Spiritual Formation

Just because the folks at the Ooze are good folks, here's the Spiritual Formation page at the Ooze that they asked me to link to. It's supposed to get the Ooze up higher on Google searches and such--kinda like "miserable failure" punched into Google yields either Dubya's bio page or Michael Moore's page or Jimmy Carter's page, depending on whether the crazy lib bloggers or the crazy Republican bloggers are winning that little game at the time. But anyway, here it is.

Strange Props

I never used to have dreams about plays, but in the last seven years, since I first read about existentialism, I've had them over and over. One of the existentialists (want to say Sartre, but I'm not sure) called life a play for which we know not the lines but in which we stand center stage. Since I learned that, I've had dreams about being in plays for which I don't know the lines quite frequently.

Last night, in the play, my stage directions (I did know them) said that I was to emerge in the last scene with "signs that represent my plight." I had no idea what they meant, so I began gathering props from backstage. If I remember correctly, I grabbed a couple books (no big surprise), a newspaper with a headline about somebody winning (I suppose that means that my dream-making faculty feels pretty good about my life right now), and a pink flamingo (no idea on that one). As I was about to step onto the stage, the alarm went off.

I finished Barth's Dogmatics in Outline, and although I didn't agree with every one of his points, it's undeniably one of the most powerful works of theology I've ever read. I'm already imagining things in Barthian categories, something that no theologian since Milbank has done to me. Now I'm trying to catch up on my Marva Dawn for Monday and to read a Robert MacAffee Brown book which, although it's very good, just can't measure up to Barth.

Another day of classroom moving and syllabus writing lies before me... bummer. Oh, well--it could be worse. I could still be cleaning toilets in Johnson City.

No Job, No Brakes

I had one of my anxiety dreams last night. Mary and I were sitting in our car overlooking some kind of parade when Cynthia from the library came walking along. Suddenly I realized that I was supposed to be at the library an hour and a half ago to sub for her. She told me that no patrons had come yet, as far as she knew, but that I was actually supposed to be at a much larger library, and there were seven people waiting for me to show up. With this prompting on the brain, I started the car and threw it in reverse. Lacking the power to move backwards, we began rolling forward towards a thirty-foot drop off into the parade route below. I stomped the brakes but got nothing. So I floored the gas in reverse, hoping to save the car. All that happened was a spinning of the front wheels and a plunge as the car began to fall. I woke up in a cold sweat at 3:30 this morning as the car hit the bottom. Not being one afraid to continue such dreams, I made a pit stop and came back to bed and dreamed about being a defensive end for the Indianapolis Colts.

Most of my free time has been wrapped up in planning for next semester's classes, so I still haven't finished Barth. I have, however, decided that the speech class is going to move in a workshop-speech-workshop-speech manner, each Monday being concerned with some teaching of theory and then some time for students to consult with me. Wednesday will begin with speeches and end with whatever teaching I have time left for. I'm not sure whether I have to give a final, but I'll try to avoid that if I can.

Micah has been as active as ever, and we've got less than three months' time until he's due. I've felt like a father for some time already, and I'm ready to try my hand at it in the trenches. March 11, here I come!

Get a Job

I dreamed last night that Richard Gilmore (from the show Gilmore Girls) was my father-in-law and that Mary and I were visiting for a weekend. He kept ranting about how I should get a real job, and I accidentally dropped about eight spoons down the garbage disposal. Details beyond that are fuzzy.

Barth is still coming along, though extensive trips to Mary's school and excessive Madden playing (and enervating Christmas shopping) have kept my reading time to a minimum. I don't know if I'm burnt out or what. Perhaps I can turn that around today and have a dazzling take on Barth's final chapters tomorrow morning. We'll see.

A Voice Crying

No dream recollections from last night; I believe I was just too tired.

Barth's Dogmatics in Outline is almost finished, and I know now why he's such a compelling figure in theology. I also wonder whether I could sustain reading through twenty volumes of his intense prose. On the other hand, he's given my little book a jump start; I started making notes on a chapter for the first time since October yesterday. I don't know whether I'll have the thing rolling by the time Micah arrives, but it'll at least be something that I can tool around with as the months and years pass.

I think I'll try out Robert Macafee Brown's book next--it's also a compact-sized, hundred-and-some-pager. And in the meantime, I've got chapters of Marva Dawn's book to read. Taking it on with a group has proved rewarding; since I've got the strongest cultural conservative/aesthetic elitist tendencies in the group, it's interesting to have to take Dawn's side in matters of church art, pop culture, and such. I think it'll be an interesting read down the road just for that reason, even if for no other.

Way too much Caffeine

In my dream last night (you thought I'd stopped this blogging thing, didn't you?), I was tired, so I found a can of cola to drink. Unfortunately, it was a can of high-octane Jolt Max (I'm not sure whether they actually make such a drink). The result of my ingesting the drink was that I became able to shift up to eight days forward or eight days backward due to the caffeine overdose. Being in a dream, I didn't think to do the obvious sports-betting thing; instead, I was just overcome with anxiety as my life became a sort of digital cable menu, each of seventeen days being just as much an option as any other. Spooky.

Barth is coming along nicely, but I fear that I'm soon going to be overwhelmed with work and nearly unable to finish. I might be teaching as many as four courses with three preps over there next semester, and I'm not sure what's happening as far as textbooks or syllabi go. So I might be in a dead scramble by the time I next enter something on the blog. Or maybe not.

So it's been a week

I've had in-laws in, a job interview that never materialized, and all kinds of other reasons not to write here. Or read, for that matter. I'm making my way through Barth, but not nearly as quickly as I'd hoped.

Tuesday is my next "interview" with EC, and I imagine I'm going to turn down the job--the long commute and low pay just aren't the things I need right now. So be it.

Marlowe, Wrestlemania, and Derivative Calculus

Okay, last night's dream was so bizarre that I can't even begin to interpret it. I was a student on a college campus built on a series of terraces on a steep hill. To get from a high point to a low point, there were no stairs, so everyone, from eighteen-year-old students to sixty-year-old professors, would put one foot on the steep slope between two terraces, lift the other one off the ground, and slide down the slope, taking a short hop at the bottom and continuing on his or her way. And I don't remember having to re-ascend the slope.

I was on my way to a psychology exam for a class taught by Dr. Teague, who taught Renaissance Drama when I was doing my MA in English. And Brad Warfield, a friend from college and seminary, was there in the class with us. To study for the test, we had been watching old Wrestlemania tapes, the ones featuring Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant. And before I entered the classroom, Dr. Teague was sure to ask me whether I'd been studying my WWF tapes. But when I sat down, the first three pages were full of problems in which I had to give the derivative of various calculus... things (can't even remember the terminology, much less how to do them). I woke up feeling betrayed by the world and by the college system.

Speaking of college systems, I've got an interview Tuesday morning for a possible spot teaching English at Emmanuel College for a semester. I'm quite excited, really. While I don't hate substitute teaching, I'd much prefer being in charge of my own classroom and teaching my own class. Mary has said that it would be alright so long as it's not a money-losing proposition. Cool.

I played Madden instead of reading philosophy yesterday, so no interesting notes from books. But I traded a tight end and a draft pick for a hot shot rookie defensive lineman, and the Colts defense that was porous in the first two games picked off three Tom Brady passes in week three, taking the already invincible Colts offense to a 30-point rout of the once-mighty Superbowl champs. But today, I've got Nietzsche and Barth with me, and they'll be traveling along with me to Appalachee High this morning. I hope I've got third or fourth period planning--it seems like every other class I sub for has second period, the positive worst time to have planning. Oh well. Have to see when I get there.

Nietzsche makes sense now

I forget whether it did back in college or whether I was just too sleep-deprived to maintain attention, but at this point, I'm about twenty pages into The Birth of Tragedy, and I'm actually getting out of it what people say is in there. I'm also chugging through Barth's Dogmatics in Outline. If I've got some time today, I might also start Robert MacAfee Brown's Saying Yes, Saying No or a reread of Milton's "A Masque." Underemployed ain't great financially, but I sure am getting some hardcore reading done.

It's now been since Thursday that I got a sub call. I turned that one down because I was studying for the GRE, and now I'm paying the price karmically. (Not sure if that's a word.) I've got the phone next to me as I type this, and I'm really hoping to get called. No matter, though--next week I've got five, eight-hour days lined up at the library, each of which pays more than an eight-hour day of subbing. And once January comes, I'll be applying for real jobs anyway.

Micah is as active as ever, though he always stops kicking when I put my hand on Mary's belly. A little less than four months from now, he's going to be breathing air and shared much more evenly between Mary and me. Ph.D applications are in the mail; now I've got to concentrate on applying to churches. More on that later.

Heavy Hitters and Silly Reads

I've finished up the Papal encyclical Evangelium Vitae, and I've started Karl Barth's Dogmatics in Outline. I've also picked up Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, a British humor book about punctuation, from the public library, so I'm not completely devoting myself to hard-hitting theology.

