Author Archives: Derek A. Olsen

The path you must follow is in the Psalms–never leave it

Hie thee over to the Byzantine Anglo-Catholic’s place for a fascinating post on the Camaldolese order and their spirituality. I’m stealing from there the entirity of the Brief Rule left by their founder.

Brief Rule

Sit in your cell as in paradise.
Put the whole world behind you and forget it.
Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish.
The path you must follow is in the Psalms–never leave it.
If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of
your good will, you cannot accomplish what you want,
take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart
and to understand them with your mind.
And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up;
hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.
Realize above all that you are in God’s presence, and stand there
with the attitude of one who stands before the emperor.
Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God,
like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what his mother brings him.

A REAL “Listening Process”

Christopher has a nice post up on his take on my previous post.

I want all the bishops and archbishops who read my blog to sit up and pay close attention now.

It struck me as I read through it that “this here” is the vaunted listen process. It’s about people sharing how they do family and do life in the sight of God.

A listening process doesn’t happen when strangers with pre-determined decisions show up in a room and argue for a couple of hours. A listening process doesn’t happen when a large organization comes and has a “conversation” which is a monologue wherein a particular view is shoved down everyone’s throat.

A listening process means sharing the realities of our mundane lives and exploring whether and how God is at work in and through them–listening for the footsteps of God in the midst of life. And noting where we fall into moments or patterns of sin where love is denied or distorted.

A listening process is listening to Christopher talk about the daily realities and ups and downs of family life. A listening process is getting to know bls’s take on art, music, and the events of the day. And about listening and discerning what’s there as well as what’s going on with Chris and Jessicah, Caelius, LP and Mrs. LP, the Postulant and his M, me and my M. (See how inclusive we are here? We’ll even listen to Lutherans! :-D) This is the heart of it–not talking “about gay people”–but talking to and hearing from people–friends–married, partnered, single, dating, talking about the realities of their lives and recognizing the presence of both God and sin in each and all.

The sad reality, of course, is that this will not be recognized. Activist will struggle against activist. The shrillest voices with the keenest pitches will be the “listening process”. Talking poinst will be weighed against talking points and none will be persuaded. So sad—what a mess…

Teaching Men about Women’s Issues: Home Edition

1950’s paradigm: Man goes off and earns the paycheck; woman stays at home and does the child-rearing and housework.

200X paradigm: Man goes off and earns a paycheck; woman goes off and earns a paycheck. oh btw…woman gets to do the child-rearing and housework too…

M and I don’t consider ourselves awfully progressive. In fact, on a lot of things, we’re quite conservative. When we got married, though, we discussed that we saw ourselves as part of a team and that household chores should be split in ways that make sense. I’ve always tried to be an active dad, and when G was little stayed home and watched her mornings and worked in the evenings. Furthermore we worked on the input-output rule: M breastfed so I changed all the diapers. I still change a lot even though the breastfeeding days are long over and H’s diaper days are drawing to a happy end.

With M going to work, I’m the at-home parent since my commute is to my office in the basement. Since our schedule is currently arranged so that M works out in the mornings before work I’m:

  • waking the girls
  • making four breakfasts
  • packing three lunches
  • dressing 2 girls
  • taking 1 girl (G) to the bus stop
  • cleaning the  kitchen.

Then my “real” day starts with spreadsheets, coding etc…
[Insert laundry here as I work near the washer & dryer]
Come lunch-time…

  • sneak in a run
  • plan dinner
  • start dinner prep

Then it’s back to the spreadsheets until:

  • pick up G from bus
  • finish cooking dinner

sometimes in the midst of spreadsheets. I was dicing onions during a conference call the other day…

Then after dinner it’s:

  • clean kitchen
  • help G with homework
  • put girls to bed.

Is this lifestyle what they had in mind with “women’s liberation”?!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining; this is just what we have to do to make sure everything moves steady. Nor am I listing all of the stuff that M is doing—so please don’t think for a minute that she’s slacking or that I’m accusing her of it. Far from it!

Rather, it’s opening my eyes to the assumptions that we men tend to make about who does what and how we contribute to the household. And, it’s making me realize that M has been doing far more than I’d ever guess while I work away.

