One of Micah's many inquisitive looks

Emerging Grump

It occurred to me that, being on the Emergent Blog Roll, I probably ought to say something about the whole Emergent movement. Like many others on the list, I've been influenced by philosophical and theological trends of the last fifty years, and like many others, I've come to be an educated critic of the tradition into which I was converted. So to those extents, I'm a kindred spirit with folks like Noetic Penguin and Seraphim.

Yet every Sunday, round about 11:00 AM (it's variable when one has a three-month-old son), the folks at Bogart Christian Church see me walk through the doors for a time of singing and prayer and hearing our pastor Ben Parker preach from the Scriptures. Moreover, we enjoy being there. Moreover, although we've had to move away from one church we've loved and left another that didn't love us so much, we don't plan on abandoning that little small-town Georgia church for a new church plant, a house church, or any of the other alternative modes of worship that Emergent-types tend to prefer.

So what gives?

First, my examples are a bit deceiving--because I know NP and Seraphim, I used their names, but even a quick look at NP's blog or Seraphim's blog will reveal at least love for even if not conformity with established churches. Neither necessarily devotes much time to attacking "The IC." (That's "The Institutional Church" for those not versed in Emergent-talk.)

Second, even those Emergent-types who prefer not when it comes to traditional Sunday gatherings things to teach those of us who prefer to live as young gadflies within, I know that our ministries to the current power structures are similar. As I grow older, I hope sincerely that more gadflies will find our little gathering worth some stings as I become more a part of that assembly's establishment (as one tends to do if one sticks around long enough--an establishment with a different ideology is no less establishment). I know that some of those stings will come from "outside" the organizational paradigm to which I've become accustomed, and I'd be a better theologian if I took them seriously, so why not start now?

But to take "them" seriously in the future (I haven't the first clue what "they" will look like when I'm fifty) means taking our own critiques seriously enough to present them as true correctives while maintaining the discipline of idol-smashing when our own ideologies become more precious than our own ideas ought to be. And when we fail in this discipline (as establishments always do), we'll have to be ready to let the young smash them for us.

All of this bad prose is to say that our relationship to the current establishment, mine as a gadfly and the "true" emergents' as outsiders, can only minister to the Gospel as long as we remember that we're serving the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah. As cliche as that sounds at times, our situation always must be relative to the grand mission and the grand story that makes us and to which we, when we're faithful, contribute. Our idol-smashing hammers must not themselves become holy relics lest we become the monsters we've set out to slay.

Of course, I've said nothing new here; any Emergent worth her or his salt would say likewise. All the same, I figured I ought to justify my presence on the Emerging blogroll with a bit of commentary.

Hooray for Micah!

Micah gettin' down during play time

Micah's getting tired of pictures faster than I am

Two More Movie Reviews

Mary and I cancelled our Blockbuster online membership recently (we'll be busy enough in the coming weeks), so here are two of my final movie reviews:

• Sideways. Good storytelling about two pathetic, sometimes reprehensible middle-aged men. Although the on-screen sex does little for the movie (it hardly ever does), Sideways gives us a pretty tight narrative about one of the arbitrary relationships that we value beyond what we should (the two main characters were freshman roommates in college--no offense to Paul Helphinstine if he's reading) that doesn't quite manage to redeem either of the parties involved. The bits of farcical comedy come just at the right moments to keep the viewer from "going dark side," and the wine-as-life metaphor, though overworked in some of the "deeper" scenes, works notably well when it's not being overworked. Overall quite a good movie.
• Spanglish. Keeping Adam Sandler on the margins of this movie was quite a good decision (no, I'm not a fan). Framing the story within the story of a young woman's Princeton admissions essay was even a better idea. Subverting the standard chick flick story line was brilliant. Adam Sandler does not run off with the housekeeper with a heart of gold, and his almost-too-stereotypical quasi-liberal yuppie wife (played by Tea Leoni) does not lose out in the end. Instead, the movie lets the main characters in a chick flick choose their children (who are real characters) over their own impulses and live for something other than the abstract punchline that Hollywood calls "romantic love."

