adventures may be the second best thing to having them oneself; at least, I have found this to be true in reading Belloc, who is writing here about a portion of his long walk from Toul, France southward to Rome. Part of the way I have attempted to keep a grip on my sanity during graduate school is in reading travel narratives, not with any attempt to locate Postcolonial Discourse or experience mind-altering Encounters with the Other, but for the simple joy of escape from the quotidian and mundane.

Last night I spoke with a German graduate student about books, while sitting on the porch at Starbucks, and he told me plaintively that he was no longer able to read for the pure enjoyment of it: "Even when I'm reading Harry Potter, I've always got the pen in hand, finding poscolonial or feminist. . ." etc., etc. I pity the poor immigrant, who has lost the point of the whole enterprise: to dig deeper into books and submit oneself to the flow of them, to put ones' own preoccupations aside, whether they are theoretical or mundane, rather than bringing them to bear on every line and incident of the text. Not that complete objectivity is the goal, but rather the 'letting oneself go' that is involved in all great activities: diving into the water, sleeping, philosophy.

I hope I never end up in that student's predicament. I suppose that is one reason why I'm leaving: to escape such a fate. However, while I've been here, travel writing, for me, has supplied what I suppose for others is provided by fantasy or science fiction - the escape from one's ordinary world and immersement in a different one.

The voice, especially in a good writer, provides a kind of personal meeting, and this meeting is succesful in travel narratives to the degree in which the narrator is good company, the sort of person one would want to actually travel in a foreign country with. That's why, no matter the copiousness of his knowlege about little hidden villages in the Alsace, I would not choose to read Rick Steeves for pleasure. Rather, I prefer writers who understand a certain enjoyment in the details of being in an interesting place, and who are able to convey to the reader the sense of moving and the spaces in-between, of which so much of travelling is. I find this in Belloc, who provides this in a way that manages to be easily sensible while avoiding the clichés of the travel brochure and the easy epiphanies of the Englishman Abroad.

Just as by being in a certain mood, one feels that it is fitting to be with certain people, so I want to read certain writers based on how I'm feeling. Evelyn Waugh's travel writing, particularly A Mediterranean Journal, provides company of an pleasing sort when I am in need of a good-natured but sarcastic and slightly lazy companion. If one is inclined toward the sort of observations that come from visiting the parlors of run-down brothels outide of Cairo or Alexandria, or of spending one's days doing nothing but sipping cocktails aboard a steamer bound for Malta, Waugh is perfect. He is the antidote to those travellers who attempt to actually Do Lots of Things when they go places. He is rather the one standing in the corner, making wry comments about the earnestness of American tourists or the relative merits of Armenian and Ethiopian waiters.

Belloc, however, is usually more the sort of wayfarer that I would rather travel with, because he Gets Things Done (thirty miles a day on foot, in fact) at the same time as being able to stop and enjoy a quart of the local wine, to comment on the middle classes and the temporal benefits of a morning mass. In a passage on the latter he gets into a discussion of activities of human necessity, a part of which I will end with. It is emblematic of the sort of Good Sense that one wants from time to time in one’s travel narrative:

Whatever is buried right into our blood from immemorial habit, that we must be certain to do if we are to be fairly happy (of course no grown man or woman can really be very happy for long – but I mean reasonably happy), and, what is more important, decent and secure of our souls. Thus one should from time to time hunt animals, or at the very least shoot at a mark; one should always drink some kind of fermented liquor with one’s food – and especially deeply upon great feast-days; one should go on the water from time to time; and one should dance on occasions; and one should sing in chorus. For all these things man has done since God put him into a garden and his eyes first became troubled with a soul. Similarly some teacher or ranter or other whose name I forget, said lately one very wise thing at least, which was that every man should do a little work with his hands.

Why We All Love Poetry

2007-05-24T12:16:00.000-05:00

Gerrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac" selection for today is a poem by X.J. Kennedy, from "Peeping Tom's Cabin: Comic Verse 1928-2008":

Ars Poetica

The goose that laid the golden egg
Died looking up its crotch
To find out how its sphincter worked.
Would you lay well? Don't watch.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

P.S. Speaking of poetesques, today is Robert Zimmermann's birthday. Happy birthday, Bob.