So—thank you, M!! And the rest of you guys with households–get off your butts and lend a hand… ;-)

 FYI, today’s run will become a literal run to the grocery store to pick up a couple of missing ingredients for dinner. I’m shooting for butternut squash risotto with balsamic marinated chicken and brocolli. Feel free to stop by—and bring a fork… :-)

Random MP Thought

On running across this section of Ps 103…:

For look how high the heaven is in comparison of the earth; *
so great is his mercy also toward them that fear him.
Look how wide also the east is from the west; *
so far hath he set our sins from us.
Yea, like as a father pitieth his own children; *
even so is the LORD merciful unto them that fear him.
For he knoweth whereof we are made; *
he remembereth that we are but dust.
The days of man are but as grass; *
for he flourisheth as a flower of the field.
For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone; *
and the place thereof shall know it no more.
But the merciful goodness of the LORD endureth for ever and ever upon them that fear him; *
and his righteousness upon children’s children;

…I’m reminded of something I first noticewd when studying the psalms appointed to follow the  Gen 1 reading in the Easter Vigil. I was originally puzzled about the selection of the bits of Psalms 33 and 36 when there are other psalms that seem to me more explicitly focused on creation (like, say, Ps 104!). Why these? 

In looking over these over, I noticed a feature which appears here as well. These psalms aren’t just about creation and the created world. Rather, they’re using creation as a physical model to give us a sense of the breath, height, and depth of the virtues of God.  The vast expanses of creation, the pairings of finitude and infinity are invoked in order to describe the moral characteristics of God and of God’s inordinate love.

Hatin’ on the NRSV

This weekend’s Gospel foregrounds one of my pet peeves about the NRSV; it’s translations can be down-right misleading in ways that obscure some fascinating stuff. In this Sunday’s reading they fooled around with Matt 22:20 in a way that covers up a great sacramental reading of the story.

NRSV: ‘Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”’

 

 

KJV: ‘And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?’

NIV: ‘and he asked them, “Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?”‘

The Greek word variously translated as ‘head”, “image” and “portrait” is eikon–the same word from whence we get the word “icon”. I much prefer the translation “image”. In a similar way, the second is epigrammata. “Inscription” works fine in my book. The problem is that the NRSV attempts to give a precision that is not present in the original. As a result, it closes off the possibilities for readings that are available with the other (better) translations. Preeminently, it obscures the fact that the word really is image, something that I think factors theological in Jesus’ retort. The coin made with the image of Casar belongs to Caesar—however the human beings made in the image of God belong to God! Especially if those humans have been marked with an inscription—like, say, a cross upon the forehead—the sealing of baptism.

I think that’s a sacramentally rich reading of the passage—but one completely hidden by the NRSV.

To the Farmer-In-Chief

bls points us to this article in the NY Times magazine–a letter from Michael Pollan to the next president. The whole thing is worth a read and here are some juicy excerpts to whet your appetite…:

There are many moving parts to the new food agenda I’m urging you to adopt, but the core idea could not be simpler:we need to wean the American food system off its heavy 20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of contemporary sunshine. True, this is easier said than done — fossil fuel is deeply implicated in everything about the way we currently grow food and feed ourselves. To put the food system back on sunlight will require policies to change how things work at every link in the food chain: in the farm field, in the way food is processed and sold and even in the American kitchen and at the American dinner table. Yet the sun still shines down on our land every day, and photosynthesis can still work its wonders wherever it does. If any part of the modern economy can be freed from its dependence on oil and successfully resolarized, surely it is food.

. . .

We emptied America’s rural counties in order to supply workers to urban factories. To put it bluntly, we now need to reverse course. We need more highly skilled small farmers in more places all across America — not as a matter of nostalgia for the agrarian past but as a matter of national security. For nations that lose the ability to substantially feed themselves will find themselves as gravely compromised in their international dealings as nations that depend on foreign sources of oil presently do. But while there are alternatives to oil, there are no alternatives to food.

. . .

Changing the food culture must begin with our children, and it must begin in the schools. Nearly a half-century ago, President Kennedy announced a national initiative to improve the physical fitness of American children. He did it by elevating the importance of physical education, pressing states to make it a requirement in public schools. We need to bring the same commitment to “edible education” — in Alice Waters’s phrase — by making lunch, in all its dimensions, a mandatory part of the curriculum. On the premise that eating well is a critically important life skill, we need to teach all primary-school students the basics of growing and cooking food and then enjoying it at shared meals.