No real recollection of the content of my dream last night, but I do remember that it involved an indestructible devil-figure. He actually loaned me an anti-tank rocket launcher and let me fire it at his body at about five hundred yards. Didn't even wrinkle his thousand dollar suit. I forget exactly what the devil wanted of me, but I'm sure I would have turned the gig down. Unless, of course, he just wanted to tempt me into firing a shoulder-launched antitank round. Then I'm screwed.

This will be my last week of subbing before six working days off from the kids--I'm taking over many of Cynthia's hours at the library, and I'm looking forward to it. I'd trade thirty-student classes and bad videos for ignorant computer questions and parents who do their kids' homework any old day of the week. But right now, it's time to shower just in case a thirty-student class lacks an idjit to play the video tape.

Talking mice?

I had a full-fledged comic book ripoff dream last night. In the dream I was a talking mouse. By whatever means (I remember more towards the end of the dream), I had been changed into a talking mouse, and by exposure to a failed MiracleGro experiment, I had grown to thirty feet tall. I had made myself useful around Washington, D.C. by helping construction crews to lift heavy things, but one day, George W. Bush gave orders that, since he thought I was a French mouse, I must be destroyed. So all of a sudden, tanks are shooting at me. So I dove into the Potomac, where I found a secret underwater door. When I opened it, I partially blacked out, but all of a sudden I was talking to a Jedi who was part of the insurrection against the Galactic Empire. She told me that the others wanted to execute me as an imperial spy, but she decided that I couldn't have been because I had a French accent. Then the alarm went off.

I finished both Evangelium Vitae and Paradise Lost in the last couple days, and now I'm looking for a new project. Oh, yeah... I probably need to study some more for Saturday's English subject area GRE. With Mary unsure whether she wants to keep working after Micah's born, I'm not sure how much of myself I can sink into this test--even if I make it into a program, there's no guarantee that I'll be accepting the invite. But I can't blow it off either, because she's still unsure whether she wants to work or to stay home. Oy. To be continued...

Lawsuit Baseball

I dreamed last night that I was playing third base on some kind of baseball team. The thing is, the batter was in a horserace-style gate that would open just before the pitcher delivered. Beyond that, I fielded a couple choppers down the line, but when I threw the runners out, after the first one the other team started threatening lawsuits. And after the second one, my own team started threatening lawsuits! Come on, guys... I was just playing the game!

I finished Torture and Eucharist this weekend, and my review is on amazon.com. I suppose Wes Arblaster is working at a church, so in theory it should be possible for me to land something, but I fear that questions are going to come up, and I'm going to have to choose between another year of unemployment and selling out what I believe. I suppose those fears won't come to a head until I'm in my first interview.

Another buggered election

When I went to sleep last night, they were just beginning their all-night marathon. This morning, it looks like like Pennsylvania went Kerry, Florida went Bush, and Ohio is going to be the new legal battleground. Unless one believes Fox News, which has Ohio already in the Bush column. I suppose Fox News, if nothing else, was an accurate predictor of the 2000 Florida results.

More importantly, the anti-gay amendment passed in Georgia yesterday. The courts are already challenging it, but I don't anticipate any great overturnings. I only know a handful of gay Georgians, but my instincts tell me that this could well cause an exodus from "red" states into "blue" states over the next few years. What it will do economically and culturally, I can only speculate. But I wonder what sort of neighbors the Georgia Protestants are being seen as right now.

Mary had the day off yesterday, and I was sick part of the day, so I didn't get a ton of reading done. Perhaps tomorrow I'll be able to say more about what we Christians can do to oppose the state.

Fascist Time Change

All this baloney about "gaining an hour..." whole lot of good it does when it's pitch dark at seven o'clock and I'm getting tired at eight! I think all of us from Indiana who have landed in states that capitulated to the totalitarian "let Uncle Sam tell you when the day starts and stops" plot get at least a little depressed on the day after Daylight Savings Time starts in the fall. No government should have that kind of power, but I don't suppose any military in the world is powerful enough right now to liberate us from the state's control even over the hours of the day...

Torture and Eucharist has bogged down a little, but I understand why. Cavanaugh wants to give a detailed treatment of Jacques Maritain's political theology because it had such a profound influence on the Chilean hierarchy and because it serves as an example of bad ecclesiology. But since I've never read a paragraph of Maritain, the commentary ain't doing much for me. I'm looking forward to clearing this chapter and getting on to Cavanaugh's chapters on resistance.

Emergence and Krispy Kreme

The strangest dream... I was vacationing in a city (can't remember which) with my wife and my parents. The last morning, a Sunday, came, and I decided that I'd go grab some breakfast before we had to go to church (for whatever reason, I was teaching Sunday school). But as I wandered the streets, I came to realize that I had no idea where I was going. I happened upon what looked like a ferry terminal for crossing the river (the city did have quite a big river), and hundreds of teenagers were pouring into it while booming bass, sounding vaguely like dance music, poured out. It was six o'clock on a Sunday morning. After backtracking a bit, I found what appeared to be a mall food court, and I ate a Krispy Kreme before finding my way back to the hotel. Then we went to the church, "The First Emerging Church" as the sign would have it, and I taught something about Isaiah.

Didn't do any more reading on Cavanaugh yesterday, though I did get ahold of a copy of America: The Book from the public library. Funny stuff, but as is often the case, too much non-mother-friendly stuff for many in my circle. I think Ryan is full of crap on this one, as he often is: one of the vices of certain comedians, according to Ryan, is that they don't offend anyone. I say that just makes them accessible. Snobbery, I've come to think, is at least part of the drive to riddle comedy with obscenity.

Imagined Communities

I'm about two-thirds of the way through Torture and Eucharist now, and I think it's going to trouble me more than any book I've read recently. Not because of the graphic visuals--Cavanaugh is actually pretty sparing with the blow-by-blow, preferring instead first-person testimonials and general notations that torture happened. The really troubling notes are the histories of Chile from 1970 to 1990. They resemble so much the state of America right now that I'm actually starting to believe the John Ashcroft conspiracy theorists. The strategy of the Pinochet people involved pitting the theological resistance against the "real" Christians, the nationalists who didn't question their leader. Their increasing secrecy in the early seventies led to a state in which nobody trusted anybody and anyone opposing the governing party was labeled treasonous. Their military became the national symbol, considered far more "Chilean" than politicians or intellectuals or workers.


Three voices were competing to define the people's imagination. On the one hand, the left wing painted a picture in which the peasants of Chile and the factory workers in Southeast Asia and the poor farmers of Cuba were all one, the "other" people being the Chilean oligarchs, the international capitalists, and the fat cats of the world. Against them the Pinochet regime leveled charges of "class warfare" (sound familiar?) and held that all Chileans, whether the impoverished or the multi-millionaire, were part of a whole in ways that a Chilean and a Cuban could never be one. And finally, the Church, after it had flirted with both of those sides, eventually declared that the body of Christ was no invisible thing but a real political body, one that pointed to the eternal but was constituted by a discipline here and now. Until the eighties, the Pinochet people won out, and anything done for the good of the nation-state (including torture) was considered good because if Chileans weren't protecting Chileans, nobody would. And the government maintained a perpetual "state of emergency" to justify any abuses that they "absolutely needed" to inflict on the people (sound familiar?).

I really don't remember what I dreamed about last night, by the way. I'm showing a video to my substitute class today, so I might get some more reading done. Who knows? All I know is that one candidate is looking more and more like Pinochet as the pages pass, and I'm going to be stepping into a booth come Tuesday...

Spookier by the Minute

I've still been reading in Torture and Eucharist, and I just finished the section in which Cavanaugh runs down a history of Chile from 1930 to 1988, and where I expected a history that runs parallel to Afghanistan's or Iraq's, I see the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush years in America. Spooky. When time affords itself, I'll go into more details there.

I can't remember what I dreamed, but I do feel better since I forgot to set my alarm and overslept by almost an hour. I wasn't nearly as productive as I'd hoped this morning, but I feel great. I wonder whether I'll say the same in six hours.

Cutting Cactus

I dreamed last night that I was going out to some kind of lake to visit my little brother Ryan (he's 23) on the job. I found him using a weed eater to cut down hillsides full of grass. For whatever reason (I guess just because I'm a good guy) I offered to take it from him for a few minutes so he could rest. He proceeded to jump in his truck and drive away, pointing to a field growing as dense with cactus as a field might grow with wild grass. I woke up this morning still spraying cactus parts all over myself with a weed eater.

This weekend I finished books eight and nine of Paradise Lost. I can see why people are fascinated with Satan--his character does generate the most interest--but I still don't think that Milton was of the devil's party without knowing it. (I've got to practice using that line--it seems to be a requirement for Milton conferences. I'd probably better find it in Blake as well.) His venom has reached full boil by the time book nine rolls around, and the evil with which he wrestled in book four has become all-consuming. It's terribly interesting to me that even the Prince of Hell struggles against evil in Milton, pointing to a definite privative notion of evil--it's always deviant from a good, and it's always a choice. And now that I've read Augustine's City of God, I know that Milton's strong emphasis on free will isn't incompatible with the old African either. Man, I love this theology and literature stuff!