An American Epic

2007-05-15T08:55:00.000-05:00

Today, in 1942, Go Down, Moses was published. Though he had already published a few of the stories in The Saturday Evening Post, and the first printing initially carried the subtitle and other stories, Faulkner always meant the work to read as a novel. The chapters, which are more or less self-contained narratives, work a lot like my own family. That is, there are certain episodes in the history of my family that have clear beginnings, middles, ends. Some of these I can remember myself, but the majority are stories which have been passed down into a collective family memory. These stories are never contained by the present, nor are they mere slaves to the past. These stories often misremember and mischaracterize, but they deeply ground the way my family understands itself. This is one of the reasons that I find the novel so compelling. It crystallizes how storytelling from generation to generation interprets a family's history for the family's own understanding. The dedication, for instance, is striking:

TO MAMMY

CAROLINE BARR
Mississippi
[1840-1940]

Who was born in slavery and who gave to my family a fidelity without stint or calculation of recompense and to my childhood an immeasurable devotion and love

Faulkner, of course, is writing for us as much as he is writing for himself. One of my favorite tutors here at St. John's, Brother Robert, told me that he thought of "The Bear" as the definitive American epic. He was ninety-two when told me this, and had been teaching for nearly fifty years, still sharp as a tack. I must say I agree him. Here is a single sentence:

It was as if the boy had already divined what his senses and intellect had not encompassed yet: that doomed wilderness whose edges were being constantly and punily gnawed at by men with plows and axes who feared it because it was wilderness, men myriad and nameless even to one another in the land where the old bear had earned a name, a through which ran not even a mortal beast but an anachronism indomitable and invincible out of an old dead time, a phantom, epitome and apotheosis of the old wild life which the humans swarmed and hacked at in a fury of abhorrence and fear like pygmies about the ankles of a drowsing elephant; - the old bear solitary, indomitable, and alone; widowed childless and absolved of mortality - old Priam reft of his old wife and outlived all his sons.

As much as I love the novel because it is the human heart in conflict, I love the sheer mastery of language. It is both humbling and inspiring, and brings back memories of Searcy in the dog days of summer, sitting on the porch with sweet tea, and long conversation. I might just read it again.

Die Grosse Stille

2007-05-09T10:43:00.000-05:00

I saw a beautiful film last night at Hartford's Real Artways Cinema: Die Grosse Stille - Into Great Silence. It's a documentary of daily life in the Grand Chartreuse, the Alpine mother house of the Carthusians, one of the most ascetic monastic orders in the West. The film is a little under three hours, but it rarely seemed long or overdrawn. All of the little particularities in the life of an ordered, ancient community are brought out, and one gets the sense of looking into a very rich, private world. The stille in the title refers to the life of the monks, but also to the film itself - there is very little dialogue and no voice-over to explain the images and utter platitudes (one of the few exceptions to this is an amusing scene where the monks talk shop during a recreation period: "Did you know that the monastery in Pavia uses seven washbasins instead of only one?" "Well, they're Trappists!"). The film felt like a visual cleansing of the palate, leaving me more refreshed than when I went in.

Annapolis

2007-05-04T09:19:00.000-05:00

It's nearly official that I will be (semi-permanently) relocating to Annapolis, MD, at the end of the month. A few days ago I told my supervisor that "I won't be returning in the fall," and repeated that pronouncement later to my landlady. Tiffany (my landlady) no longer owns her old yoga studio and has decided to concentrate entirely on real estate. She was a bit upset to hear that I wouldn't be occupying her studio apartment, but I think she'll recover soon since she's planning to raise the rent $100 for the new occupant. It's a little upsetting for me to think of leaving New England right when things are starting to bloom outside and the students have finally cast off the looks of death and despair that seem to to go along with winter here (a black hooded sweatshirt is the uniform for the season). I hope to spend the last few weeks of my stay enjoying the area. Maybe I'll drive up to Concord soon and bask in the Therauvian glow of Walden Pond, stalk the wild crocus and whatnot. Boston should also be nice this time of year, and I hear that in Providence during the summer the city puts on a street festival every couple of weeks called "Firewater" (the name is refreshingly direct) in which they put fire in big rounded metal bowls and set them on the Providence river, inviting bands to play and local vendors to stay open late into the night. However, I am also looking forward to returning South of the Mason-Dixon line to the land of my fathers. Jeremy, Kelly, hope you enjoy your trip out west. A good literary companion might be Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, about his Thoreau-inspired living experiment in Arches National Park - one of Dr. Engel's favorite books, I believe. All the best to the rest of you as summer gets into the swing.

J & K out west

2007-05-03T19:17:00.000-05:00

Hi gang,

Brief blogging/pictures from the first four days of our trip out west are up. You can track our progress (and, hopefully, my speedy recovery) by clicking Jeremy's name as contributor to North Locust. We're posting on the site "if only I knew." All further updates about the trip will be there, so as not to clog up North Locust.

