sweet & heavy trouble

DRM

2006-09-25T09:57:00.000-04:00

Screw you, media companies and Apple Computer, for devising ways of making your product suck the fun and convenience out of digital media. Yesterday, I showed an Episode of 30 Days at church. I bought it a month ago, and it worked fine then. But yesterday, since I was in a room with no Wi-Fi, and I hadn't upgraded to QT 7.13, it refused to play until I went downstairs, logged into the iTunes store, and downloaded a 50mb upgrade which was needed to undo the crippling that iTunes 7 had brought with it.

Thanks, Apple!

Copyright law and FCC regulation should change but they won't. All the more reason, I supose, to avoid corporate media entirely.

2006-09-21T14:13:00.000-04:00

I am at work and I just bought a slice of pizza for lunch. It is the cheapest thing I can get, which I why I got it. My friend Andy would have the fortitude to skip lunch (or, more likely, the sense to bring it). In any case, I found myself saying a quick prayer before beginning to eat. I finished with the line my parents instilled in me "bless this food to the nourishment of my body." As I said that to God, I grimaced and looked down at the grimy, greasy slab of bread and cheese before, knowing full well that it's bad for me and I thought to myself: "Is this like asking God to make a square circle?"

Dear Lord, bless this fattening and heart clogging, but terribly convenient, meal to the nourishment of my body.

I wonder if a lot of our prayers are like that when we live lives that are so utterly contradictory to where God wants us that God's response isn't about Grace, but about silence in the face of a logical contradiction.

Boy, was I wrong...

2006-07-25T09:56:00.000-04:00

I finished writing a paper in May (about 6 months late)about Gnosticism and Information Technology. Long story short, part of my paper was an attack on the $100 Laptop Project as something that is at least potentially giving the world a Gnostic-flavored attempt at jacking more people into the Otherworld of so-called cyberspace before giving them potable water and food. While I was not 100% sold on the accusation, I was pretty darned cocky about it. Last night, I read an article in WIRED (another target of mine) about the current design of the laptop in question. The designer (whose name and exact verbiage I am without at the moment) said that he thought arguments about giving kids in the developing world food and water before tech were silly, because the developing world is heterogeneous. There are kids, he said, who are undoubtedly poor, but whose top priority is learning.

Let's chalk another one up to my white privilege and ignorance!

beats

2006-05-22T13:31:00.000-04:00

I bought another drum machine today. Dr. Rhythm DR-550, super-cheap.

I would like to have people at 7 Willow this summer to sit around and play with drum machines, keyboards, laptops, etc.

Ministering to the Middle Class Church

2006-04-25T10:09:00.000-04:00

Are the concerns of middle class church folk like myself as valid as those of the poor?

I have some resentment and disdain for the middle class, Protestant tendency to navel-gaze and/or re-invent the wheel over and over again. I find it in myself, although I have found some relief in it by looking toward historic orthodoxy. At the same time, I find that it is somewhat inaccessible to a lot of folks, not the least of which being the kids that I work with. What does it mean to communicate the Gospel with sensitivity, but without losing clarity about the things on which Scripture is entirely clear? It is certainly not clear on an awful lot.

Emergent Christianity? 33-300 AD.

But what if the Church is still young?

t-shirt

2006-04-05T00:07:00.000-04:00

So I'm working on a T-Shirt as a possible design for Threadless. This one is titled "Storm in a Teacup."

"Life Together" Notes

2006-03-29T21:07:00.000-05:00

"Thus this spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ and that love of others is wholly dependent on truth in Christ." (36-37)

This sort of thinking really shakes me up. Wake up from your slumber, mortal: prayer is real. Why is this shocking? Because I've learned to get on my knees, let pious words bounce around inside my head, and call it "prayer."

"Game of Life"

2006-02-06T14:09:00.000-05:00

So Benny-Boy and I have to come up with a "Game of Life" for our Wednesday class on games and simulations. There were no real stipulations other than that we needed to make a game that was about us as individuals. I have decided to make a Memory/Concentration style game. My take on it will include this "twist": images that are in color represent where I am headed, or hope to be headed. For instance: Church would be in color, and would be representative of my desire to become more involved in and more deeply connected to God's church. Television, on the other hand, would be black and white, as it is something I more and more wish to erase altogether.

(I AM NOT A LUDDITE. I am blogging, after all.)

Anyway, this style would have the effect of creating a minor narrative element where there would normally be none. I'll scan some of the drawings if any of them are decent.

"For the Soul of the Church"

2006-02-01T20:10:00.000-05:00

When the missionaries came to Africa, they had
the Bible and we had the land. They taught us to pray with our eyes
closed. When we opened them, we had the Bible in our hand, and they
had the land.

—Jomo Kenyatta, Kenyan independence
leader and first president

My friend Phoebe sent me this link a couple of months ago to an article from ColorLines. It is a critique of the relationship between white, American, conservative Episcopalians and conservative African Anglican bishops (and their respective churches.)

I need to read it more carefully because I think that their is quite a lot they miss coming from what seems to be a purely secular perspective, but this point is certainly taken: Rich whities who are super interested in a relationship with African bishops are probably don't know many (if any) black people at home.