I realize as I wrap up our little Blockbuster experiment that my reviews are more insider musings than newspaper-style movie reviews, but I suppose folks can pick up a newspaper to get those. I think they serve more to clarify my own thinking than for anything else, but this whole blog thing is supposed to be egocentric, isn't it?

A day in the life of a baby can be exhausting...

Micah and Grandma Gilmour right before she had to fly back to Indiana

Our new house in Statham, Georgia

Micah with Mom at our new house

Okay, the redeye makes him look less than angelic--we still love the little dude!

More Movie Reviews

The title introduces well enough. So here goes:

• Ray. This movie was phenomenal, and if I watch Million Dollar Baby and am not utterly blown away, I'm going to call foul on its not winning Best Picture. Jamie Foxx steps out of the way and lets Ray's story carry the movie, and for that alone he deserves Best Actor (this is no slam against Jamie Foxx; I don't think many actors could have let Ray come through the way he did). The music, of course, was wonderful, and the sex and drugs were present in the story without dominating the screen. Neither making Ray an idealized racial justice crusader nor an utter jerk, the movie brings across a humanity that only adds to a great musician. It was so good, I can even forgive the sometimes heavy-handed psychoanalytic stuff that creeps into some scenes (I'll let you readers either watch and see or figure it out).
• Closer. Y'know how I liked Ray so much because the sex wasn't all over the screen? Yeah, that's why I didn't much like this one. This movie, from early in the game, dares the viewer to object to the mostly pointless, completely un-erotic sex that is typed into computers, discussed as one might discuss baseball or politics (except with more dirty words), and splayed all over the movie screen for two hours. Alright, I'll take your dare. Most on-screen sex does nothing to enhance a movie's story, and this movie was different only in that it had no story to accompany the on-screen sex. All four major actors are talented folks, but they were straitjacketed by the writers' obsessions with discussing, alluding to, and performing sex. Yeah, I took the dare. Now what?

So there's my movie reviews for today. Mary and I just got Citizen Kane and Sideways in the mail from Blockbuster; if we have a chance to watch them between getting ready for Mom's visit and closing on the house, I might just comment here later.

Micah sleeps well knowing the Colts drafted some defensive help this year

Micah making merry in his bassinet (he's nearly too big for it)

Got milk?

Micah in the bouncy seat (or at least the top half of Micah--it's hard to aim and to amuse a baby)

Micah in his shorts (before an untimely spit-up put an end to that)

Some Movie Reviews

Mary and I, tired of watching the same game show reruns while we fed and napped with Micah, decided to sign up for Blockbuster's online program, and we've enjoyed it so far. The movies get here on time (in general), and we've caught up on some titles we were meaning to see (at some point) but never got to. So here's my uneducated take on a few that we've seen since joining:

• Finding Neverland. Not a bad film--I particularly liked the (relatively) understated blurring between the author's imagination and reality as everyone else sees it. Even better were the blurrings that happened while he was playing with chlidren. The end was pretty standard tear-jerking fare, but the visual and plotline statements about imagination and adulthood make this one worth seeing.
• The Manchurian Candidate. When I see an action movie, I don't want to feel this violated. Instead of the clean-cut international intrigue story I'd hoped for, this movie spent most of its time plumbing the depths of war's scarring of the human mind, the machinations of biotech, and a mother's drive to see her son rule the world that shades (for a scene or two) into the incestuous. Yechh. On the plus side, Denzel just can't seem to do a role halfway, so his portrayal of a psychologically-scarred career soldier is wonderful even as it disturbs.
• Friday Night Lights. Don't try to remake Hoosiers. Coach Carter did somewhat, but the strong pro-education, pro-black overtones made it a movie worth watching beyond the feel-good sports appeal. This one didn't have any such focus. The games that received significant screen time in the first half of the movie were so devastatingly one-sided against Team Mojo (the protagonists of the film) that their meteoric rise to the state championship game (which lasts all of four minutes for five rounds) and subsequent nail-biter championship game with the invincible Dallas high school team (the game's ups and downs seem nothing short of deus ex machina) lack any plausibility. On the other hand, I have to hand it to any script writer who puts this couplet into a movie script: "You want to win? Put Boobie in!"
• I Heart Huckabees. I don't know what I want to think of this one yet. On the one hand, it's a feature-length joke at the expense of philosophy majors. On another, it's a lovely look at intersecting thought-worlds and their inability to reconcile unless the people who think hard also learn to love one another. If you live in any two of the worlds staged in this film (environmentalists, nihilists, idealists, evangelicals, capitalists, and many others) and wonder what would happen if too many of those worlds collided in one room, this is one that will at least give you one possibility of what it might look like.
• The Notebook. Never being one to begrudge my wife a good chick flick, this gem led off our Blockbuster trial period. It was too chick-flicky even for her.
• Garden State This one was genuinely good. J.D. from Scrubs (can't think of the actor's name) tells his story with fairly convincing (though obscenity-laced) dialogue, cinematography that reflects the scene-POV's mental state, an archetypal journey into the underworld set in suburban New Jersey, and a sound track that I've been told is quite hip (I'm a poor judge of that). The ending scene was a hair over-the-top (reminded me of the Friends finale), but that doesn't diminish a really good movie.

My in-laws also purchased Rudy on DVD for me for my birthday--not bad stuff. I can see why Sean Astin got cast as another emotional favorite in the LOTR trilogy.

So there's the movies I've seen since Micah was born. I think Mary and I are going to watch Ray here in the next couple nights--I'm looking forward to seeing Jamie Foxx's continuing emergence as a serious actor. I was impressed enough by Collateral that I go into Ray expecting great things, not waiting for Foxx to redeem himself for Booty Call.

Latest Book Updates

Well, I've been posting pictures so much lately that I haven't put much into writing here. Newborn baby, I say, newborn baby!

But here are a couple reading updates. I finished, not too long ago, N.T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God, and I feel like I could write a syllabus for and teach a New Testament Introduction course now. Wright carefully set up a framework that takes into acocunt the historical and the literary and the theological, the Jewish and the Greek and the Roman, the preacher and the scholar and the skeptic. And he held it together for four hundred-plus pages.

I've also received a couple books as birthday gifts (I turn 28 tomorrow): The Barbarian Way by Edwin McManus and Overhearing the Gospel by Fred Craddock. I'm probably going to use McManus as a brief break from Wright's dense prose, then read the rest of Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God (just dying to put in a joke about 'rithmetic here), then take on Craddock. All these are books I want to tackle before the summer's out.

In the fall, I'm taking two Shakespeare classes and hopefully working on a "Hebrew Bible and/as Literature" syllabus to present to the English department. Part of my motivation is to get another "classes taught" line on my CV (that list grew this semester at Emmanuel), but I'd also like to teach some Bible, and this seems like a challenging context in which to try it. So I'm off to UGA on Wednesday (probably) to get some paperwork and start writing! Woo hoo!

Micah's livin' large and lovin' it

Micah playing in his bassinet after church

Micah's first bottle (He ate somewhere around three and a half ounces--no wonder he's such a hoss!)

Micah at one month old (April 7, 2005)

More diapers, less despair

Four more weeks. Then the house will be closed, Mary will be back to work, my term at Emmanuel College will be over, Mom will have arrived from Indiana, and I'll be in the process of setting up a new home while taking care of my new son. Four weeks, and everything changes.

Yeah, I know everyone told me that everything would change on March 7, and it did. But for whatever reason, this seems even bigger. Perhaps it's because I read up on that. This, the prospects of taking care of my son without Mary's help all day, the idea that I own (and owe for) a house (the most expensive item I've ever been involved with)--that's spooky.

