That’s all for now

To wrap up April, a couple of Clerihews composed while waiting for the bus this morning. A book on women of the gospels has been simmering on the back burner for a long time. I’m a little worried it might be over cooked. Anyhow,  I have been giving them some thought as evidenced here.

The Blessed Virgin Mary

Was (quite rightly) wary

When an angel – Gabriel

Appeared with news to tell.

 

Mary Magdalene

Why are we so keen

To label you a harlot

When the gospels do not.

 

And that’s a wrap for poetry month 2013. It has been fun.

Clerihew times two

For the fourth of April, day 4 of 30 poems in 30 days, two clerihew for you. I finished the Barth one, and the other was a late evening brainstorm.

Professor Karl Barth

Was incredibly smart.

But even he could not finish Church

Dogmatics, leaving us in the lurch.

And second:

R.A. Dickey

Has a tricky

Knuckleball.

Catchers fall.

That may satisfy those who think that I’m cheating by writing only short poems/pomes. I wrote two. And, just so you know, I am thinking on some larger works. Warm-ups are necessary!

A Clerical Clerihew

A clerical clerihew for day three:

Pope Benedict Sixteen

Hated to be seen

When he’d been sick a bit.

So, instead, he quit.

I challenge any of you to come up with a theologically themed clerihew. I was working on Professor Karl Barth (Incredibly smart) when this one popped into my head. Can anyone finish Barth? Dogmatics is a difficult rhyme in English or German.

The effects of war, Part 2

Previously in this space I discussed a book that 1Mom gave me for Christmas on the after-effects of war. She gave me two such books, and I’ve now finished (re)reading the second, The Ash Garden, by Dennis Bock. I was intrigued by a review of Bock’s book when it first came out in 2001. I got it sometime later and read it, but it has since disappeared from my library, which means that during one of my last two moves I decided not to keep my copy. Now I have another copy, and I’m glad I re-read the book.  It certainly sustains re-reading, and, though I remembered the basic premise of the book was based in the after-effects of the Americans going nuclear on Hiroshima, I’d forgotten most of the details.

The book is all about German guilt, and is connected to the war in Europe as much as the war in the Pacific. The two areas of war and their worlds are connected through the main character, a German scientist who left Germany and worked for the Americans, not because he thought the Nazis were wrong, but because his boss wouldn’t let him follow the path to nuclear fission that he thought was correct. The idea of the a-ethical scientist is something I often discussed with students when I taught High School physics. It is also part of the reason I didn’t follow a career path using my first degree. I don’t think the work of science is outside of ethics, thus scientists must be concerned with the ethical implications of both their methods and results. Also, consumers of science must be concerned with the ethical implications of the science they use. Books like The Ash Garden explore these ideas and allow for thinking and discussion of them. If I were still teaching high school physics, guess which novel would be assigned in the nuclear physics unit?

Language, a tangled web woven about us

I am reading some interesting non-fiction at the moment. I’ve progressed very slowly through James K.A. Smith’s The Fall of Interpretation. I’m not sure exactly why I am reading this quite so slowly as I am, but the contents of the book interest me. I’m provoked to rabbit-trails of thought, which is a good thing. It does, however, make for slow reading. In Smith this morning, I read some discussion of language in Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine (alternate English title: On Christian Teaching). My transit reading for the day was Northrop Frye’s The Educated Imagination, the Massey Lectures for 1962. I made it through the first two of Frye’s lectures. They are fascinating reading. I imagine they are also fascinating listening.

The interplay of first reading Smith writing about Augustine writing about language, then reading Frye’s words on literature as opposed to other uses of language has set my head spinning. I’m not sure how my brain will land on this. More thought is needed. Here, as food for your own thinking, are some quotes that have me thinking hard on how to teach a class on telling stories in religious education.

From Frye:

This allusiveness in literature is significant, because it shows what we’ve been saying all along, that in literature you don’t just read one poem or novel after another, but enter into a complete world of which every work of literature forms a part. This affects the writer as much as it does the reader.

From Smith (on Augustine):

Language is required in order to express that which is interior to the soul by means of something external (verbum); thus language “makes public” the “private” intentions and desires of the self; words are therefore “common property,” belonging to a community. Language must span a gulf between interiorities, precisely because the other has “no means of entering into my soul.” The “space” between souls requires the mediation of signs, which in turn requires interpretation.

Shared stories are essential to community, particularly a community of faith. We need to tell these stories, using language well, in order to share faith with others.

Reading Out LOUD

I’ve just come in from a workshop on reading scripture. We spent more than two hours on practical tips, then rehearsing and performing a particular reading. I was working with a team on a reading of Isaiah 6, the bit where Isaiah sees the Lord. It was a good workshop, lots of interesting points. It made me think about how I preach as well as how I read scripture. When I preach, I preach from a manuscript, so it is essentially a reading. I also got to thinking about some discussions and experiences of reading aloud that I’ve had in the past few weeks.

1. Reading aloud — “It slows me down.” My friend, the priestling, who is in her first year of Seminary, told me that she sometimes reads her textbooks aloud because it slows her reading down. She cannot skip over bits of the text, let her eyes slide over words without really comprehending what the words say. I have never actually read aloud to an audience of just myself. I feel a bit self-conscious doing that. I should probably just get over it. If I’m reading aloud at home there’s no one but me to hear it. It isn’t as if I’d try this on the bus or in a library. At times I need to slow some of my reading down, and experience it with more than one sense. I think I’d like to try this.