Sometimes I find myself aligning with the more conservative parts of the ECUSA (as I consider joining the church), but a story like this reminds me of how much more complicated things actually are.

BTW: I'm posting this using Performancing 1.1 for Firefox. It is a Ff extension that lets you post from within a browser window, with rich editing features.

schematic

2006-01-26T14:55:00.000-05:00

schematic
Originally uploaded by papertransaction.
Can you guess what table this is?!!!

Pursuits (In no particular order)

2006-01-26T14:32:00.000-05:00
1. SEVENwillowBRAIN is sort of online. I can access it via Chicken of the VNC, but I can't get SAMBA networking to work w/ OS X. Maybe I will switch to NFS? Who knows!?

2. I want to make more artworks.

3. I want to spend better time with Colleen.

4. This is all leading up to the fact that I would like to be more spiritual. I would like to be a saint. I want to live like I actually believe in the good news of the Gospel. This will involve being less nasty about people who are screwed up and hurting.

5. Regarding number 2, numbers 3 and 4 (growing in complex relationship with God and my future wife), are necessarily and wonderfully prior to it.

6. I'm a mutinizer, in the Kierkegaardian sense.

7. I should be a better employee!

2006-01-15T23:19:00.000-05:00
My sermon, titled "Ian Callahan's Kerygma Enigma"

Have you ever thought about how weird it is that we have eyeballs? All of us sitting here, light bouncing around the room and passing through holes in these little spheres of amazing biological complexity. And what about hands? These things are really weird too: bone and skin, capable of so much, 5 appendages, like a lizard.

This is strange and obvious evidence that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Think about it. You're made out of ATOMS. And they're made out of stuff that's smaller, and, in between? You guessed it: EMPTY SPACE. So we're mostly empty space, and we've got eyeballs and hands. That's just three things and they are incredible.

I'm going on about this for a couple of reasons. One is that, shortly, I'm going to be confessional with you and tell you a little bit about myself, and how this weirdness is important to me. Then I'm going to try my hand at preaching a little bit: I'm going to talk about how this weirdness, this strangeness that I am describing, might relate to what the Psalmist and our good man Paul of Tarsus have to say in Scripture. I might have titled this sermon "Simply Strange", or "Weird Words on Weirdness", but I went with rhyme over allitereation. Or substance. But let me begin:

There was a time, about ten years ago, that I started to either get really angry with God, and curse at him for the awful world he had created, full of disease and war, or that I would pretend that He didn't exist, and I would quote Nietzsche, by way of Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails: "God is dead, and no one cares. If there is a hell, I'll see you there." I did this mostly to hurt my mom, who I knew cared very much about God and about being a Christian. One time she chased me outside because I flaunted matches in my right hand and a bible in my left and was very clear that I was going to burn it outside while she was cooking us dinner. That was not a pleasant evening.

I think that a lot of the anger that I had then came from living in a pretty meaningless culture. We are surrounded by stories that make it easy for us to take for granted the fact that, not only that we are alive, but that anything exists at all. I think this comes from some of the worst things about modern philosophy, namely the arrogance of the Enlightenment in placing the human mind at the center of the universe. But I digress.

The point of bringing this up is that people don't seem terribly impressed and/or COMPLETELY dumbfounded by things like the Big Bang or the phenomenon of love or eyeballs, or fingers or trees. Or matter and the fact that we are made out of it. The greatness of this stuff explained away, mostly, or ignored. And I totally bought into it back then, I was blind and saw the brokenness of the world and stamped and shouted and pointed my finger that this is wrong, wrong, wrong, God, and you owe me an apology. I was the center, the arbiter, the judge, I could clearly articulate why people were wrong without any appreciation for the fact that the Big Bang is mind-blowingly strange, and so are hands. I didn't have any of the confidence of the Psalmist, and I had no idea that anyone was fearfully and wonderfully made.

So what does these details about my lack of perspective and former penchant for goth-industrial suicide anthems have to do with the scripture we've looked at today? Well, I have, hopefully, made one connection obvious. Whoever wrote Psalm 139 had something I really didn't at one point in my life (and many times since then): a deep, fulfilling knowledge of God the ever-present and all knowing creator; he had, I think, a sense of wonderment and awe and, well, what I have been calling this weirdness about God and about his own life.

So what about what Paul has to say to his (and our) sisters and brothers in Corinth? Before we can really talk about that, I think we need to say a few words about what was going on then and there. From what I understand, Corinth was a powerful commercial center that was attractive to all kinds of people and the religion of empire was present through and through. The ancient urban landscape was full of competing stories about humanity, mystery cults and ethical standards, much as it is today . The desire for wealth and power were surely in greater supply than faith and trust in any god, let alone in the God of Israel!

It is there, in Corinth, that Paul is writing to a group of Christians, some of whom it seems have not had great control of themselves. We, obviously, don't need to get into any details here, other than to say that Paul was addressing sexual brokenness in his time and that it also seems pretty obvious that we live in a time of sexual brokenness ourselves. That is to say, it's both important and possible for us to understand what Paul was talking about, because we're no strangers to it. So what, exactly, was Paul's response? First let me comment on what he doesn't do.