To return to somewhat normal business for this blog, I've nearly finished the first volume of N.T. Wright's Christian Origins trilogy, and it stands to be one of the theology-changing books in my life. Not that much has changed, necessarily; rather, now I've been given a scholarly vocabulary to articulate what I've wanted to think for so long (at least as long as I've started into the scholarly study of the Scriptures). Wright is at once theologian and scholar, at once faithful and acute. I'm looking forward, once I finish the 470-page volume 1, to digging into the 700-page volume 2. And that's saying something.

Micah relaxing with Mom

Micah playing on his turtle playpen

Micah checking things out

Micah being burped (hey, it's our firstborn--we photograph everything!)

Micah's first Easter, outfit compliments of Grandma Gilmour

Micah after his first bath

Actually going to write one

Don't worry--there'll be more pictures to come, but I'm here alone in the public library, don't feel like grading any more, and have four hours of solitude to overcome.

So I'll write on my blog!

Micah is now nineteen days old. Since nobody in my house gets sick on a weekday, we spent some of the wee hours this morning in the emergency room getting him checked out for pink eye. Mary tells me it'll go away with relatively little pain, but it still pains me to see gunk coming out of my son's eye.

The grand existential shift from "not-father" to "father" hasn't been all that traumatic for me, though I do love my son dearly and know that his presence is redefining my own life. But the day-to-day is actually far more telling than the big-question with regards to having a new son. My body has gotten used to little sleep, but my mind wants to be working on something when I'm home, so the rhythm that a newborn imposes on one's life has been one of those "costly grace" experiences for me--in other words, I'm going nuts. I should be thinking about my next project or spending hours reading important books or at the very least working on my Madden football franchise. But instead I'm waiting for the next poop to come so that I can change the next diaper. I'm waiting for Micah to wake up so that I can take him over to Mary to eat for the tenth time today. My life is not accomplishing anything that will bear recognition or accomplishment or professional advancement, and I just have to keep at it. And I believe that God is shaping me through all of this drudgery. No wonder I've been accused of being a Protestant!

Micah saying goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa Gilmour

Micah with Bethany

Micah being very good for Grandma Burd

Micah with Pap Pap (I'm sure he'll call him that) Burd

Rotate this one ninety degrees--Micah makes the early mistake of pulling Dad's finger

The newest Grandma Gilmour holding a slightly cranky Micah

Mary welcomes Micah into the guild of the air-breathing mere minutes after his entrance

Hey, do I need a reason to post more pictures? No!

Home again, home again! Mary, Micah, and Nathan arrived home in Bogart, GA on March 9, 2005.

Three generations of Cub fans--you know you're sorry for us! Nathan, Steven, and Micah Gilmour

Micah Patrick Gilmour

Pictures coming soon

I'm a father! Micah was born 7 March 2005 at 1:25 PM. He was seven pounds, four ounces, and twenty-one inches long. If I can get Hello working, there'll be pictures soon.

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Changes coming faster

Starting next week, my blogging should pick up... only to slow down again at any time.

My intensive adult education classes ended Thursday, and I have to have my grades in by next Thursday.

I received my acceptance letter from UGA--I'm going to start doctoral work in August.

Mary's now got less than three weeks' time before the due date.

We now know that we'll be making enough money to consider seriously buying a house in the next six months or so.

Lotsa change, no?

Hopefully I'll have some morning-time in the next few days to reflect on some of this and restore my blog to worth-reading status.

A Month Out

The last lamaze class is over. Two weeks until the intensive courses end. One month and one week until Micah's due date. The good endings and the good beginnings are upon me, and I can't wait. More later...

Six more

After tonight, I have six more harrowing fourteen-hour days. Woo hoo! I'm going to be inundated with papers soon, but no matter... I have a mere three weeks until I can rest... unless, that is, Mary goes into labor that day, which she probably will... no rest, eh? No rest.