I also started reading Torture and Eucharist in earnest yesterday. The accounts of physical cruelty are horrifying, but more enlightening is Cavanaugh's strong sociological and theological analyses of how premodern physical punishment differs from modern torture. It's certainly calling into question, at least for me, the complacency I've turned towards what's happening in Gitmo. As I read the book, I'm sure I'll have even more thoughts on the government's dealings with its enemies.

The Apocalypse is Here

Like so many bloggers in the last eight hours, I'm sure, I have to tip my blue hat with the red "C" to the Boston Red Sox. Nobody's ever come back from three and 0, although the Marlins did similar to the Cubbies last year. It always does my heart good to see the Yankees lose.

I've forgotten the plot line to my dream last night, but I do remember reaching between couch cushions and pulling out a handful of rubber bands. Weird, eh?

That "angel sex" passage in book eight of Paradise Lost is overrated, I'm afraid. I remember Dr. Doyle making a big thing of it, but it's about the least erotic thing I've ever read. But I suppose that's my sin-numbed, postlapsarian mind trying to take it in. On the other hand, I'd forgotten Satan's speech at the beginning of book nine. I was fairly tired when I read it last night; I'll have to give it another run today. I'm certain it isn't as good as his book four speech; otherwise I'd remember it. But it deserves another read.

I'm substituting for an ESOL class today. Mary thinks I'll be fine, but I wonder whether this is going to be one of those harsh lessons in saying no.

Too Many Footnotes

Hauerwas's book is good, but every page is about half text and half footnotes. I suppose I should expect that from a book based on a lecture series, but it's slow going nonetheless. In Paradise Lost I'm up to book eight, where Raphael tells Adam that astronomy is a noble profession but always subject to revision. Or at least that's how I read it.

Can't remember precisely what I dreamed about last night, but I do know that Mary decided to start anew the fight against canine tyranny. When I started to get up to take the dog out, she told me not to and just yelled at the dog to "go lay down." Sabrina did not go outside between ten o'clock last night and five thirty this morning--I suppose Mary wins round one.

Now that I know the context behind "I voted for the money before I voted against it," I've actually gained a degree of respect for Mr. Kerry. My hunch is that most people aren't going to look it up, so Karl Rove's gambit will likely work. By the time the election rolls around, my hunch is that ninety percent of Americans will be familiar with the one-liner but will have no idea that Kerry was trying to push for some responsible policy by voting for one but not the other of two Iraq funding bills. Oh well.

Deadline Today

I can't remember what exactly I dreamed about, but I know it involved Sabrina's behaving herself in an animal hospital, so I should have known it wasn't real.

I haven't covered any more ground in Paradise Lost, but I did pick up Hauerwas's With the Grain of the Universe where I left off, and I finished the William James section and started the Reinhold Niebuhr section. I think I'll try to knock that one out as my next theology book.

Today's the application deadline for the library job in Lawrenceville; I hope not too many people applied. I hope even more that nobody super-qualified applied. I suppose we'll see how this pans out over the next few days.

Another short one, I know. I don't suppose I've quite recovered from sleeping in this weekend. I'm hoping I'll have some good stuff to talk about tomorrow.

Easily Worth Two Bucks

No dream recollection this morning, as I snooze-buttoned whatever I was dreaming right out of my memory.

Mary and I went to see Spider Man 2 at the second run cinema last night, and I feel like it was a good two dollars spent.

This morning and early afternoon I really have to devote to getting my study on Acts ready; I don't think we're actually going to get past the first couple verses of chapter one just yet, but setting things up ought to be fun.

Short entry today; perhaps tomorrow will prove more fruitful.

Two dreams, one Senator

It's Saturday, and it's not early morning, but what the heck? Sabrina (the cocker spaniel, for new readers) woke me up at one o'clock in the morning while I was in the middle of one dream. In it I was walking in Indianapolis with my mother, grandmother, and wife, when we came across a service pit, the kind covered with grating that keeps one's feet up but still allows a view into a twenty-foot pit. But this one had a three-foot-by-three-foot hole in the middle, and my grandmother was walking straight towards the hole. I told her to stop, but she insisted that she could step over it, took an eighteen-inch step, and plunged straight down. I ran to the edge of the hole to see her land on both feet, Matrix-style. She looked up and told me that the landing had hurt a little. So, being the dutiful grandson, I began to climb down, using the electrical conduits and water pipes as handholds. Then Sabrina bopped me in the face to let me know that the vast mass of kleenexes she had consumed yesterday had reached the digestive terminal.

In the second one, I was a student in a college classroom. The class turned to the presidential election, and people started spouting Republican slogans ranging from "Kerry is no leader" to "God wants Bush reelected." From two seats behind me, I heard somebody say, "Shut up." I turned around to see John Kerry sitting at a desk two seats behind me. I told him, "Don't worry, John. I'll vote for you." He said, "Thanks, Nate." Then Sabrina barked in my ear. Apparently she had found some more toilet paper, and it had found its way through.

No big thoughts today, but I'll be back Monday with some more good stuff. Shoot, I might come back tomorrow.

First Day

In about two hours, my first day of substitute teaching commences. I'm still eagerly anticipating any word about the library tech support job over in Gwinnett, but nonetheless, today I actually start contributing to the family money situation again.

Abdiel's story in Paradise Lost always seems both too long and too short. Too long because by the time he makes his speeches against Satan, returns to Heaven, makes speeches there, makes speeches against Satan again before the heavenly war commences, and deals the first blow to Satan, I get the feeling that he's too minor a character to warrant such attention (though I know why Milton did so). Too short because I know why Milton makes him so important, and some more treatment would highlight further that importance. I'm up to the beginning of book seven, halfway through the epic, and I'm enjoying it more than ever.

No political or medical updates today. I've been turning over in my head a manifesto of sorts dealing with the double-standards that teachers and doctors live in, but that can wait. The dog has to pee, after all, and the look she's giving me tells me that this pee stop has cosmic implications that should not be ignored by any mere mortal (she gets that look two or three times a day).

Vagary and Brilliance

I can't exactly remember last night's dream because I took a shower, did some laundry, and edited Mary's social studies test this morning--just too much activity. But I do remember it had something to do with my being a politician--watching these presidential debates has really screwed with my head. Incidentally, I thought Kerry probably did better in all three debates, while Cheney pretty clearly cleaned Edwards' clock in the veep debate. My primary criteria are apparent preparation and who caught whom most visibly in distorting things. Bush was caught in whoppers at least once per debate, while Cheney had statistics in his evil bald head that made Edwards' party-line statements seem entirely unconnected with reality. Fun to watch all around.

I'm up to book five in Paradise Lost, and I think that Satan's book four speech has to be the best piece of tragic writing in English. Nothing in Lear or Hamlet measures up, not even to speak of anything in Marlowe's plays. I think Satan is the ultimate Aristotelian tragic hero, his flaws clearly named and operative as the narrative unfolds. Nobody is born higher than Satan who falls; nobody sinks into such a low state. In previous readings, I took "Evil, be thou my good" to be some kind of bold Promethean stand. This time, taking more careful note of the speech's direction up to that point, I realize that it's a resignation, a realization that God is gracious enough that he could resume his service as Lucifer at any time. Satan realizes in that proufoundest of speeches that not only did he choose to become Satan before he was expelled but that every moment for the rest of time, he is going to continue to choose to be Satan. Nowhere else can I think of a character whose singular vice is so deliberately chosen and thus so singularly torturous. Also, the book four speech throws into absurdity all the tough talk in the Hellish council from book two; Moloch's violent overthrow would never work, and as long as their disposition is towards rebellion, they continue to be their own Hells. Belial counsels sloth while never addressing the chosen character of their Hellish imprisonment. Mammon takes it a step further, pretending that their Hell is some kind of neutral place that can be made good of or bad.

Satan's book four speech breaks through all of that; his exposure to the beauty of earth brings out of him the most honest moment he has in the epic, a clear-sighted confession and perhaps even some contrition, but never repentance. It also qualifies some people's easy claim that "we've all got Satan within us." Perhaps, but the intensity and the degree of Satan's fall has none of Hannah Arendt's banality; this is the most rarefied rebellion against the divine possible, and it leads places that human rejection simply cannot lead. I'm salivating over book five even as we speak. I think I'll go read a while.

The Void

I had perhaps the creepiest kind of dream last night, namely the empty set. I closed my eyes not long after ten thirty. I opened them, and it was five thirty. I've read that such voids are illusory, that my dreaming brain just created a facsimile of my last waking hours, but even that's a little weird, I think.

I'm in the process of applying for a school tech support job, and I'm as nervous as can be. If I should land it, it would mean that Mary and I would have sufficient money not only to make it through her pregnancy but probably to get ahead while she's pregnant. If I don't, no big changes, save that I'll probably be quitting the library come January. Of course, if I do get the job, I'll probably be quitting anyway, but that's a separate issue.