First Corinthians 6:12 reads: “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. When Paul says "All things are lawful for me", it looks like he is quoting them and how they might make their Christianity and their Corinthian lifestyle compatible, easy...typical. But his response isn't exactly to tell them that they are simply wrong about that, that they have, in fact, violated the new law of the Gospel. His response is surprising to someone looking for the moral guidance of a student handbook: "but not all things are beneficial." Is Paul a relativist? Hardly! It is pretty clear that fornication is not permitted, but it's not a simple "no" to the Corinthians "yes." Let me make this place sound like a tent revival by reading verses 17 through 20:

But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

Notice, again, that Paul has still not simply told them that they are "bad." Paul has, instead of writing a rule book along the lines of "article 3, section 4: Fornication is to be avoided at all times", he has gone much deeper. He has reminded people of who they really are: living members of the Body of Christ on Earth; he has reminded them of the fact that they are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that it is a desperately sad and harmful thing for them to forget that in their actions. This is, I think, probably one of the greatest things we have to learn from this passage: how Paul reacted to the brokenness of people around him.

So what does all of this mean for mean for me a Christian living in America, and all of you? Paul's response is a far cry from the ranting and raving of my teenage years. Heck, its a whole lot different than the way in which I find sometimes myself talking about our President. It is much different than the talking heads of television, bickering with one another, it is different because it is a very strange response to suffering disagreement in this world. I am thankful for what God has done through Paul in these letters, because now, instead of trying to burn the things I disagree with, I can help the Church be a light to the world as we say to one another:

"Isn't it wonderfully weird? You are fearfully and wonderfully made, and you are not your own."

sermon prep

2006-01-13T11:09:00.000-05:00
UND!
1 Corinthians 6:12-20

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.”

But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

sermon preparation musings

2006-01-13T11:02:00.000-05:00
These are the passages of Scripture on which I am preaching Sunday:
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
1O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

2You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.

3You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.

4Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.

5You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

6Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.

13For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.

15My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

16Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.

17How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!

18I try to count them—they are more than the sand; I come to the end—I am still with you.

2005-12-30T17:55:00.000-05:00

2005-12-30T01:00:00.000-05:00

My betrothed is on a fantasy class Star Destroyer.

I want her back in the Rebel Alliance.

Shit.

2005-12-20T10:12:00.000-05:00
The Chronic-What!-cles of Narnia

This video is the funniest thing I have seen come out of SNL in a long time.

ARRRRRRRRRGHHHHH

2005-12-16T10:50:00.000-05:00

We are pleased to learn that Target has heard our concerns and decided to use Christmas in their advertising and marketing efforts. Since the company has responded positively, we see no need to continue the boycott,” said AFA Chairman Donald E. Wildmon in a released statement. According to AFA, over 700,000 people had signed an online petition to boycott the company."

Why, why, why do they want to get in bed with Caesar?

So much for family values.

Maybe it's a little mean but...

2005-12-14T15:36:00.000-05:00
I got a kick out of it.

snow day art work

2005-12-09T14:51:00.000-05:00

The phrase "A Hero for the Modern World" has been running through my head for years. I don't even particularly like the phrase, so perhaps this illustration of it will exorcise it from my brain.

2005-12-07T14:00:00.000-05:00
MEGACHURCHES CANCEL ON CHRISTMAS.

Ugggh.

James Gee Post #2

2005-12-06T13:12:00.000-05:00
Now it's time for some P-O-S-T-I-V-I-T-Y.

I rather enjoyed Gee's description of "design grammars." Well, more generally, his description of semiotic domains have been helpful. I fixate on the concept of design grammars in particular for a couple of reasons.

For one, I think it is helping me think through a lot of thoughts and feelings I encounter when moving about the Web. There are so many particularities to the different cultures that I come across that it is sometimes hard to peg them. I'm thinking about a blog like BoingBoing, for instance. Heck, blogs in general. Production and design are very much a part of any cultural transmission one is going to make on the Web, and it seems like the notion of design grammars is a very useful way of navigating and indentifying the boundaries.

I don't have much else to say about it, save for the fact that I love it when I come across a lovely, useful nugget like this one, especially when it's in a work by which I am otherwise frustrated.

James Gee Post #1

2005-12-06T12:12:00.000-05:00
I will be reacting first to some ideas from chapter 4 of James Gee's What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy.

Gee begins the chapter by discussing views of the human mind and learning. He briefly summarizes two perspectives, moving quickly away from the first which he describes as a view that "treats the human mind as if it is pretty much like a digital computer." (73) The reason for this description is a belief that the mind stores rules and computes them. Gee's view, which he seems to indicate is superior, believes that learning is based on previous embodied experiences in the world where people "store these experiences, and make connections or associations among them." (73)

Gee goes on to describe his view on learning. Things got interesting for me when Gee makes a very particular word choice that has me somewhat confused "All the cavepeople who stored the generalization 'Tigers are dangerous' and refused to apply it to even the first lion they saw probably died without many offspring. The ones who let the many features lions share with tigers trigger the association between these elements and danger passed on a great many more genes." (75) [emphasis added]

What, exactly, does Gee mean when he used the word "refuse" when describing the poor cavepeople who were likely to be gobbled up by lions? Refusal is, to me, a term that explicitly implies choice when it is used in regard to human beings (or, as in this case, pre- or early humans.) Does he believe that the ill-fated cavepeople might have consciously noted that the lion was a distinct creature from a tiger, and then said to themselves "I am not going to apply what I have learned about the striped creature to this golden one?" Or is he using the word "refuse" in the way that we often do about machines (e.g. "my car refused to start!")