2. Listening to someone read — details get picked up. I’ve said before in this blog that I find the experience of listening to an audio book substantially different from reading a book. Last week I listened to Pride and Prejudice and found that listening to a book I’ve read a few times to be an enriching experience. I’ve read P&P many times, and thought I knew the story backwards and forwards. Listening to someone else read it highlighted some details that I have never noticed before. This may be part of that whole slowing the book down process. It was pretty interesting. I think I’ll try some other re-reads as a listen next time through.

I’ve got more to say about reading aloud as performance, and thus preaching as performance, not to mention the hideous habit some people have of speeding up when they read scripture verses as if the Bible were something to be rushed through so we can get to what the person themselves has to say. But I’ll stop for now with these two reflections and ask what you’ve read aloud/been read lately?

Synchronized Reading

It is always interesting when I’m reading fiction and non-fiction that turn out to be about similar things. This doesn’t always happen. Of course, whenever I’m reading two books at once the two speak to each other. Even books I’m not reading right now also speak into what I’m currently reading. That is part of the fun of reading lots. Your brain works intertextually more and more. But I’ve just finished two fiction books that almost perfectly illustrate the first chapter of my current theological reading. That is pretty exciting.

My current theological read is The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic by James K.A. Smith. Smith’s book is about hermeneutics and reading texts. He discusses whether one can ever do this without interpretation. He claims that the need for hermeneutics is part of our status as creatures, created beings, not God, and thus it is not a result of the Fall (Garden of Eden, Eve, Adam, fruit, all that = Fall). I’ve just finished the first chapter in which he discusses and disputes a view of hermeneutics that I was raised with (and, it appears, so was he, #plymouthbrethren ftw). I enjoyed it very much. I’m interested to see how he builds the “Creational Hermeneutic” promised in the title of the book.

I just finished reading The Chosen and The Promise by Chaim Potok. These books are about growing up Jewish in New York in the 40s. The first book is set during World War II, and in it the protagonist learns about the holocaust. The second book is set in the years after the war with survivors of concentration camps living in New York. Both books discuss the reading and interpretation of sacred texts extensively. The key conflict in the second book is about the reading and study of the Talmud. It is very interesting. I’m glad I re-read these two just in time to start reading Smith’s book. It makes all of them more interesting.

A New Book about Old Books

The post over at the Baker Academic Blog yesterday was a set of videos of Marion Taylor discussing the Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters. Marion was the editor of the Handbook and I contributed four articles to it. I was heavily involved in some of the initial re-discovery of women research that made the Handbook possible. And, as seen on my books page, I’ve published a little about it.

I shouldn’t find it so hard to read older books when most of my published research is about older books, right? It is a nice theory anyhow.

Theology in the Grocery Store

Contrary to any traditional idea of Sabbath-keeping, I went to the grocery store on the way home from church. As is usual, the place was jammed. Sunday now seems to be the default day for grocery shopping. As I stood in the line-up for the cashier, the man behind me struck up a conversation with the woman in the next line-up over. Following an initial greeting the conversation went like this:

He: You eat all that food you get fat, hahahaha. [I internally cringe at this degradation of food and its necessity for life.]

She: You gotta eat. [I internally cheer for this statement of the necessity and implied goodness of food.]

There was then some chat about some football game that seems to be happening today.

She: I’m starved, I went to church and I’m on my way home. [Internal voice: Yay! another church to grocery store person!]

He: You! Church! You went to church?!?!

She: Yeah, I go to church when I’m all right.

He: Wow, its been a long time since I been to church. I go to church in my house.

She: Yeah?

He: Yeah, I wake up and I thank God for life. I go to church in my house, that’s what I do.

She: Yeah, that’s all you need.

Oh how I longed to turn around and let loose upon the bad theology demonstrated in this conversation. I refrained from a sermon in No Frills, but you, dear reader, are about to hear about it.

“I go to church when I’m all right.” Nope. Properly, one goes to church because one is NOT all right. I go to church to get right, not to show I’m all right. Church isn’t a check in with God to say “See I’m all right today,” it is a place to go to ask God to help you become all right today.

“I go to church in my house.” “Yeah, that’s all you need.” Nope. Whatever this religion is, it isn’t biblical Christianity. One cannot be a Christian alone. I go out of my house to church to reconnect with other people, fellow members of Christ’s body, and to be reminded, because I need reminding, that I cannot be a Christian alone. It isn’t all about me and God in my house, however important that may be. It is also about being a member of God’s family, the Body of Christ, the communion of saints that extends through space and through time. You and I cannot be Christians alone.

St. Athanasius on the Psalms

I’ve just finished On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius, translated by a sister of the CSMV and introduced by her correspondent and friend C.S. Lewis. I talked about Lewis’s introduction during Christmas, and mentioned how reading his reflections on old books in that introduction influenced my reading resolutions for this year. Added to the end of On the Incarnation is an appendix containing a translation of a letter written by St. Athanasius to someone called Marcellinus on reading and interpreting the Psalms. It is great.

I am interested in the history of interpretation of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, so reading this appendix on the Psalter was almost better than the theological discourse on the incarnation. Both pieces of writing have their own charm and particular appeal. I preach the Psalms whenever I get a chance, so reading about their interpretation always fascinates me. This morning I heard an excellent exposition of Psalm 139 in the middle of a sermon on our identity in Christ. Then this afternoon I read St. Athanasius on interpreting the Psalms. The combination made my day.

I will post again on publishers and textbooks, but that’ll come tomorrow. Watch this space.