Paradise Lost still has not disappointed. The text is so complex, so open yet so compelling, that it feels like I'm reading something new even as I go over familiar passages. Very cool. Anyway, I have to write a cover letter.

Double Header

This morning, I woke up actually remembering both the dream I was having when Sabrina (our cocker spaniel) woke me up at 1:30 this morning and the dream I was having when the alarm went off. Pretty cool, eh?

To set up some background for the first one, sometimes my dream-making faculty will contextualize stimuli that would otherwise wake me up, keeping me asleep and making me odious to Mary if she's trying to sleep. This morning at 1:30 was one of those times. Sabrina had detected either a squirrel or another dog or a cat or a deer out in the yard, and she had jumped up on the bed and taken her place right next to my head to scratch at the window and bark and carry on. Incidentally, she once cut the right side of my face open in one of these frenzies. But this morning, my dreaming brain created a scenario in which Sabrina had read a sign out by the street that said it was election day, and she was protesting the fact that we wouldn't let her go vote. Eventually Mary woke me up for real, and I took the dog out to pee.

In the second dream, I discovered that I had a hard lump in my right palm and a socket like a headphone socket in my right wrist. Moreover, I was at Circuit City, and they were trying to sell me various cyber-punky devices to plug into my wrist or to interface with my palm sensor. I shaved and showered before I sat down to write this morning, so I don't remember much else, but just having those cyborg parts was trippy enough.

I began my fifth wall-to-wall reading of Paradise Lost yesterday, and Milton's great epic gets better every time. Each time I attempt it, I get more involved in the imagery, the theological import, and especially the rhetorical tricks and ironies that Milton uses both to keep me, the reader, at a distance from the things going on and to let me in on the cosmic joke as the demons attempt to convince themselves of their importance. I'll attempt book two today, and if I keep it up, I'll have completed my fifth read well before November.

The Extraterrestrial Talking Diamond

Okay, last night's dream was a weird one. There was a reality show being taped in the town where I lived (not sure where, but for some reason it seemed like Winslow, IN). The idea was that a carpenter's family would live in a homeless family's car while the homeless family lived in a house that was being built. Now that I'm awake, I realize that this setup would ruin any surprise that might come with the new house, not to mention the difficulty inherent in living in a not-yet-built house. No matter. My difficulty was that the twenty-six pound talking diamond, which had told me I was the chosen one (not even sure what I was chosen for at this point) had somehow ended up wrapped in a blanket in a corner of the house and refused to move. I told the carpenter exactly what was going on while he negotiated selling prices with the homeless father, but that just made everyone want to see a twenty-six pound diamond. But when we got there, Lionel Luthor from Smallville had Clark Kent kryptonite-poisoned in a corner (right next to the diamond, which apparently nobody had noticed), and Lois Lane from Smallville captured. So as the carpenter, the homeless father, the carpenter's son, and I entered the room, so did Smallville's Lana Lang, brandishing two pistols, Matrix-style. A verbal exchange turned into a fight scene, with about six of Luthor's guards going down, and then the alarm rang.

Still haven't had a chance to watch the debate, but that's no big deal. Mary and I now have even more baby paperwork filled out, but I still have tasks to complete before I take off for work this morning. Much to do. Much to do.

I've covered about the first ten chapters of Acts, and once I've read it all the way through, I can start planning the next Bible study series. I'm also going to make a run of Paradise Lost again. I think I'll use a Vonnegut novel as my casual, in-bed-while-Mary-suddenly-gets-chatty reading.

Series Finale

Mary woke up with my alarm today and told me she was hungry, so I've got no recollection of what I dreamed about. I do remember dreaming, though.

I finished up my Bible study series on the Psalms last night, and as a whole I was pleased with the series. I suppose I can add that one to my list of books taught. Now I've got a little less than two weeks to plan my series on Luke-Acts. It amused me last night when they asked whether I really wanted to continue; they were worried that only having four people in the group would feel like a waste of time. I suppose they don't know that what I do on Wednesday nights is keeping me sane, given that I'm not planning lessons and teaching elsewhere. Perhaps if/when substituting picks up it'll be somewhat fulfulling, but really, I'm not sure.

I Could Do Better than That

Wow. The debate was so lopsided last night that I actually dreamed that I was debating Dick Cheney. And in my dream, I was laying out a case for a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, point by point, without any recourse to talking points. I can only wish Edwards had done the same. It was clear last night that Cheney had studied for that debate and studied harder than Edwards. While little John attempted to use Kerry's talking points, Cheney talked fluently about policy, records, and all sorts of things. I never really believed the conspiracy theory that Cheney was secretly running things behind the scenes, but after last night, it's hard to deny. I say we let Cheney and Kerry debate from here on out and have an American Gladiators-style contest between Edwards and Bush on a jumbotron between questions. Then, whichever wins a given giant Q-tip match or obstacle course run earns his running mate ten extra seconds on the next rebuttal. Then we can see the brains behind each operation discuss politics and the young, dim ones do something entertaining, apparently the best that either can do lately.

I'm nearly finished with Niebuhr, and I can see now the accusations that he gives the "Christ transforming culture" an unfair advantage. It's clearly his favorite of the five, and his main critique of Augustine is that he's not fully a transformationalist, that he puts too much emphasis on the difference between the saved and the unsaved. I ought to be able to knock the rest of it out today and start planning the Acts Bible study.

My friend Alex Fitzner visited here about a week ago. Here he is sitting in his house-on-wheels.

No Picture

I know I dreamed something last night, because I woke up remembering it. But I lay in bed for too long afterwards, and now I can't remember a thing.

Tonight is the vice presidential debate, and I fear that I'm going to end the night wishing that Edwards were the Democratic nominee and knowing that Cheney is in fact the sitting president. Why this presidential race is not Dean-Edwards, or even Edwards-Kerry, is still a mystery, and as I told my little brother, it just goes to show that the Democratic party isn't taking this very seriously. I'm certain that a check of my email will reveal scads of messages from the Kerry campaign asking me to vote in online polls tonight. I might, and I might not.

My assessment of Niebuhr's categories, based on some online summaries, seems to be on so far. Although Christ against culture, the Christ of culture, and Christ above culture were compelling, Christ and culture in paradox is so far the most adequate of the stances that Niebuhr has laid out. I don't know whether I'm going to be even more convinced by his Augustinian/transformational model, but I suppose therein lies the joy of reading a good book.

Won't Leave Me Alone

I dreamed last night that we had a girl, but the girl was about the size of a June bug, small enough to cradle in my palm. The problem was that we were with Mary's family, and all the women were horrified that I was holding the baby. They kept trying to take her away. Irritated but not wanting to offend, I started hiding behind things when the women came around. Then my alarm went off.

I finished my little abridged Malory last night, and I was right--not even Gawain, who becomes fiendishly strong as the sun rises, could beat Launcelot. Instead, the flower of knighthood fasted himself to death upon the death of Guinevere. By the end of things, all the knights were either dead (mostly by the hand of Launcelot), monks, or fighting in the Crusades (no mind that they were six hundred years away when the Welsh warlord Arturus was alive). I have no doubt, now having read two hundred fifty pages of Malory, that he finds some clear faults with medieval chivalry, not just any given practitioner of it. In Malory's world, might truly makes right, and a knight who denies a crime narrated mere pages before as clearly committed by said knight is innocent in the final sum of things so long as he can kill his accuser in a joust. By the end of my little abridged version, Launcelot has slept with Guinevere at least four times, but because he's so good in a fight, he stands innocent on all counts.

I've got an eight hour shift at the library today, so I'm going to wait until the eleven o'clock lull to start reading over at the Ooze. Between that and Niebuhr, it ought to be a good day.

Lost again

I dreamed last night that I was in college and that my schedule was made up entirely of high-level math classes. I never attended any class in the context of the dream but instead wandered around a labyrinth-like building, never being able to find my class but somehow running into thirty business majors in every hallway that I traversed.

I'm back in Malory for the moment, trying to finish it off before I launch into "Christ Above Culture" in Niebuhr's book. All of Gawain's brothers and nephews are now dead, and Launcelot killed most of them. For that matter, Launcelot has killed, in the last twenty pages, most of the knights of the Round Table. Apparently he doesn't age, because his son Galahad by this point is dead and gone, having retrieved the Holy Grail. The next section is called "Gawain's Revenge," but I imagine he'll kill some of the knights who have joined Launcelot's faction--I just don't think Launcelot can be killed.

End of the Line

I had one of my recurring dreams last night. I'm in college, and it's finals week. All of a sudden, I remember I've been enrolled in a class that I forgot I was in about the third week of the semester, and my final is coming up. The stuff of the dream never includes the final itself or anything like that; it's always just the anxiety that comes from having to explain myself when I show up to take the test.