I've decided to save Gravity's Rainbow for another day--I'm just too involved right now, and the book doesn't break down well like, say, Ovid does. So I'm reading Ovid again, one episode at a time. The poetic insight of the man is phenomenal--I'd always heard about his influence on later poetry, but his own play with the concepts of identity, form, deity, humanity, and such are wonderful. I'll probably be commenting on Ovid for the next few posts as I did on Malory a while back.

One episode that deserves comment today is that of Echo and Narcissus. I'd always heard the story in outline, and I'd encountered it in Apuleius (I think it's in there, anyway), but Ovid's commentary on the love of self is just great:

...Unwittingly,
He wants himself; he praises, but his praise
Is for himself; he is the seeker and
The sought, the longed-for and the one who longs;
He is the arsonist--and is the scorched.

How many futile kisses did he waste
On the deceptive pool! How often had
He clasped the neck he saw but could not grasp
Within the water, where his arms plunged deep!
He knows not what he sees, but what he sees
Invites him. Even as teh pool deceives
His eyes, it tempts them with delights. But why,
O foolish boy, do you persist? Why try
To grip an image? He does not exist--
The one you love and long for. If you turn
Away, he'll fade; the face you discern
Is but a shadow, your own reflected form.
The shape has nothing of its own: it comes
With you, with you it stays; it will retreat
When you have gone--if you can ever leave!

If there's ever been poetry that begged for Christian allegory, this has to be it. The potential commentary on our own self-fashioned gods is tremendous. And it's got to be an influence on Milton when he narrates Satan's incestuous desire for his daughter Sin--if I remember right, Milton even points out that Satan only loves himself in her.

BTW, this is all from Allen Mandelbaum's translation.

Hard Time Remembering

Okay, so there haven't been many posts lately. I attribute this to two things:

1. Working fifteen-hour days over at EC takes a toll, alright?
2. It's dang hard to remember what one dreamed when the first step on the ground is made towards whatever my soon-to-be-born son and his seven-and-a-half-months-pregnant mother need from me.

That said, I suppose I have been doing some thinking during the day, so there might be some merit to blogging those thoughts.

Were I not so tired, I'd probably be writing on my book in these months--I've been reading some phenomenal books myself, and I've got thoughts to contribute. I wish that I were more employable as a preacher. I think I've got enough to offer a congregation now that I'd be worth hiring, but on my resume, the multiple master's degrees and the years of education make me look not thoughtful but dangerous. And dangerous isn't what many churches want. At least not the ones I'd want to serve. Yes, I've become Groucho Marx--"I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member." (I think that was Groucho Marx, but I suppose it could have been Winston Churchill or any of those old famous dudes who seemed to speak in one-liners.)

But since teaching is wearing me out, I keep returning to my favorite opiate--computer games. I'm in season three of my Madden 2003 (I'm cheap, so no, I'm not buying the new version), and when I get home and know that I only have forty minutes before it's time to start cleaning the house, I don't open Word to write. I pick up the controller and become, for a brief spell, a Peyton Manning who on occassion beats the Patriots.

So now I'm waiting. Waiting for Micah to get born. Waiting on Ph.D stuff to come in. Waiting to see whether Mary can find work anywhere. Waiting to see if any of my resumes will yield fruit at any of the churches I've applied to. Not a great situation, but I suppose that's life. I've got so many horses in this race that I still haven't given any thought to the unhappy possibility that none of them wins. I suppose that will come if it comes as well.

Back... for the moment

The things that have happened... it's been nearly a month, probably more than a month, and once again proof positive comes that life can occur without my blogging it. For the next little while, it's going to have to continue--I've got an unbelievably killer schedule right now, and it's not going to let up until mid-February.

So for now, no thoughts on annihilation, no observations about American Christians, no rants about politics... back to work!