This is further complicated by the fact that Gee also seems to be hinting at some evolutionary ideas in his paragraph, namely that the people who did not refuse to make the association were more fit and were selected. If he is implying it had anything to do with their genes, then this further complicates matters, as it makes the possibility of their conscious "refusal" less likely if they are beholden to some sort of genetic leash.

So are people chained to their embodied experiences or not? If, according to Gee, they are, then I do not think that Gee has gotten away from the "digital computer" model as much as he thinks he has.

My Professor Lets Us Blog Papers...

2005-11-15T15:20:00.001-05:00
So here it is:
Within this past few weeks' batch of readings for Educational Media Theory, I will tackle the pair offered for us to read as an introduction to multimodality. I will look at the introductory chapter first, followed by Carey Jewitt's take on assessment and multimodality. To begin, a quote from Kress and Jewitt's introduction: “Rather than taking talk and writing as the starting point, a multimodal approach to learning starts from the theoretical position that treats all modes as equally significant for meaning and communication, potentially so at least.” (Kress, 2)
I am not sure that I can articulate this very well, but I am in disagreement with this theoretical position. Why? Why did the authors have to throw in that last, awkwardly placed prepositional phrase: “potentially so at least?” I am of the opinion that this puts the theoretical position in hot water. Is it betraying the common sense notion that some modes are much more significant for meaning and communication of some types than others? That is to say, it seems like, with the caveat attached, the theoretical position is really saying “depending on the situation, different modes can be equally significant.” That I will buy, but I do not think it's a terribly interesting position to start from.
It seems to me that the real basis for encouraging multimodal skills and learning is more sociological than philosophical. There is no need to set up a tricky theoretical framework to explain that we live in media saturated environments and that a sensitivity to all of the modes (even ancient ones, like gesture) is very useful to engaging the world instead of just being dragged along by it. Proposing that there exists some sort of undue bias towards the written word by writing hundreds of pages on the topic (as I suspect some people have done) seems silly and self-contradictory to me. This brings me to the second reading, Carey Jewitt's chapter on “Re-Thinking Assessment.”
I was

Sometimes...

2005-11-07T12:43:00.000-05:00
I really wish I could be Roman Catholic.

A Cardinal Asks Faithful Not to Discount Science

2005-10-31T12:14:00.000-05:00
Mathematical proof that Ian Callahan is not the Antichrist!

2005-10-24T14:51:00.000-04:00
"The Abortion Debate No One Wants to Have"

I think I would like to become more articulate on this subject, even if I'm not sure I have a clear stand to articulate. Reading stuff like this scares the pants off of me in, I think, a good way.

EDIT: Less sure about this one, why would the Washington Post do without a little fact checking on prenatal testing? I still think that this person has a good point, but she's relying to heavily on the assumptions of social conservatism. I point out the "blue state California" bit. When you start talking like that, you've lost me.

Cyberpunk Gnosticism

2005-10-07T10:57:00.000-04:00
"For Case, who'd lived in the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he'd frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh."
-William Gibson, Neuromancer (p.6)

2005-09-30T12:47:00.000-04:00
As I struggle with figuring out what it means to be a part of the Church, I am given some direction by surprising statistics.

There are 77 million Anglicans worldwide. 40 million (!!!) are African.

That's right.

Oh man, it would be awesome to be part of a church centered in Africa. (Geographically speaking, of course.)

tension

2005-09-18T23:15:00.000-04:00

tension
Originally uploaded by papertransaction.
So I took these pictures on a train a long time ago.

I think I'd like to make a photo-essay out of them, maybe publish them as a PDF.

I remember C.S. Lewis talking in Mere Christianity about all of us being on different trains (it's somewhere near the end and I don't feel like moving over to my bookshelf at the moment.) I think it may have inspired this essay at the Trinity Foundation: A Trainwreck in Slow Motion

Sufjan Stevens

2005-09-08T09:30:00.000-04:00
Sufjan Stevens and the Illinoisemakers played a great set last night at Pearl Street. The music was top notch and the cheerleading stunts were probably the most literary variations on the genre ever written. I was especially pleased when the whole band came back to play an encore and "All the Trees of the Field Shall Clap Their Hands" was the song. That title comes from Isa. 55:12, "the hills shall break forth before you into singing; and all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands." (here is an interesting blog that discusses the metaphors employed in the biblical text.) And here, for your enjoyment, are the lyrics to the song:

If I am alive this time next year,
will I have arrived in time to share?
And mine is about as good this far.
And I'm still applied to what you are.
And I am joining all my thoughts to you.
And I'm preparing every part for you.