I watched the first presidential debate last night, and if the rumor is true that Nader is off the Georgia ballot, I suppose I could vote for John Kerry. I actually found things out about his policy proposals last night. From Bush I found out that questions not leading naturally to recitations of the party line are ignored so that Bush can recite the party line. But then again, I know that pretty well from the scant press conferences he's done over the years. I was trying hard not to focus on body language so that I could hear what the candidates were saying, but Bush's smirk will not be ignored. When asked whether he lied to get his invasion of Iraq, he smirked as he denied knowing any better. When asked which pre-emptive war will be next, he smirked as he claimed to hope that there would be no need for any more. When asked to account for the deaths that the Iraqi invasion has caused, he smirked as he claimed that every life is precious. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but when asked questions that confused him (this happened a couple times), the smirk disappeared instantly. Likewise, when Kerry was calling his policies into question, he traded the smirk for his "he took my candy" look. I'll be in substitute teacher training during debate number two, but I might have Mary tape it for me.

Niebuhr's book continues to impress. Again, I think that some of his categories are too dependent on the categories of nation-state and modern church, but his descriptive power is nonetheless impressive. If I can pull a political thread away from the trolls for a little bit (and this close to an election!), I think that a discussion of his work would be quite good.

Back to Niebuhr

I finished David Sedaris's book, and my break from hard prose, last night. The whole book was a hoot--I'll probably try out some more trendy essays the next time I need a break from slow reading. Actually, I'm pretty charged up to continue in Christ and Culture.

No dream recollection this morning, but more dog stories. Sabrina is still on the warpath; her latest victim was a bag full of bathroom trash that I had bagged up but not taken out in the rain. Oy. That'll be a project today to gather up.

I'm not feeling like writing a great deal this morning, obviously. Mary's OBGYN appointment yesterday went entirely smoothly, and our baby has a strong heartbeat. Mary's right on track as far as gaining weight goes, and everything is cool in general. In a little over three weeks, we'll get the ultrasound on video and find out what sex our baby is. I think that'll be the coolest so far.

Doggie Speed

No dream recollection, because I was dealing with a psychotic Cocker Spaniel all night. She absolutely had to go outside at midnight, an hour after I went to bed, so I figured I'd give up the minute and a half to get six hours of uninterrupted sleep. Except then she woke me up again at three in the morning, insistent that she had to pee right then. And at five, she woke me up thundering away at the bathroom door, her signal that she's out of water. I thought she had just been left alone too long.

But then, this morning, I found the evidence of something far more sinister. Sunday night, I made chocolate chip cookies for Mary and me. We couldn't eat the whole batch, so I bagged them up and put them on the counter. This morning, I found a mangled freezer bag and chocolate stains on the guest bedroom's bedspread. So now I understand perfectly well why she needed to pee four times from ten o'clock until six o'clock, and I understand how she went through two bowls of water. She was flushing the drugs out of her system. The old conspiracy theory is that chocolate will kill a dog, but Sabrina's done things like this a number of times, and it only makes her more impulsive than a Cocker already is. For instance, this morning, she didn't wait until Mary and I had left the house as per usual but went straight from her most recent excretory outing into our bathroom to eat our toilet paper. I put her in her cage for some hard time, but she knew that I'd get in more trouble for inducing dog-noise before seven AM than for letting our little dog become more of a monster than she already is, so she got out early. And I know for a fact that, given enough time, she will do this again. There is no learning of lessons for dogs as old as Sabrina; years of ruling the house in Pennsylvania are impossible to undo here in Georgia.

On the book front, I've given Malory and Niebuhr a break to read David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day. It's got to be one of the funniest books I've read in quite some time. Even Mary, who read sections with me while we were waiting to get in to see the doctor, thought it was great stuff. And best of all, I've been reading it just for a day and a half or so, and I'm almost finished. I'm starting to understand how people can go through so many books at the library--some books are actually easier, some go faster, some don't take as much time as others! I really should have known that before now.

My father-in-law Ollie (with the best picture-taking look I could get out of him) and my mother-in-law Sue holding the plaque that West Alexander Christian Church presented them

My niece and nephew Analice and Adam

My niece Chloe (without the benefit of redeye reduction--I wanted to do this fast)

My niece Janelle

Worn Down

We flew in from Pittsburgh yesterday afternoon, and so our Fall travel season is over. My body still hasn't recovered from the 20-hour day (3:45 AM-midnight) that we turned in Saturday. Mary is still sad because we spent our last night in the parsonage. But overall, the trip was good. Mary's sister-in-law surprised us (ambushed us, really) with about two hundred dollars worth of maternity clothes for Mary. We had a retirement party at an ice hockey rink. We were there for Ollie's last Sunday school class. Pretty cool stuff. Pictures of nieces and nephews to come.

I've only got the death sequences left in Malory, but this weekend I was instead reading H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture. Having read Hauerwas's and Yoder's critiques of Niebuhr since I was nineteen, I've been spotting all kinds of categorical difficulties. No surprise. What is surprising is how well written the piece is. This book deserves its masterpiece status, and I'm sure that I'll say so when I finish the book and post on the "Christ and Culture" thread over at the Ooze.

I'm not sure that my body has regenerated to the point that my brain can generate dreams, so no dream recollection this morning. Just a weekend recap and a hot shower. Shower, here I come.

Strange Hymns

I don't remember the content of my dream last night, but I do remember that there was a hymn, to the tune of "The Way of the Cross Leads Home," somewhere in there:

The fool and the good die young
The fool and the good die young
It is good to know as I older grow
The-e-e-e fool and the good die young

Have you ever noticed in some late nineteenth and early twentieth century hymns where a syllable that shouldn't be sat upon gets elongated beyond reason? In the actual hymn, the definite article gets stretched as well.

I'm hoping that Niebuhr's book comes to the library today--it would be nice to have something other than Jonathan Edwards to read in the airport. But I've got other books--perhaps I'll take a Vonnegut novel with me this time. I've got to get the house presentable this morning--Alex is in town, and he's wanting to grab some lunch. I suppose that's good as far as cleaning goes--it'll keep me off the computer when I get back to the house. And it'll be great to see Alex again. I'm sure we'll have scads, as always, to talk about.

Season Premieres

No dream recollection this morning, as Mary once again woke up when my alarm went off (it usually takes light and sound). But Gilmore Girls and Smallville are off and running, and our school year diversion season has started. Neither show indicated any slacking in writing or acting, so I'm anticipating a good season for each.

The Arthur cycle, or at least Malory's version of it, is a bizarre thing. Arthur is conceived when King Uther utilizes magic to have an illicit affair. Galahad, the purest of knights, comes about when Launcelot is trying to have an adulterous encounter with Guinevere but is tricked into sleeping with Elaine instead. Gawain just can't seem to keep it in his armor at all. Moreover, these knights do whatever they can to protect "maidens," but already in my little abridged version of Malory, two matrons have had their heads hacked off. I really need to read Lewis's actual work defending the concept of chivalry; from Malory, it doesn't look all that Christianized.

The old Lois Lane was on Smallville last night. The old Lana Lang is a main character. The old Clark Kent has made numerous cameos. Yes, folks, it's time for Gene Hackman to make an appearance! If the Smallville producers are reading this, you know it's true. Get Gene on the phone, and make it happen!

The Chocolate Fountain

The talk of the weekend (at least for those of us lurking in the corner and making comments) was the chocolate fountain. See the stuff in front of the fountain? Dad dipped one of everything in the falling chocolate. BTW, I promise that tomorrow I'll return to my early-morning-musings as per usual, but this morning, I just felt like posting some pictures, alright?

We're All Grandma Quick's

Even more people now have signed up to be Grandma Quick's grandchildren. From left to right are Jared, Rachel, Joe, Megan, Jill, Beau, Ryan, Tyler, Mary, and me. Grandma Quick is standing in front of us wearing the corsage (in case the generation gap is hard to spot). As often happens, the camera snapped while I was talking.

Back Home Again in Indiana

Here's a picture of Dad, Mom, Ryan, Mary, and me on the morning of Jill's wedding.

Knaughty Knights

Having finished The Analogical Imagination, I've embarked on something completely different, namely rereading my Malory book that I at best skimmed while getting the house ready for Ollie and Sue's visit last spring (or was it Ollie and Uncle Charlie? Oh well--no matter). I had forgotten just how cynical Malory's version of things turns out to be. I'm certain that my recent encounters with C.S. Lewis apologists has been the occasion for my turn back to the medieval, but I don't think Malory's was the chivalry that Lewis had in mind. But it sure is entertaining--in Malory's version, not only is Arthur the child of a Merlin-assisted bed trick but Gawain has already gotten him some while pretending to help the noble Sir Pelleas win his true love. I already know what's going to happen between Launcelot and Guinevere, and I can't imagine that it's going to differ much beyond that. Having read some of the excerpts, I wonder whether buying the full version might be a good investment. We'll see.

As my readers might have guessed, no dream recollection this morning. I've got to drive Mary to school, so I had to get up and immediately shower so that we would be ready about the same time. I've also got to set a tape to pick up the season premiere of Gilmore Girls so that we can do a late-nighter when we get back from working in Mary's classroom. So I've been running about since six AM. In fact, I need to go wake her up now. So until tomorrow...