To change our children’s food culture, we’ll need to plant gardens in every primary school, build fully equipped kitchens, train a new generation of lunchroom ladies (and gentlemen) who can once again cook and teach cooking to children. We should introduce a School Lunch Corps program that forgives federal student loans to culinary-school graduates in exchange for two years of service in the public-school lunch program. And we should immediately increase school-lunch spending per pupil by $1 a day — the minimum amount food-service experts believe it will take to underwrite a shift from fast food in the cafeteria to real food freshly prepared.  

These last points are vital. We need to teach our children about gardening, cooking, and food in general. We’re trying at home, but school reinforcement is always good. I’ve been looking quite seriously at these resources recently at the National Gardening Association’s site and have been wondering what it would take to get an organic gardening/composting project started at Lil’ G’s school.

A Thought on the Economy

Fr. Haller writes good sense based on working in the Pit. Let me add my negligable two cents worth.

This credit crunch and market crash corresponds—as far as I can tell—concurrently with the end of cheap oil. Yeah, it’s bouncing around $100 a barrel now, much lower than the summer’s $140’s—but do you ever think we’ll see $20 or $40 again? Me neither…

We need a new economic paradigm that takes seriously both communication technology and the energy reality. Here’s my take: Keep data global; keep stuff local.

On Contexts and Biblical Interpretation

Huw and I have been having an interesting conversation at the Episcopal Cafe that I think is worth expanding. It began with a discussion of the parable of the workers in the vineyard with the occasional infusion of the parable of the wicked tenants. In this exchange I was focused mostly on the first… Here are some of the pertinent comments to date:

From me:

I think in speaking about the “generosity” of the vineyard owner of Matthew 20 it’s important to note that the Scripture doesn’t call him “generous”. That’s a liberty taken by our translators; rather the word is “good” (ego agathos eimi)…

I don’t think a traditional meaning “doesn’t fit” the meaning of the text at all. Actually, I think it works better when we consider not only the content of the parable but its literary context as well.

If we look just before this parable we see the account of the young wealthy man who asks what “good thing” (ti agathon) he must do to be saved to whom Jesus responds that “there is one who is good” (ho agathos) (Matt 19:16-22).

Then Jesus speaks of the difficulties of the wealthy who wish to enter the kingdom [“easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God…”] (Matt 19:23-30).

Then we get this parable about the householder who hires laborers (Matt 20:1-16) which ends with the householder saying, “Why do you cast the evil eye [on me] because I am good?”

How do we interpret the householder given the rest of the discussion around wealth and the good? Is he a negative example that confirms the difficulty of the rich to do good or a positive exemplum of one who uses wealth as a manifestation of the nature of the kingdom?

If he is a sign of evil what, then, is the sign of the kingdom thus displayed?

I agree that we must always be on our guard against the domestication of the sharp edge of the Gospel. I just disagree that this reading strips the story of a Gospel challenge.

From Huw:

 

Donald – As you noted in your reply, “It is exciting when scripture pushes us to a kind of arguing that seems rabbinic”.

When I first read your post my guts knotted up a little. Your reading of the text comes at such a different angle to what is traditional that I felt as if the floor had dropped out on an exciting carnival ride. THAT’S what I like about this sort of Rabbinic Conversation! It’s like a roller coaster with the Holy Ghost at the switch as long as we trust each other.

Derek, your description of the text works well with my ex-Orthodox comfort level – which is therefore suspect. Thanks for that tracing of “good” through those passages. But does that literary context say anything about what *Jesus* intended by this story? Or does it tell us more about what the Matthewite community wanted to focus on in the hearing of this passage? Mind you – I don’t think it’s possible to make that choice in a satisfactory way; and I think such a realisation opens the doors to the possibility that there are many other ways of reading this text.

And this is even more true if the traditional reading is based, in circular fashion, on a context that simply expects the traditional reading.

It’s the use of Allegory that is the problem here: was Jesus intending Allegory? Did the Early Disciples hear Allegory? We may never know in this world, but certainly the Church Fathers saw nearly *all* the scriptures as conveying Allegory. Should we do likewise? Even if we follow in their footsteps, does that mean that only one allegory drawn from the text is right? If we decide to use their method do we need to duplicate their results?