And I heard from the trees a great parade.
And I heard from the hills a band was made.
And will I be invited to the sound?
And will I be a part of what you've made?
And I am throwing all my thoughts away.
And I'm destroying every bet I've made.
And I am joining all my thoughts to you.
And I'm preparing every part for you

Man, I am thankful that this guy exists and that God gave him the talent that He has.

Remind me...

2005-07-20T17:57:00.000-04:00
of the fact that working for pagans and rich kids really sucks.

I can't believe I have another 4 weeks of this, 2 without Colleen.

Genetic Values

2005-07-16T15:19:00.000-04:00
Today I read the first chapter of Holmes Rolston III's Genes, Genesis and God. The first chapter, "Genetic Values", makes a proposition about genes and natural history that I find to be quite intriguing.

The production and defense of natural kinds are what is ultimately involved in the alleged "selfishnes" of these genes. ... "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds" (Genesis 1.24). There is nothing ungodly about a world in which every living thing defends its intrinsic value, those brought forth from its own perspective, at the same time that it shares, or distributes, these to offspring, to others, in the ongoing evolutionary narrative. There might be something godly about a human kind that, made in the image of God, could oversee this panorama of natural history, find (again) that it is "very good," and rejoice in it. (Emphasis added.)

Rolston also makes a case for increasing complexity and value (in instrumental, not psychological, terms) in evolutionary history and claims that biology, the only science unique to Earth as far as we know, is better understood in terms of story and not law. This is opposed to Dawkins, et al, and their metaphors about "blind" and "selfish" genes (a.k.a. Neo-Darwinian materialist poppycock.) (yeah, Dawkins gets me riled up.)

Anyhow, I'm excited about reading the rest of this thing.

Kierkegaard T-Shirt

2005-07-15T00:07:00.000-04:00

Kierkegaard T-Shirt
Originally uploaded by papertransaction.
Today I finally made a Kierkegaard T-Shirt.

My lips look ridiculously serious, but I suppose that's what wearing the Dane does to you.

TechnoCacaphone

2005-07-03T23:51:00.000-04:00

TechnoCacaphone
Originally uploaded by papertransaction.
This beast distracts us with the glimmer and shimmer of the techno-miraculous.

Simulacra and simulation, instant communication. Ladies and Gentlemen: the TV nation.

1st_bedecard_posted_to_web

2005-06-28T11:38:00.000-04:00

1st_bedecard_posted_to_web
Originally uploaded by papertransaction.
So apparently I was the first person to post a BeDeCard to the web. This is exciting. FYI, it was posted from Col's friend Becca's apartment in Philadelphia using their WiFi.

When they write the book about BeDeCard theory and praxis, I sure hope this makes it in.

Zombie Thoughts #1

2005-06-27T07:31:00.000-04:00

I may occassionally try to relate theological/philosophical issues to zombies. I don't mean namby-pamby "I'm not aware of myself" academic zombies, I mean flesh eating, totally undead, smelly hordes.

Zombies & Liberalism

Are zombies an apt metaphor for the problems of liberalism? Roaming monads wearing the costumes of individualistic capitalism ("Hark! There roams zombie butcher, baker, stewardess, cop!") Modernity is implicitly nihilistic, so-called post-modernity is explicitly so, and the roaming zombies project those worldviews in graphic materiality.

Zombies don't have ethics because they don't have a story.

Hauerwas

2005-06-27T07:15:00.000-04:00

"9. In our attempt to control our society, Christians in America have too readily accepted liberalism as a social strategy appropriate to the Christian story."

Liberalism, in its many forms and versions, presupposes that society can be organized without any narrative that is commonly held to be true. As a result it tempts us to believe that freedom and rationality are independent of narrative- that is, we are free to the extent that we have no story. Liberalism is, therefore, particularly pernicious to the extent it prevents us from understanding how deeply we are captured by its account of existance."

-Stanley Hauerwas
"Reforming Christian Social Ethics: Ten Theses" (1981)

It kinda creeps me out anytime someone says "I'm a child of the Enlightenment." It seems to be a big stamp of approval for liberalism, and it has a weird semantic relationship to "child of God." Eeeek!

The Tyranny of Distance

2005-06-24T18:46:00.000-04:00

2005-06-23T12:57:00.000-04:00
Evangelicals in Iraq

from the Washington Post:
"The way the preachers arrived here . . . with soldiers . . . was not a good thing," said Baghdad's Roman Catholic archbishop, Jean Sleiman. "I think they had the intention that they could convert Muslims, though Christians didn't do it here for 2,000 years."(page 1)

Delly said that "even if a Muslim comes to me and said, 'I want to be Christian,' I would not accept. I would tell him to go back and try to be a good Muslim and God will accept you." Trying to convert Muslims to Christianity, he added, "is not acceptable."(page 2)

What do we have to learn about Kingdom building from Iraq? I would really like to learn more about the status of Christian/Muslim relationships there. Did the relative liberalism of Saddam Hussein have the same sort of theologically liberalizing trends liberalism has had in the West? Or is Delly's comment simply a symptom of being a minority population? (Somehow, though, I don't think early Christians would have sent willing converts back to their Pantheon. Does the fact that Islam considers itself an heir to Abrahamic faith nullify that comparison?)