Back Again

Our plane (the fourth we'd been on this weekend) landed just after seven o'clock last night, and we're back in Georgia. Whenever I get the chance, I'll probably try to post some images from the wedding and from Indiana in general here. This is my first morning back in Georgia since Friday, so the rapidly changing sleep environment thing has made me forget what I dreamt about.

This weekend made me feel terribly old. We didn't check any bags, so hauling all that crap down the narrow airplane aisle banged up my elbows and made me sore. Mary can't really carry anything heavy, being pregnant, so I ended up hauling thirty pounds of her students' papers for grading, twenty pounds of clothes, shoes, and toiletries, and ten pounds of miscellaneous junk on my shoulders through three airports and for what seemed miles and miles. My back and shoulders are sore. And I had to ride in the middle of the back seat two and a half hours from central Indiana to southern Indiana and two and a half hours back from southern Indiana to central Indiana; my joints are all sore. The good thing is that I've actually become sore enough that I'll likely exercise more this week as penance. The bad thing is that I've become quite sore!

The wedding itself was quite nice; I'll probably write about seeing family, talking with people, and other such things in subsequent posts. But being with Mom and Dad, knowing that Cindy Weaver died hardly a week before, has really shaken me up. I know that nothing is ultimately in my power, that my folks could live to ninety or live to sixty and I would have control over neither. But more than ever, I need to get away from the South. My own distaste for Georgia has not changed, but now Cindy's death has added urgency to the pull towards family. Scott Weaver is movinig back to Indiana from Washington, D.C., but it doesn't matter--he's never going to be able to make trips to see his mother. I want to move before that happens. More later.

Ivan's not so Bad

I just checked in on the flight status for our plane out of here, and Northwest Airlines hasn't indicated any delay... yet. Mary's principal issued an order last night that everyone was to go home instead of staying late to work, but the superintendent of the too-large Gwinnett County School System has not yet, as of this writing, canceled school in light of the hurricane. The school systems to the North, South, East, and West of the hubristic system have closed, but not Gwinnett, by gum.

My post is coming so early this morning because I set my hit-and-miss little battery-operated alarm clock just in case the power went out in the middle of the night and shut down my more dependable, plug-in clock radio. Unlike the days in which the alarm just refuses to turn on, this morning it decided to go off half an hour early. So it goes.

Another good paragraph from Tracy on theology's task:

Yet the basic grammar of Christian systematics endures. That grammar is constituted by the classic symbols and doctrines which every theology worthy of the history of the classic self-understandings of Christianity recognize as the paradigmatic candidates for Christian response and recognition--God, Christ, grace; creation-redemption-eschatology; church-world; nature-grace, grace-sin; revelation; faith, hope, love; word-sacrament; cross-resurrection-incarnation. All these symbols, like Everest, are simply there. They serve, minimally, as reminders that certain responses, certain moments of recognition, certain internal self-correctives, certain directions of thought and feeling have achieved paradigmatic, classic status. They cannot be ignored. In every cultural situation, an adequate Christian response demands that attention must be paid to the entire symbol system: through both critique and suspicion, retrieval and reinterpretation in and for the situation, yet controlled by some present experience of the event. (Tracy 373)

Wow. If theology is going to be more than a "period piece," this is the standard to which it must rise. And here's a passage about whether theology can ever be adequate to its task:

All the clasic systematic theologies from Paul and John to our own day are de jure inadequate, de facto relatively adequate accounts of the fuller range fo the entire symbol system from the dominating perspective of a singular stance of personal response. (Tracy 407)

This is an incredibly helpful evaluative tool, as is the whole of Tracy's book. It doesn't claim too much for the practice of theology, yet it does not default to ineffability as the only important theological category. Instead, the relativeness of any theology's adequacy is at the forefront; no systematic theology is going to "get it right" in an unqualified way, but given that YHWH is a God who reveals God's self, a theology can be adequate relative to other attempts to make YHWH's self-revelation intelligible. I like that.

I've only got about a dozen pages left before this book is done, and I'm not planning to haul the heavy booger onto the airplane today. On the plane I'm taking my copy of the Jonathan Edwards Reader, and assuming that Mary can muster the discipline to grade at the airports, I'm going to try to get some more of the greatest American theologian read. I'm looking forward to seeing my cousin Jill get married, but I'm not looking forward to the airport experience, getting on a plane with Mary in the middle of a hurricane, or any of the details surrounding the trip. So it goes.

Revival's Over

No recollection this morning, because Mary was up and accused me of stealing all the covers. It's funny, and it shows what part of my brain is engaged when I pray the Psalms in the morning. If I have to interact conversationally, I don't remember. If I'm meditating on a phrase or a verse, I still might. But no dream recollection today.

Our revival preacher, Chris Micheal, was phenomenal. His preaching style is quite reminiscent of Will Willimon's and last night he went on a tangent that actually led back into his central image! It's so rare that I hear a crafted sermon, I always appreciate the ones I hear, and Chris delivered four works of art this week. Perhaps they're special "traveling revival" sermons, and perhaps his normal week-to-week work isn't anything like it, but I don't know, and I don't care. This week has been great.

I've got one chapter plus the epilogue left in Tracy's book. I don't know why people hadn't been reading this guy at Emmanuel--his work is great for integrating all the kinds of things that Emmanuel folks tend to be interested in. I finally got to the part in which he lines out what "Analogical Imagination" is, and it's great. Basically, in an intellectual context that will not allow an easy denial of otherness, analogies are the best way to connect between two story-selves. No ontological category is assumed for both participants to fit into; instead, each conversation partner's categories are left intact, and the work of connection involves imagining analogous experiences and symbolic moves and those sorts of things between people. I've not articulated that entirely well, and the book is sitting next to Mary, who is sleeping, in complete darkness, so I'm not going to go get it. But all the same, I have a hunch this book is going to join the hall of great theology books in my story.

No apologies?

I dreamt last night that I was sitting and reading (I do a lot of that even in my dreams) at my father-in-law's house when a garbage truck backed into the front wall of the house, cracking the drywall around where I was sitting and shattering the window. When I went outside to demand that they repair the house, they pointed at the obviously damaged house and told me that there was no damage. I looked at the broken window and crumbling wall and said, "Well, what about the window and the wall?" The driver said, "No, you said the house was damaged!" Then the alarm went off.

Here's another passage from the Tracy book. I ought to be finishing this one up in the next few days.

Nor does the actual rich diversity of forms in the New Testament grounded in the unifying unity of an even tseeking a response of personal faith signal the call to any kind of thoughtless, lazy theological pluralism. Rather the New Testament diversity is impelled by the dynamism of the event itself and its self-expression into the otherness of a wide range of responses to, witnesses to, that event: responses which posit themselves in and by the event by implying their own fulfillment in the next needed form. Proclamation's positing of the bare that of the event of Jesus Christ implies the who and what of the narratives; the surprises, the resolutions, the end and non-end of the narratives imply the need for symbols and imagesable to capture in manifestation the clues disclosed by the narrative as teh key to their interpretation of the ministry; the irreducible tension of each symbol and the conflict within the whole complex of symbols (cross-resurrection-incarnation) demands the interpretation of critical reflective thought.

So the diversity of the New Testament does not have to be historical accident but can be conceived of systematically as the very stuff of God's self-revelation. Cool, eh?

Faulty Hardware

My alarm clock did not go off this morning. Like many other things, the realization that one has lost forty minutes, that the morning routine is shot, will monkey with the best established pattern. So no dream recollections this morning.

I'm about a hundred and twenty pages away from finishing David Tracy's book. In his last section he's going to bring his concept of genre as productive rather than simply taxonomical to bear on Christology. I think that genre concept is definitely going to play a role in my book on prayer. Speaking of which, I've got rough outlines laid out for all nine chapters now, so I suppose I can say that I know basically what the book is going to be about. Assuming that I can be disciplined enough to write a few pages a week, I could potentially have proposals sent to publishers by February or March. I'm not sure that anyone will be interested, but I suppose that's just one of the risks that goes along with spending the time to write a book.

Learning, not Winning

This morning, my childhood friend Scott Weaver has no mother. My father's former coworker Dave Weaver has no wife. When my high school Spanish teacher Cindy Weaver's funeral ends on Tuesday, the people will go home, and Wednesday morning, all of this will still be true. I thought this thought as I made my way from the bedroom to the computer room this morning, and now I can't come up with the first detail of what I think must have been a benign dream. The most disturbing thing for me is that in the sixteen hours since my mother let me know Cindy died, I've thought myself to the edge of crying, into a still calm, towards guilt, into abstraction. My emotions are not themselves in control, yet I can't say any rational process is controlling them either. Instead, something that is not my will yet is not what I think of as emotional momentum is fiddling with whatever chemicals make for emotional responses. I must admit, I'm a bit scared. My reactions have been something other than human.

