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.