One traditional allegory on the “Walking on Water” has Peter getting out of the boat showing us what happens when we dare leave the Church. It goes on to say that Peter was at fault for daring to leave the boat at all! After the Great Schism this reading becomes laden with political overtones. It’s no wonder we never hear it in the west outside of the Orthodox Church. I head it every year when that Gospel came up. And when Peter cries, “Save me” Jesus puts him in the boat (ie, back in the Orthodox Church). It has nothing to do with Peter “loosing faith” when he tried to Walk on the Water. Attempting to walk away from the boat and the other disciples was, in this reading, the sin.

Which reading is right? Does one need to be right and the other wrong? Do we need to pick one over the other other than as needed for a sermon in a given situation? Which one is intended by the Gospel writer? Which one would have been heard by his first community? Or would they have heard just a cool story? Do we need to know those answers beyond prying new, interesting readings out of the text? 

From me:

Hey Huw,

Yes, a both/and reading is typically preferable over an either/or. I do think, however, that certain readings are to be preferred based on the principle of edification. I need to be challenged by readings like the ones Donald and Deirdre offer. At the same time, others need to be challenged again by the meanings that endure in the traditional readings. I do not accuse Donald or Deirdre of this at all, but there are some who believe that the Bible was entirely misunderstood until the 1960’s and I think that’s a mistake.

As for the parable and its setting, What you and Donald are doing is stripping away one setting and replacing it with another one. The one that you are discarding comes from the same general time-period and culture as Jesus himself, written by a people far more familiar with their cultural and interpretive practices than we are. The setting that you are replacing it with is a 21st century recreation that some scholars think might be possibly what Jesus was like. Or not. Personally, I’d rather work with the setting that we actually have and, since Matthew is the only gospel who preserves this parable, it’s the only one we have to go on.

From Huw:

Derek – ” I’d rather work with the setting that we actually have”

If by that you mean *only* the literary setting, then ok. As I said I thank you for drawing out the line on “agatho” through the preceding several scenes. It was something I wouldn’t have noticed without your sharing.

But, again: that only tells us about the text. Not about the community or the intent of the writer(s). It tells us nothing about Jesus. We don’t even know if the community would have heard those several passages read together. Even our assumptions about who that community was are mere guesses.

Any attemt at a cultural reading or a setting (New or Old) is a reading-into the text of material that isn’t necessarily there. Our choice, as you’ve noted, is to find out if it is a reading towards the edification of the people – and ultimately to their deification in Christ.

From me:

But, again: that only tells us about the text. Not about the community or the intent of the writer(s).

True. And the text is what we confess as part of the mystery that is the Word of God–not the community nor the intention of the writer(s).

It tells us nothing about Jesus.

Au contraire, my friend… It tells us how Matthew and possibly other pre-Matthean sources communicated who Jesus was. It may not give us historical “facts” about Jesus but it does tells us how the author and the transmitting community understood the ethos, aims, and point of Jesus. That’s pretty important in my book.

Speaking simply, we make meaning from a text based on two primary factors: content and context. I think that Huw and I both acknowledge that the more malleable of the two is context and the discussion here is not about what one context the text belongs in, but what we should consider the primary context (or contexts) and which should be secondary, tertiary or beyond. So we agree that there are  multiplicity of legitimate contexts; the normative context is the one up for grabs. 

From a scholarly point of view, I’m a literary guy. Thus, my intention is to give the text pre-eminence over other factors. Theologically, I do believe that the biblical text is the Word of God, inspired by God. I see it as something more a kin to a hypostatic union where it is simultaneously a limited human word and a revelatory divine word rather than following a dictation model. As a result of these convictions, I argue that the normative context for any pericope/section of text is its immediate literary context, the larger context of the book in which it is found and the wider context of the whole of Scripture. Another primary context for me is the history of interpretation—how the Church has understood, incarnated, and wrestled with the passage through the centuries.