Ze Trip

2005-06-20T21:39:00.000-04:00

I haven't forgotten about this thing. See! I'm posting a new picture. This is just going to have to be piecemeal.

Another update!

So, Col and I learned quite a bit on this miniature road trip. This included things about art, being people who would like to marry each other, maps, and of course, indie/diy culture at the Allied Media conference. We attended various workshops (myself: Making your own short radio piece, starting a youth media center, A/V improv, indie fundraising; Colleen: Indie marketing, Hip-hop and organizing, some video screenings and starting your own alternative publication.) Some were better than others, but we agreed that, even if the content of the workshops was limited, they definitely provided us with, to get chemical about things, "activation energy."

We both felt like we really didn't quite fit in to the scene there. There is an indie culture that is distinct but, as it is very definitely a reaction against the mainstream (and one, I might add, that is frequently swallowed up my the mainstream) it has its own conformist tendencies as well. The t-shirt pictured below, along with another classic that said "Defend Fallujah" and featured a shoulder mounted rocket launcher, are reflective of a trend amongst this crowd to be awfully confused about how one should engage in ethical discourse. "What the heck is justice or love?", and "How did you come to such a clear understanding of the way the world should be?" were questions that the two of us were asking inside our heads frequently. It is a confusing picture that is painted when streams of thoroughly modern Marxism and postmodern deconstruction come together and get expressed most succinctly in hip t-shirts.

Like I said, though, we did learn quite a bit. Col and I talked on the ride home about how important genuinely Christian, and genuinely independent, media could be. This means stuff that doesn't come through Zondervan, or Thomas Nelson, or any of the other big Christian publishers and content producers (never mind the big time, mainstream stuff.) Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate a lot of the things that they put out, but I think there is just a tremendous potential for totally independent, very cheap information sharing. This is not, of course, a new idea, and there is plenty of good stuff out there already. (Online sermons, theology blogs, etc) This can be dangerous, too (look at a lot of tracts, for instance.) But it does seem to me that there's plenty more room for healthy, Christian critiques of sexual mores, news media; the distribution of art, etc, that is more accessible to more people. (Baird has a great idea for a sort of Christian reading list PDF zine.) I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I feel convicted to start experimenting (with Colleen and my friends at FBC Amherst.)

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It was a great trip. I miss Colleen.

Some more pictures:

These served as conference passes.

Col and I in a very cheap and tasty Mexican restaurant. They had apple soda that was delicious.

AMC 2k5

2005-06-20T00:31:00.000-04:00

T-SHIRT
Originally uploaded by papertransaction.
To be updated sporadically over the next few days.

2005-06-19T19:11:00.000-04:00

Boo.

2005-06-18T20:15:00.000-04:00
I forgot my USB cable in the dorm room. I am a doody-head. (I'm not sure if that is spelled correctly.)

I have some interesting pictures to post, unfortunately.

I can say this: Col and I are a bit tired of "indie" stuff, the culture is tough, but we have learned a lot.

We miss friends. I'll probably write the conference up while we're in the car tomorrow, and put the pictures in later.

2005-06-17T22:46:00.000-04:00

A BeDeCard to Start the Day

2005-06-17T09:20:00.000-04:00

BeDeCard
Originally uploaded by papertransaction.
Thanks, Baird! We're about to drive 8.5 hours to Bowling Green, Ohio. Prayers for travelling mercies appreciated.

2005-06-16T22:15:00.000-04:00

Colleen and I Adventure in Philadelphia

2005-06-16T22:12:00.000-04:00
We took a SEPTA train into City Hall and then searched in vain for a so-called "Phlash" bus. It ended up being more like a "Phantom" bus...we couldn't find it anywhere! (ha-yuck, ha-yuck.)

We did, however, eventually find our way to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We did not have much time, but we did manage to get through the modern & contemporary wing. (On our way into it, we got to see some Cezanne, Van Gogh and Renoir, Monet. Art history textbook stuff. Beautiful.)

The modern stuff (Picasso, Johns, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Warhol, Duchamp!) was particularly exciting to me because of Baird's recent presentation on the ideas that have influenced his brainchild, BeDeCards. Baird and I had a brief conversation relating Dada to postmodernism and theology generally, pulling on N.T. Wright's framing of postmodernism as a manifestation of God's judgment on the arrogance of modernity. Baird related that to God's use of invading Assyrians to deliver judgment upon Israel.

"Wake up and smell the Torah."

Brilliant.

Enjoy the pictures below.

Graves on Federal Street

2005-06-16T22:08:00.000-04:00

Graves on Federal Street
Originally uploaded by papertransaction.

Kandinsky

2005-06-16T22:07:00.000-04:00

Kandinsky
Originally uploaded by papertransaction.

Duchampnotes.JPG

2005-06-16T22:06:00.000-04:00

readymades
Originally uploaded by papertransaction.

dead fountain

2005-06-16T21:36:00.000-04:00

fishvomit.JPG
Originally uploaded by papertransaction.

Where is Warhol?

2005-06-16T21:35:00.000-04:00

IMG_0071
Originally uploaded by papertransaction.