I've had some good conversations on The Ooze lately. One of them has had to do with the character of evangelizing, while another has dealt with the second amendment and its defenders. I am pleased that my own tendency in online discussion is tending away from winning debate points and towards achieving an understanding of those with whom I disagree. I've come to the point where I am a pacifist, and I'm in little danger of "changing my mind." At this point, "my mind" is so bound up in disciplines of prayer, in expectations of friends, and in an eschatological mindset, that a mere cognitive encounter isn't going to be able to shake it. I think I'm at the point now where, like my theological mentors Yoder and Hauerwas and Kenneson, I can do some honest thinking about just war and about the logic of the American system without necessarily being "tempted" to become adherents of those traditions. Three years ago I don't think this would have been the case. But now, I have the confidence that I can understand without betraying, and coupled with that I've lost the ability to be satisfied with winning debates. I want really to know what's going on in the other person's system so that I can really know the difference. If there is a singular difference between what I was intellectually three years ago and what I've become, this has to be it.

Back into the Dorm

My dream was quite vivid last night--I dreamed that Mary and I moved into the dorm room in which I was a resident assistant my last two years of college. I was trying to get people to borrow the stupid safety video individually instead of watching it in a meeting, and I caught some guys coming in after having way too much tequila. May God help me if I ever want to move into a dorm again.

David Tracy's book has one of the most sensible paragraphs on the diversity in the New Testament that I've read in some time. I'll produce it at length here:

Both these major genres--apocalyptic and the doctrines of early Catholicism--may best serve their roles in a contemporary interpretation of the actual diversity of the New Testament not as the truth but as the truth of important correctives. Apocalyptic serves constantly as the corrective of any slackening of eschatological intensity for real history, for the novum and the future, any relaxing of the power of the negative and the not-yet in all other genres. Early Catholicisim serves as the coorective of any temptation fo shirk the ordinary, including the ordinary and necessary human need to find some clarity and explicitness for certain central shared beliefs as doctrines to allow for the human need to find order in thought and some structure in community. (Tracy 268)

The paragraph goes on to line out the tensions that each genre maintains, holding each forth as a necessary check on our tendencies to lose the ordinariness or the newness of the gospel proclamation. This is what good systematic theology should look like.

Pretty clear memories

Mary was up when I woke up this morning, so I had a conversation before I sat down at the computer, usually a killer of dream recollection. But I remember distinctly that in my dream, I was selling sniper rifles. Of course, just when I was about to make a sale, Mary grabbed the pillow underneath my head and spun my head nearly all the way around (she said that she thought I was underneath said pillow suffocating).

Another hurricane, another dig into presidential candidate Vietnam records... nothing new on the news, it wouldn't seem. And I haven't progressed far enough in David Tracy's book to offer much more than I've already said. So this morning's entry is going to be a short one. Perhaps there'll be more to say tomorrow.

America hater?

I don't know what to do with my historical consciousness. When I hear people talking about the latest terrorist attack as if those involved invented baby-killing, my mind always goes back to Dresden and Hiroshima. When Civil Liberties folks talk about Duh-Bya and his merry men as the worst violators of civil rights the world has ever seen, I think back to Abe Lincoln. And so it goes. Sean Hannity and his ilk in the last three years have made it treasonous to ask historical questions, and now even the news networks are afraid of those kinds of questions (not that they were entirely reflective before). I don't think these historical antecedents excuse the evils that go on, but I do tire of the melodrama, the people who pitch this year as the worst year the world has ever seen. I'm not sure to what extent these folks really believe it or to what extent they're using it cynically in order to win political points, but after seeing it on television at least since the early nineties, I'm sick of it.

I actually hit a smooth patch working on the book last night. A section of Tracy's The Analogical Imagination is going to be very helpful in crafting the chapter on what it means to be human and to pray. Besides, the book is helping me think through what it means for the Bible to be sacred and to be literature. I think his account of things is a hair too Blakean for me, but right now he's talking about religious classics in general. Perhaps when he turns to talk about the Bible and particularly the gospels in particular, I'll find more resonance.

It has not yet begun to rain

The remnants of Hurricane Frances came to north Georgia at about three o'clock this morning. I knew this because I had the window above our bed open, and I was getting wet. Later, around five this morning, our dog Sabrina started going nuts when the wind picked up. That dog is going to have a heck of a time if we end up moving to Kentucky--they have real weather there. The rain is still coming down, but I just took the dog out to go to the bathroom, and the wind is barely blowing now. I think this tropical storm is running out of gas.

I finished reading Praying with Icons last night. It reminded me again why I respect the Russian church so much and why I can never get too close to it. To address the latter first, the author, James Forest, relates that his wife grew up in a Dutch Reformed household, that in their eyes any recognition of Saints or Icons was Catholic, and they were not Catholic. My wife's situation is similar. The difference is that the Forest's wife has apparently decided nonetheless to become Orthodox. Our situation will not allow that. Mary's family, as long as they're around (may they be around for many years), will always be low-church Protestants, more particularly Campbellites. That means her parents. That means her uncle and cousins. That certainly means her brothers and sister. And although I have my doubts sometimes, I still think that means her neices and nephews. But I think I've come to the point that I'm alright with that. After all, I've been a Campbellite myself for a decade--as long as I've been Christian. And although I have a fascination with things Orthodox, I don't think I'll ever see the need to become Orthodox. Perhaps it's "bloom where you're planted." Perhaps it's keeping the peace with the family. But at any rate, I've been Campbellite, I am Campbellite, and I don't see any compelling reason to become other than Campbellite. The tradition is still alive enough that people like Dr. Norris and Wes Arblaster can emerge from it and remain alive--why should I think that I'm more delicate than those two?

Missing Weekdays Already

Well, I had to take the dog to the groomers' Friday morning, so I didn't take my standard time to make an entry on the blog. So it goes. I probably won't post tomorrow either, seeing as it's Labor Day (the day when only the working poor have to go to work).

I wonder sometimes about history, about whether what I do is going to be seen as one of those Enlightenment steps forward or one of those post-colonial complicit-in-violence things. Or whether history as a means of telling stories is going to change so radically in two hundred years that I've just got no idea what they're going to say about what I do. At any rate, there's no way of telling here and now what's going to be said then and there, so I suppose that's where my speculations on that end.

Mad as Zell

Weird one last night--I dreamed that I was receiving instructions from a future employee about someone the future employee wanted investigated. The weird thing was, all the flash-forwards were about studying to be a private investigator, not about the case itself. And I had no idea who the employer was. The alarm clock was especially weird after all the temporal bending...

I hate to dwell on national politics, and I imagine that once the defend-the-indefensible convention in New York is over, I'll chill out some, but Zell Miller just bugs me. I'm no Democrat, so his flip-flopping has no particular bearing on me. But his "Good ol' Southern Boy" schtick has never seemed so fake. Moreover, his selection of "good" moments in U.S. relations abroad is, to put it bluntly, horrifying.

He wants us to remember fondly the U.S.'s Cold War treatment of Greece. I wonder whether he's most proud that the U.S. backed the fascists in the thirties or the military coup in the sixties. Of course, he was adamant that soldiers, not protestors, give us freedom of to protest. I suppose that's why he likes military dictatorships--so many soldiers around all the time, there must be lots of freedom. I wonder if he's ever been to North Korea. He's also pleased as can be about our history in Iran--I guess up until the people's revolution in the seventies that overthrew America's puppet dictatorship there. Iran is another proud moment Zell would have us remember. The Shah had some wicked secret police, and they weren't hamstrung by any whiny liberals--I guess the people just didn't like that kind of freedom, because it got so bad that they preferred Ayatollah Khomeini to the freedom that the U.S. wanted to give them. Some pepole just don't appreciate a liberator.

He also wished that we had funded SDI more fully; I don't suppose anyone's told ol' Zell that the cold war is over and that no missiles actually got launched that would require Star Wars satellites.

Bless his heart.

I think I'll stay away from the RNC broadcast tonight--it makes me grumpy. Look for more positive posts in the near future.

Very little dream recollection this morning beyond the fact that my dream involved stinging insects. Beyond that, I can't remember a thing. And of course, I had tasks I had to complete quickly this morning rather than coming straight in to the computer room--that seems to be the variable that determines things.

The Bush twins. What is there to say, really? Twelve years ago, their grandpa wouldn't be caught on MTV and criticized Clinton for disregarding the "dignity of the office." Now his granddaughters have basically brought MTV's level of intellect to the RNC along with some of the least amusingly timed pop culture references (including Sex and the City, a show I'm sure Jim Dobson and Jerry Falwell just love to watch together while they plot new ways to persecute gays) I've ever heard. Of course, they were following the third heavy-hitting pro-abortion Republican speaker of the week, so why should I be surprised?

You might wonder why I back Ralph Nader, who's openly pro-abortion, while criticizing the Republicans for trotting out their pro-abortion politicians on TV. For years (I'd say up into the nineties) I was an increasingly conflicted single-issue Republican. I found their stances on guns, capital punishment, corporate regulations, the environment, and persecuting gays and lesbians unstomachable, but abortion was a bad enough thing that I figured that biting the bullet on the rest of that stuff at least might pave the way for some real reform when it comes to our treatment of the not-yet-born.

