Monthly Archives: August 2007

Anniversary

Yesterday was our 8th anniversary. I’m generally not known for being a romantic. Not necessarily because I’m *not* romantic but because I don’t normally plan ahead and set up things that are going to be romantic… I actually did ok yesterday, though, even with the constraints of two kids and a quite limited budget.

I woke M with breakfast in bed which was crepes simply dressed with lemon and sugar (n.b.: I found myself wishing I’d made lemon-sugar—I’ll have to try that next time.). On my return home from work, I brought an inexpensive but good bottle of wine and a bag with spinach dip and gnocchis from our favorite upscale Italian place (one order of the gnocchis feeds both of us with left-overs to spare…). I had set up a screened-in pavilion on our notoriously mosquito-infested deck and festooned it with little white Christmas lights. M fed the girls a quick supper and we put them to bed shortly thereafter, then we enjoyed our dinner in the pavilion, under the lights, accompanied by Glenn Miller’s greatest hits (snuck into M’s iPod when she wasn’t looking). After a leisurely dinner, we pushed the table out of the way for some dancing before we retired.

All in all, a wonderful evening with a wonderful wife.

More Office Matters

Following Josh’s excellent advice I’ve added more clutter to my side-bar… Down below the “Pages” box is now a “Pray the Office Online” box that has links to a few of the best online Office sites I know. If there are others that should be up but aren’t, let me know.

Once again over at the Liturgies of the OJN page, Fr. John-Julian’s plainchant customary is up. It’s a brief guide on how to sing chant and I added a short bit about the pause (caesura) at the asterisk in the psalms.

Tech Is Here To Stay: Learn To Deal With It…

There is a post at one of the great academic web projects, the New Testament Gateway Blog, on the WikiScanner. Dr. Mark Goodacre, now at Duke, has been thinking for a bit about the future and direction of his own project which has grown into an incredible endeavor. Several things here are of interest to me:

  • The world is in the midst of perhaps one of the first truly global paradigm shifts with the rise of the Internet. It involves data, who can access it and how it is communicated. We’re all still trying to figure out what it means but one thing is clear: it’s not going to go away. Particularly in this context–students will be relying much more on the Internet.
  • As far as tenure goes, one of the fundamental metrics is books and articles published. If we take the first point seriously, then university-type folks need to have more serious conversations about how research and topic databases like data portals, wikis, etc. should be added into the tenure discussion to promote the creation and proliferation of reliable, verifiable data.
  • Broadening the scope a bit: congregants and congregations and those seeking knowledge about both will be—no, are—relying more on the Internet as well. What are we religious-types doing about this?
  • And is the answer to this question (either in the academic or the religious realms) rooted in organization-wide top-down directives or more of an individual and small-group collective nature? It seems to me it’s the second—but that produces the inevitable problem of content control; how do you distinguish the trustworthy from the flawed and fallacious?
  • Because of the kind of material out there and its means of production, one way to move the conversation forward is the growth of “certification groups” who would certify the content of a site according to their standards. Both the blessing and curse of this kind of approach is that the group would essentially have no direct power over the content and the value of the certification would be only as good as the public trust held by the certifying group.

There’s more to think and say about this—but I lack the time and brain-cycles to do it justice at the moment…

Quotable Quotes

Over dinner last night, M mentioned a large Baptist church in the area that serves us as a landmark. Upon hearing it mentioned Lil’ G responded:

“We don’t go to church there; they don’t even like Mary!”

New Post at the Cafe

I have a new post up at the Episcopal Cafe and (brace yourself) it has nothing to do with Communion without Baptism!

There is actually one more in the series that I intend to post but it currently sits half-finished on my hard drive. I thought it’d be better to post something else than to cast up half-baked thoughts to conclude a discussion that so far I’ve found very informative, respectful, and thought-provoking.

Update: The comment issues overnight seem to have gone away…

Seminaries in Jeopardy

A story came across the email this morning about the state of the Episcopal Church’s seminaries. Unfortunately, this confirms everything that I’ve been thinking and gleaning from anecdotal evidence.

  1. Standalone seminaries are become less and less viable from a financial standpoint
  2. The reduction of funds means a reduction of full-time faculty which means:
    1. Our best people are forced elsewhere because our seminaries can’t afford them
    2. Adjunct faculty become a major fallback–and they are often less qualified than the people they are replacing (Of course, I say this as one adjuncting myself…)
  3. Technology is never an answer–but it may open opportunities for creative thinking along the lines of the Disseminary
  4. Distance learning can never and will never replace the formational importance of thrice daily corporate worship

I hope to graduate in May with the intent of (eventually) teaching in an Episcopal seminary. I’m starting to wonder about the long-term viability of that plan.

Brief Note

I’ve not been around much and will continue not to be.

But… I just had to point to this article that AKMA has brought to our attention on “Adventure: Search for the Colossal Cave.” Those who recognize the name will need no reminding; for those who don’t, an introduction really won’t suffice–because one can never capture what it all means to those of us who played it back then.

The article is fascinating, but doesn’t answer a question that I’ve wondered about for quite a while. At what point in the game’s history did the den of the software wizard disappear? I have vivid memories of the room littered with Dr. Pepper cans sporting a pin-up of a nude Cray-1 supercomputer that somehow was missing from later versions I’ve played… Anybody know?

Refusing the Spectrum

Fr. Haller has an interesting post up where he looks at current Anglican issues in terms of realists and idealists. I agree with much that he writes, but I’m not sure I agree with this one… I think I can sense what he’s trying to set up, but it’s not quite there yet. One difficulty with the post is his initial rhetorical decision: to make the liberals the realists and the conservatives the idealists. In my experience, the liberals I know tend to be the idealists, then attempt to impose their ideals on those around them. I’m not saying conservatives don’t do this, I just think that both groups have both idealists and realists in them.

He presents a binary list of options. But, as I read through them, I found myself not only choosing freely from both, but just as frequently wishing for options not offered. Here are a few I offered in my comment–with a few new additions:

eschatology: sacramental
mood: optative
goal: maturity
pedagogy: experiental (i.e., liturgical)
gospel: Matthew
ecclesia: militans
theological school: benedictine
the church: “you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it”
creation story: John 1

I keep hearing about this spectrum but in an important sense…I’m not on it!

I’ve said before, I’m a moderate by default because I don’t fall into the camps described. Furthermore, I don’t think either of two camps should be the goal. To me, Anglicanism is about a set of boundaries defined broadly by the literal sense of the historical creeds and defined more narrowly (but still fairly broadly) by the theology encoded in the prayer book. I don’t want either liberals or conservatives to shoehorn me into their dogmatic statements; I’d much rather they join me in worshiping in the beauty of holiness and in works of mercy.

In short, I’d really like the conversation to move beyond the binary. We need to be challenged by those on all sides. All those who confess Christ crucified have something to teach me about loving and serving him and my neighbor. I need to be challenged by the “liberals” and the “conservatives” and by all those who don’t fit into either of these  for my own growth and correction(…let the righteous smite me in friendly rebuke…)–and I’ll return the favor too.

Arora’s Law

This is a phenomenon that has needed a name for a long time and now it does. It’s a version of Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies–but the current Anglican version. As Godwin’s Law projects that the longer an internet debate continues the likelihood grows that Nazis and/or Hitler will be invoked, so Arora’s Law projects that in any Anglican online debate the longer it proceeds the likelihood grows that Jack Spong will be mentioned.The whole thing is here… (h/t Thinking Anglicans)