Literary Theology

2007-04-24T21:52:00.000-05:00

A while ago Taylor and I exchanged a few notes about an orthodox theologian named David Bentley Hart. During one of my online searches I came across this blog. Although I don't check it regularly, I have enjoyed reading several posts from the archives. I especially like Propositions from occasional guest writer Kim Fabricus. This set is one of his more pointed criticisms.

Ten thoughts on the literal and the literary

1. The more literal, the less literary a person is likely to be – and vice versa. A survey of the reading habits of fundamentalists would be an interesting exercise. I suspect that they would score low on reading classical and Booker/Pulitzer prize fiction – and even lower on poetry. I wonder what they would make of William Empson’s seminal study Seven Types of Ambiguity. To plagiarise Paul, the literal crucifies, the literary resurrects: meaning walks through closed doors. “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant” (Emily Dickinson).

2. It is an interesting fact that fundamentalism is predominantly a Protestant phenomenon, a reductio ad absurdum of the Reformers’ emphasis on the literal meaning of scripture to the exclusion of the medieval “fourfold vision” (Blake). Is there a lurking fear here of a connection between polyvalence and polytheism? How ironic that, on the contrary, an insistence on a single, solid, certain meaning – i.e. semantic closure – is indicative of idolatry. The burning bush is the horticulture of divine deconstruction, and the golden calf is bull.

3. Another interesting fact: the rise of Protestant literalism went hand in hand with the desacralisation of nature, which – the good news – entailed the rise of the natural sciences, but which also – the bad news – issued in the evacuation of God from the material world, soon followed the absence of God from the world of culture. Modernist atheism itself is the spawn of biblical literalism. And when belief did a bunk, it was the priesthood of poets that helped keep the rumour of transcendence alive.

4. So another connection: the “disenchantment” of nature (Weber) and the impoverishment of the imagination. Chesterton observed a “combination between logical completeness and spiritual contraction.” And he said: “Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so makes it finite.” There is also the spiritual contraction, the failure of imagination, of legalism and moralism. Hence R. S. Thomas’ description of Welsh Nonconformity as “the adroit castrator of art.”

5. There has been much discussion at F&T about the nature of theology as a science. Of course – this is a Barthian blog! But Barth himself was a master of stirring rhetoric and stunning imagery. And, of course, there was his passion for Mozart, and his admiration for Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Melville’s Moby-Dick. Barth wasn’t so hot on the visual arts – a Protestant prejudice! – but the Church Dogmatics is a cathedral, stained glass windows and all. In short, if theology is a science, it is also an art.

6. Which should not be the least bit surprising. After all, God-talk is impossible without the deployment of analogy and metaphor, and the Bible is incomprehensible apart from a narrative hermeneutics. Is it not therefore a scandal that, until recent times, theology has been in thrall to an ontological and epistemological captivity – and inevitable that it would take a Catholic, Hans Urs von Balthasar, to write a theological aesthetics and dramatics? Is not faith itself an imaginative perception of reality?

7. Theological ethics – another test case. Fundamentalist ethics are rule-based, and the answers to moral problems are found, decontextualised, at the back of the (good) book. Jesus’ preferred method of ethical instruction, however, is the parable, “subversive speech” (William R. Herzog II). Indeed Richard B. Hays argues that a “symbolic world as context for moral discernment” is fundamental to the entire New Testament. “The kingdom of God is like this.” Enter the story, work it out – then act it out!

8. Follow the trajectory to virtue ethics. The accent is on agency and action, dispositions and desire, time and telos. Rules are not excluded, but they function heuristically, as “perspicuous descriptive summaries of good judgments” (Martha Nussbaum), to inculcate habits appropriate to the development of Christ-like character. Moral theology works best when it tells the stories of the saints. Virtue ethics is narrative ethics, where the script is unfinished and improvisation is essential. The Christian life is jazz.

9. One of the great filmic send-ups of biblical literalism: the opening scene of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. The camera pans to Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount, and then to a group at a distance where our Lord’s voice doesn’t quite carry. “Blessed are the cheese makers,” one character hears. “What’s so special about the cheese makers?” asks a woman. “Obviously it is not to be taken literally,” her husband replies; “it refers to any manufacturer of dairy products.”

10. Moral: a cultureless theology is an ecclesiastical disaster – and a “two culture” (C.P. Snow) theology is not much better. If we are ignorant of science we lapse into Idiocy 101-102: Creationism; or Imbecility 201-202: Intelligent Design. But if we are ignorant of literature, mere ignorance becomes downright dangerous – witness the nonsensical interpretations of biblical apocalypse by the religious right and its pernicious influence on American foreign policy in the Middle East. If pastors should be community theologians, community theologians should be writers-in-residence, exercising what Yoder called “word-care,” and teaching their folk how to read.

You can find the original post here.