Now I realize that abortion is a product of late capitalism, that the rich would simply find ways around any anti-abortion law just as they find ways around tax law, criminal law, and just about anything else. The underground phenomenon would be immense--after thirty years of legalized abortion, there's no way any law would be enforced consistently. For an analogy, consider whom the IRS spends most of its time auditing.

So now I call myself anti-abortion rather than pro-life; I'm in no way a part of the Republican effort to repeal Roe v. Wade; I simply view abortion a part of the culture of death, alongside capital punishment and unrestricted corporate capitalism and the war industry, that Christians are to renounce prophetically but not necessarily smite with Caesar's sword (the category of "evils that should be smitten with Caesar's sword" has shrunk considerably over the last ten years for me). And with the prophetic renunciation should come, as always, caritas that invites those involved to repent and believe, to become part of the movement that threatens their industry as it threatened gladitorial combat in Rome and as it threatened idol-making in Ephesus (I think it was Ephesus).

So I'm no longer a single-issue Republican because I think that the Republicans are misguided on that issue and flat out wrong on most others. Being no lover of John Kerry either, I'll likely cast my vote sixty-three days from now for Ralph Nader.

The Pro-Abortion Convention

For lack of anything good to talk about (I had to get myself ready early this morning, so I can't remember what I dreamed about last night), I did watch John McCain and Rudy Giuliani last night on the television. No lover of Kerry myself (note my Nader support a couple posts back), I still find the Republicans' self-righteousness revolting. No, that's not entirely it either. The Republicans, at least in their public face, seem to assume that nobody listening knows anything about global politics. McCain inveighed against those who underestimated Iraq's threat to the world barely minutes after he sang the praises of Pakistan, the one nation we know has sold nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea. And what exactly happened in Spain? An enemy attacked, and they changed their policy towards Iraq. The Republicans call that capitulation to terrorism. What happened in Libya? Iraq got attacked, and Qadhafi changed his policy towards the United States. What do the Republicans call that? Capitulation to terrorism, right? No, they call that good foreign policy. If they're going to act like Don Corleone, I wish they'd at least talk like Don Corleone. For all of Clinton's faults, at least he talked like Don Corleone when he was acting like Don Corleone. No "good versus evil" stuff. No, he told the country that "they" had messed with one of his people, and now he was going to mess their faces up. No crusading facade. No biblical verses. Just "we're going to mess you up." Badda boom badda bing.

Moreover, the Republicans know that the "single issue" voters are too scared to soil their purity by voting for Democrats, so they trot out three heavy-hitting pro-abortion politicians in their first two nights. This is what infuriates me most about national politics--otherwise intelligent people pretending that this or that national party is going to do something about abortion. Of course, the so-called "single issue" crowd voted for Dole ( a pro-abortion Republican) in '96, so I've been suspicious of the self-imposed label for at least eight years. My fear is that persecuting gays is going to become the new "social" issue, freeing the RNC to ignore abortion and become in all respects the party without a conscience.

In personal news, Mary's next doctor's appointment is today. I'm told that this is the "hear the heartbeat" appointment, so that ought to be good. I'm not sure when they're going to need to take my blood, but I hope that my phobia of needles relaxes enough that I don't embarrass myself by puking in their office. But if I do, so it goes.

I'm taking on Analogical Imagination by David Tracy now. His thesis so far is that all theological work is public and that properly describing the public is the first task in understanding what theology itself is in any given era. Sounds solid. As I read more of it, I'll post more of what I learn here.

Augustine's Bad Rap

First, in the dream recollection department, I remember quite distinctly that my dream involved driving between my grandma Quick's house and grandma Gilmour's house. Of course, in the dream, that involved getting across a swamp, and that in turn involved getting the car into two foot deep swamp water. Of course, midway across, Dad dropped my brother Ryan and me off so that we could sneak into the back entrance of a giant underground shopping mall (in the middle of the swamp) and sneak through the physical plant to emerge in an expensive clothing shop. I still can't remember why we wanted to do that. All I remember is that the physical plant featured giant, quasi-Gothic clock tower gears and security guards that asked Ryan and me not to tell anyone that they were stealing Gucci clothing.

In the waking world, I finished Augustine's City of God yesterday, an undertaking that began two months and 1100 pages ago. As often happens when I read famous writers, I found that certain "Augustinian" stereotypes didn't hold up. For instance,

• Augustine respects Plato as the pagan philosopher closest to figuring things out (other than Plotinus), but he differs from both thinkers to a degree that makes the label "Neo-Platonist" a hair misleading. Moreover, his primary complaints involve the Platonists' and Neo-Platonists' not being Jewish enough. John Milbank's Theology and Social Theory is far more a Neo-Platonist book than is Augustine's City of God.
• Augustine is not the despiser of the human body and matter that my medieval literature class made him out to be. One of his primary beefs with Plotinus is Plotinus' denial that the body is good. God said material creation was good, so Augustine tends to agree. Moreover, postlapsarian sex is fallen in Augustine's mind not because it involves pleasure (he's no despiser of pleasure--just read his chapters on the resurrection) but because the male sexual apparatus functions apart from the will, rising at inopportune moments and refusing to rise when good moments arrive. In Paradise all parts of the body were, as they will be in the Resurrection, extensions (pun intended) of the human will. Resurrected bodies will need neither cold showers nor Viagra. Moreover, women in the resurrection will remain physically women; he counters vigorously that "perfection" of women will involve their turning into men.
  
• He is not the humorless theologian of sin and doom that he's sometimes made out to be. I suppose this stereotype better fits with Calvin's reputation, but I've heard it nonetheless. Augustine has a vibrant sense of wonder, and on occasion he even cracks a joke.
  

If anyone reads this blog, I'd recommend to nearly anyone the two- or three-month investment in reading this book. No one section is impenetrable, and the lessons in ancient history, Christian theology, and bizarre modes of Scripture reading are worth the trip. Compared to Foucault's philosophical histories, Augustine's theological history is both entertaining and clear. And you'll be able to say, as I'm now able to say, "I've finished Augustine's City of God."

Why Nader?

I suppose I had some tingle of hope while Howard Dean was the leading man in the DNC, but now that Kerry is the man in charge, I'm definitely going with Nader. Besides, I live in Georgia--it's going Republican. Even the Democrats are Republicans here. But here's why Nader is the only responsible vote any more:

• Education. Nader is the only one of the three televised candidates (I'm not sure about the Greens) who will come out and say that high-stakes testing is a bad idea. Bush is all about No Child Left Behind; Kerry thinks that the only thing wrong with it is lack of funds.
• Electoral Reform. Nader supports Instant Run-Off voting, a system in which voting one's conscience isn't "giving votes" to a bad candidate, whether that candidate be Clinton in '92 or Duh-bya in '00. The system would insure at least that a majority of people wouldn't be horrified with any given president on election day. What a president does after that is a different story...
• Taxes. Not content to see feudalism reborn, Nader actually has the guts to propose taxing the giant pools of wealth that collect around certain families. That means reducing the taxes on money worked for and increasing taxes on money that just comes to certain blessed souls. More tax revenue leads to smaller deficit. Smaller deficit means less money spent on interest payments and more to fund schools. All of this should be simple, but if it's not, take a gander at Perfectly Legal. It's a book on taxes that is readable and infuriating just because you'll know things then that you wish you didn't know.
• War. This one is important to me: Nader is the only anti-war candidate. Ask him if he would have invaded Iraq, knowing what we know. He wouldn't have. Ask him what our course of action should be. He'll tell you he would withdraw the troops, not pretending that things would be rosy once the American military left but not pretending that things are so great right now. And he'd order the corporations, Paul Bremer's real legacy, out of the country. Perhaps some of those insurgent fighters wouldn't have so much energy for insurgency if they were driving the trucks all over the place. As it stands, Bremer has made Iraq a job market for unemployed Americans. Get the unions back in America, get the unemployed Americans out of Iraq, and you'll see Iraqis and Americans with jobs and CEO's with medium yachts instead of jumbo ones. And that doesn't sound bad.

So there are probably the biggest four reasons that I'm going no-party this election. So it goes.

In the dream recollection department, I've got some pretty vivid memories this morning. I was at some kind of youth ministers' convention (I'm not a youth minister), and the people talking up on stage were throwing some hardcore evangelical cliches around. One, talking about his wife, referred to her as "my quiet rock." Another used the word "just" as an adverb for every other verb in his public prayer. In the meantime, spastic youth ministers were playing "terrorist," planting fake bombs and trying to bribe the security guards with Monopoly money and generally making everyone miserable. And every youth minister thought every other youth minister's fake terrorist threat hilarious. Just as a little background, many of my friends from college are now youth ministers, and I can't be around more than two of them at a time for more than a couple days at a time; they just find themselves too amusing, often at the expense of people who, IMNSHO, are more responsible and contribute more to humanity and often to the Church. I don't have anything against any given youth minister; it's when they get together that I begin grating my teeth.