I see Huw and Donald (who started this discussion) assigning a primary—perhaps normative—context of historical Jesus research to the parable. That is, they are suggesting (and do correct me if I’m reading you wrong, Huw) that a (if not the) central context for the parable is based in Jesus-as-he-was rather than the gospels which are texts that transmit not the pure Jesus—Jesus-as-he-was—but Jesus-as-the early-church-viewed-him.

I take issue with this. I’ve been trained in the New Testament guild. That means several semester-long in-depth seminars on the history of New Testament research and on the whole “Quest for the Historical Jesus” problem. I know where we’ve come from and where we are now. And frankly, I see most historical Jesus research as problematic. We have very limited data that we can say is “historical” in nature. Our main sources were not primarily interested in giving us the kind of historical data that we are after. As a result, most of the research greatly outstrips what I believe our sources give us. Whenever that happens, we begin wandering into the realm of fantasy. Historical reconstruction as wishful/hopeful thinking. Albert Schweitzer was the first to expose this for what it was at the turn into the 20th century and while we’ve progressed into new areas and sociological models he couldn’t have dreamed of, his central charge still holds true. The Jesus we go looking for is the Jesus that we find.  I do not believe that the sources that we have—the gospels—contain the data for us to access Jesus-as-he-was and therefore any attempt to do so provides Jesus-as-we-wish-him-to-be mistaken as Jesus-as-he-was. And that, in my opinion, is why using historical Jesus research as a central context for understanding the parables is misguided—we’re not giving them a contemporary context, we’re giving them a modern context that masquerades as historical.

Having said all that, it’s only fair t note that the parables have been a central battleground for historical Jesus research through the 20th century because one of the few things that everyone actually can agree on is that Jesus taught in parables. (Naturally, we get into major arguments when various folks start pronouncing on which parables belong to Jesus and which are from the early church–or, worse yet–which pieces of which parables are from Jesus and which from the early church…) In this discussion, I’m not denying the validity of the work of folks like Jeremias or Perrin who did some careful and important work on the parables with either implicit or explicit ties to historical Jesus research, I just don’t think that even their careful research (not all of which I agree with either…) gives us enough of a solid context to justify replacing the context we do have with the one we reconstruct.

New Cafe Post

I’ve got a new post up at the Cafe today. It’s on the inevitable topic of religion and politics. (I’m a little puzzled by the title, but ok…)

I also want to draw attention to yesterday’s piece on parables. I try to argue for a pluraity of readings when it comes to the Scriptures. That is, the *more* readings that make sense of a passage within the reasonable limits of a passage’s content and context is a good thing. And, on the whole, I greatly prefer both/and approaches to either/or approaches.

In reference to yesterday’s piece and its discussion, I do indeed want to embrace new methodologies and new ways of looking at the biblical text. What bothers me, though, is when we get a sense that a new reading replaces or supercedes traditional readings simply because it’s new and novel. Yes, we should challenge hegemonic readings that insist that there’s only one way to read a passage and I try hard not to fall into that (though being human, I fail at times…). Nevertheless one of the ironies of the modern situation is that those seeking to overturn old hegemonies are at risk of creating new hegemonies. Yes, let’s multiply readings. 

Furthermore when we multiply readings, I think it’s important to keep in mind Paul’s words about spiritual wisdom. The point is not pride but edification. Many readings may well be valid. But it’s our task as leaders and those who care for the church to determine—in humility and to the best of our abilities—which words are most edifying to whom and at what times. Sometimes I need words of rebuke and interpretations that challenge my favorite traditional readings–whether they be early medieval traditions or scholarly traditions. On the other hand, sometimes I need to be re-confronted by a traditional interpretation, challenged to discover why it has returned time and again to Christian minds despite shifting cultures, intellectual currents, and spiritual fads.

In Other News…

I’ll not be making it to SBL this year.

Things are still tight, and at the moment I can’t afford to go to more than one conference per academic year.

‘Cause I’m going to K’zoo…

Actually…I’ve been invited to present as K’zoo—and so I shall!

This is an all around good thing. Not only is it a presentation at a major conference but it’ll light the fire I’ve been lacking to get my edits done and the diss finished up so that I’ll go as “Dr.” rather than “Mr.”.   In fact, the day I should graduate is the day after the conference ends. My presentation is the first half of chapter 4 so most of the hard work has already been done; it’ll just be a matter of sharpening it all and putting it into presentation format.