IMG_0080

2005-06-16T21:34:00.000-04:00

IMG_0080
Originally uploaded by papertransaction.
The world's most famous urinal.

duchampnotes.JPG

2005-06-16T21:32:00.000-04:00

duchampnotes.JPG
Originally uploaded by papertransaction.
These, my dear friends...the notes of Marcel Duchamp!

We Mades It

2005-06-15T21:32:00.000-04:00
We have arrived in Philadelphia.

On the way down, Colleen and I saw two trucks worth talking about here. The first of these was a "Covenant Transport" branded tractor trailer. I would not have thought anything of it, save for the fact that on its rear doors there were, in small but perfectly legible type, the words "It's not a choice / It's a child." There was more text, higher up, in bigger letters, that said "More Hours / More Pay / Call 1-800-XXX-XXXX."

The second truck of note was spotted by Col. The "Transport for Christ" truck had "Jesus is Lord" mudflaps.

I am thankful to God for our safe passage to the City of the Two M. Night Shyamalan Movies I Have Seen.

P.S. I forgot my cable bag in the car, so no pictures yet.

2005-06-14T12:54:00.000-04:00
The Internet Monk on Rome

Oh, I agree.

2005-03-22T12:35:00.000-05:00

Why do so many liberals seem supportive of religious language when it is invoked by black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., but recoil when such language is used by white political leaders? Is there a subtle kind of racism going on here, where religion is okay for liberals as long as it comes from black or poor people? Are black people supposed to be culturally religious (love those black choirs), while white believers are intellectually suspect?
Jim Wallis (from God's Politics)
I
I believe that the attitude to which Mr. Wallis is referring actually extends into deeper territory that has much to do with the deep divisions that are created by class. Jacques Ellul has written about the way in which our Western world of opulence and technology crowds God, and the mysterious ways in which He manifests Himself, out of the picture for many people. (I must thank Kent Higgins for reminding me of this.) Wallis is discussing a consequence of that state of affairs: those of us who can afford to live lives of convenience, replete with gadgetry and free time, are likely to shrivel up on the inside. Then some start to find meaning by hating [insert authority figure] and flirting with the poor and the oppressed while denying treating their beliefs like the art work of a friend who doesn't quite have talent but means well: "Oh, that's cool, man. But I, uhhh, I don't have any place to hang it up!"

nine inch nails

2005-02-15T11:58:00.000-05:00
One of the questions on an application I filled out recently was "List the 5 movies, books, pieces of art, etc. that have had an impact on your life in the last 10 years." The only music I put on that list was Pretty Hate Machine by nine inch nails. The rest of the list was made up of books, and narrowing it down to five was very difficult.

Consequently, I've been listening to that album again recently to try and more fully understand why it stood out to me as having had a particular impact on my life. Listening again to the lyrics of Head Like a Hole ("God, Money let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised...") and Terrible Lie ("Hey, God...why are you doing this to me?"), I've got a more firm understanding of NIN as a purger of bad theology. NIN was the first place that I got a sense that all of this God talk was supposed to be a lot more powerful than Kool-Aid and felt board story telling on Sunday mornings.

If I was doing some serious Christ and culture analysis, I think nine inch nails would be one of the first places that I would look. Hopefully I'll get into it in the future, but Trent Reznor's lyrics (as cheezy bloody bad as they can be) and music (often brilliant) says a lot about hunger for God.

Ron Sider

2005-01-04T13:21:00.000-05:00
Here's a well written article from the president of Evangelicals for Social Action:

"The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience"

Donald Miller

2005-01-01T11:06:00.000-05:00
I am incredibly thankful that God has given Donald Miller the talent that he has. His writing is some of the most clear, honest, biblical stuff I've seen for a long time (if a "long time" is even something to which I am allowed to refer to at this point.)

I read Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality a couple months ago and it really put me in my place about a lot of things. Some of my friends have read it, and it seems to have been a blessing for them, too. In many ways, and please forgive in advance for the term, it feels like a "postmodern Mere Christianity." Miller puts things into words that I really struggle with even writing about to myself, and he's funny to boot. (And I should note that "postmodern" is not a code word for "relativistic" but for, rather, nuance, varying perspectives and tension that is often seen as problematic within a thoroughly "modernist" worldviews.)

This week I received his latest book in the mail, Searching for God Knows What. I have only read the very beginning of it, but I have already learned some things and given off a few hoots sitting by myself on the couch. Here is a quip:

And that's one of the things that you notice about Jesus in the Gospels, that He is always going around saying, You have heard it said such and such, but I tell you some other thing. If you happened to be a person who thought they knew everything about God, Jesus would have been completely annoying.
I heartily reccommend Blue Like Jazz (and I will soon have some extra copies if anyone is interested) and I think that Searching for God Knows What will soon bear the same mark of approval.

Homebrewed Media Criticism

2004-12-27T18:14:00.000-05:00
A few days ago, I had the pleasure of catching an old Saved By the Bell Christmas special. It's the one in which Zach falls for a homeless girl, Laura, when he meets her at the mall. The story gets rather involved, a sample of dialogue should suffice:

Laura: "It's nice to have friends again, Zach..."

Zach: "What do you mean?"

Laura: "People shy away from you when you're homeless, it's almost like it's contagious."

The thrust of the story is, as you can see, that homeless people are just like everyone else (especially around the holidays.) I'm interested in what this story really says about the homeless: what kinds of assertions is it making in front of impressionable youth? What story is being told about homelessness through the weirdo landscape of the Saturday morning sitcom for preteens?

The episode ends with a holiday living room chat in the Morris' house. Zach asks Tom, Laura's father, how they became homeless. Mrs. Morris chastises her son, but Tom is glad to oblige. Tom explains that he was laid off from a job at a computer factory, tried to find another job but ran out of money in the process. The rent was due, he didn't have the money and he and Laura had to hit the streets. "We came to California hoping to find opportunities and so far all we've found is a warmer place to be unemployed..."

Now I realize that it may seem incredibly silly to care about what this has to say, given the nature of television and it's relationship to being craptacular, but I'm going to do it anyway: I was oddly refreshed to see that they made a homeless father and daughter out to be bright, talented and wellspoken people who got screwed over by circumstance. Now, I definitely do not watch a lot of television anymore, but I cannot remember the last time I saw a homeless person, or even poor folks generally, portrayed as having it together mentally on that tube. I've certainly met some kooky people who live on the street and struggle with addiction and mental health problems, but that has not been the majority of them. Most people's stories are a lot more complicated than that (and, as far as this episode goes, it oversimplifies things, too.)

I'm certainly no expert on homelessness, and I haven't been the most committed person in the world, but I do know this: struggling with, talking with and trying to understand the "least of these" that live without permanent shelter has certainly taught me a lot about that Jew who wandered (without permanent shelter) around Palestine some 2,000 years ago. So that's why I care about their portrayal in the media: if it's done right, then there's something there that's breaking in through the cracks. The Spectacle, if you will, functions less well when it reveals to you that there are those who are without, that survive with less.

(I have, of course, entirely neglected the fact that the package which started this whole post was utterly absurd and had an unrealistic ending. (Tom and Laura get to stay with the Morris family until Tom finds a job.) )

Pretense!

2004-12-25T22:48:00.000-05:00
Yes, it's Christmas.

First of all, I have to say something about the title of this post and the reason that I haven't updated this thing for 3 months (not that anyone is reading it.) I set myself up for failure by un-prayerfully striking out with an agenda. I was unwilling to listen. Looking back and trying to figure out what I was thinking with that first post I am reminded of a zinger from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious." (from Life Together.)

When I first read that about a year ago (or was it longer?), I was repulsed by it. I could spend a long time explaining why, but the long and short of it is that it upset my vision of who I was to become: Michael Moore mixed with Edward Gorey and maybe Oscar Romero; cameras rolling like the twin guns of a John Woo flick. My enemies would fall helpless at my command of Scripture (you know: that passage in James about the rich.)

The past is fuzzy.

Now, after this past semester, I can see what Bonhoeffer was talking about.

I would not, for instance, have stumbled back into church if I hadn't been feeling so broken and lonely in my faith that I would join in with them, the institutionalists! The visionary dreamer in me couldn't do that because he has a standard to uphold and a giant neon cross to bear. (See, he said, you strap it on your back and people can see it for miles and miles. Chicks dig it.) But, somehow, that part of me is smaller these days.

It's hard for me to say, exactly, what I want to say. I want to summarize these past few months as a time of great change, increasing depth, listening to God. I want to repeat object lessons about driving crack addicts around and about struggling to see Jesus in the poor and learning how to read Scripture and new friendships. It's too much for display, and I would be far too apt to leave out the nasty bits about me hurting people and running away from God as fast and as hard as I can. I wouldn't talk about how confusing things still are for me. I'm tempted to paint a picture with no shadows.

So, instead, I'm going to start this thing anew. Here's the new theme: the struggles and joys of my walk with Jesus to what end I can make them public without being obscene, irresponsible or utterly irreverant. Why? Well, one thing I did learn this semester is that I need more bullshit* detection in my writing and in my thinking. The Internet, and hopefully you, electronic stranger, will help me with that, if only for the fact that I will not dare write the same kind of drivel here that I put down in my journal. This is silly, it is inevitably going to self-indulgent but, gosh-darnit, I'm going to just do it without constantly worrying about that because I'd just end up in the pit of false humility that Paul talks about if I did.

(Before I start trying to edit this thing:) "Here goes...something!"

*This blog will occassionally feature curse words.

2004-09-29T01:47:00.000-04:00
Cartavius and Me

An Alpha?

2004-09-29T01:10:00.000-04:00
This, my first textual post, is a confession.

I've stolen the title of this weblog from a Pedro the Lion song, "The Fleecing."

The lyrics go this-a-way (the chorus):

And who shall I blame for this sweet and heavy trouble?
For every stupid struggle?
I don't know.
I could buy you a drink.
I could tell you all about it.
I could tell you why I doubt it, and why I still believe.

I appropriated the term because I could not think of a better description for the struggles with faith that are to be the subject of this site.

So:

Why should we care about God?

2004-09-29T00:39:00.000-04:00
Parish House. Clarksdale, Mississippi

2004-09-29T00:27:00.000-04:00
Methodist Church, Northeast Tennessee