Author Archives: Derek A. Olsen

New Submission for the Journal of Advanced Toddler Studies

Pagan Survivals in Children’s Literature: The Case of “Mr. Brown”

The eponymous hero of Dr. Seuss’s Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?: Dr. Seuss’s Book of Wonderful Noises displays a remarkable ability to evoke a wide range of sounds. Clues embedded within the structure of the text suggest that Mr. Brown is more than he appears to be on a surface level. The climax of the book is a dramatic scene involving weather manifestations. Thunder takes the fore, chiastically bracketed between rain and lightning. While in most of the vignettes Mr. Brown “can sound like” things, here there is a profound shift: Suess writes, “Boom Boom Boom/ Mr. Brown is a wonder./ Boom Boom Boom/Mr. Brown makes thunder!/ He makes lightning / Splatt Splatt Splatt/ and it’s very, very hard/ to make a noise like that!” The crucial shift moves away from onomatopoeic mimesis; rather than declarative speech, Mr. Brown is engaging in performative speech that not simply replicates but produces the very phenomena conjured by its sound. In short, Mr. Brown bears the characteristics of a storm god.

When the rest of the narrative is viewed through this lens, an unmistakable agricultural pattern may be discerned in many of the sounds connected with Mr. Brown: bees (Buzz Buzz)–important pollenators and source of a primary ingredient of most premodern diets, rooster (Cocka doodle doo), grapes and wines (the sound of a cork: Pop Pop accompanied with an image of a wine bottle). The presence of an owl (Hoo Hoo) suggests Mr. Brown may manifest a chthonic form as well. The most telling piece of evidence receives structural emphasis as it is the first sound/image of the book: the cow. Pulling the evidence together, a storm god surrounded by agricultural motifs foremost among them the image of a cow or bull, it seems quite clear that Mr. Brown is a survival of the Ancient Near Eastern Hadad/Ba’al tradition.

Lectionary Thought

There is one little word that ought never to appear in lectionaries: “or”.

Diminished Presence

I’ll not be posting much or be online much for a while. Some major projects are in the works that are demanding my attention.

One of them is moving. Our household will be leaving our current area and will head up towards the general Washington/Baltimore area later this summer. That alone will keep us busy in addition to securing housing, employment, schools, etc.

Items will still appear at the Cafe and I’ll note them here, but I doubt much else will appear…

I’ll also give what I hope to be my final foot update: three months to the day my doctor took me off of all antibiotics. I still have some pain—especially in mornings and evenings—but the orthopedist said that is caused by a weakening of the foot ligature where the infection was. He said it should tighten back up and the pain will go away in another six to eight weeks. I was hoping to start running again, but he said no running until after July 4th which is unfortunately especially given local traditions. Nevertheless, good news overall.

Fascinating Edited Volume on the Psalms

Google Books—as you know—has full-text of old stuff and snippets of new stuff. Mostly. However, there is some full-length new stuff there including a fascinating collection of essays on the Psalms. [Note: it is actually under limited preview. I got through the first essay, then it turned itself off…] It immediately attracted my attention when I saw the editors: H. Attridge and M. Fassler. When Harry Attridge, noted New Testament scholar and Margot Fassler, noted musicologist team up on something on the Psalms you know it’s going to be both good and broad.

The table of contents suggests exciting too… A lot of big names from various fields are represented: Robert Taft (liturgical history), John J. Collins (intertestamental literature) Gordon Lathrop (liturgical theology) and more.

This is definitely worth a read and can be accessed here.

Ain’t It Odd…?

Some evangelical sorts are against women “headship” based on an interpretation of Paul. I wonder how they feel about the Queen of England. And that she’s technically the, well, head of the Church of England…
I truly wonder how those who believe themselves to be biblical literalists buy their meat. Every time I go to the supermarket, I somehow miss the section for meats with no blood in them that haven’t been strangled. No—I’m not talking OT food laws, I mean the New Testament ones in Acts 15…

Discipleship at the Cafe

What would the Church look like if we thought of “disciple-making” as
our core purpose, in adult formation programs, in seminary education,
in worship?

There you go, folks—that’s the key question. It’s from a post here at the Episcopal Cafe. I’d say all of the rest of our questions about church stuff (including what we do with people, buildings, politics, etc.) are properly subsets of this question.

New Post at the Cafe

It can be found here.

I often complain that people don’t take the tradition seriously, but—as has often been observed—the transmission of the tradition can be a little haphazard. Many people who go against it aren’t necessarily rejecting the tradition; often they simply don’t know it.

So, I’m offering a brief primer on some significant dates that get in touch with key parts of the Anglican tradition. I began here with 587 BC but will only go up through 1549. Any farther than that and we’d start getting into Anglican factional politics. Time for that another day! After all, another series later isn’t entirely out of the question…

Evangelicals and Liturgy

is the title of this post over at the Lead pointing to an article in Christianity Today.

Honestly, we’ve been hearing so much about the renewed interest in traditional liturgy from the younger demographic and seekers alike in recent years that I have to wonder why people still think this is news. How long until people stop being surprised by this and realize that it’s what’s out there on the ground?

A lot of Christians want traditional liturgy.

It ties in with a desire for traditional spirituality as well.

We want to base our lives in something that has spoken to the human condition over centuries. I want current events and ephemera in my Prayers of the People—not in my eucharistic liturgies.

We want something that is not easily exhaustible; that has multiple layers and depths of meanings—not a single, obvious, didactic point.

I want to be able to pour over and live into my liturgies for years and die knowing that there are a host of meanings that I missed because I never got around to pondering them.

What will our next prayer book offer?

Significant Books

Fr. Chris was posting on books that had been particularly formative in his faith journey and, turning it into a meme, tagged me for it.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and I find it a very difficult one to answer. There have been so very many books that have influenced me in many ways. But—fitting in my turn away from true protestantism—when I think about my faith journey people have been more formative for me than books. Or—to mix it up, what certain mentors taught me with certain books has been incredibly formative…

None of that answers Fr. Chris’s question which is partly about recommending really good books to other people. I’ll morph it a little bit too–I’ll list what I currently think to be the seven most important books for my faith formation and theology. There are, of course, three that should go without saying so I’ll just stick them here at the top for the sake of form and make it a round ten:

The Bible
The 1979 American Book of Common Prayer
The ’82 Hymnal
The Book of Concord: Ok—here’s the first book that I’ll explain, and that needs some explanation. For those who don’t know it, the Book of Concord is that official collection of theological writings that Lutherans accept. I don’t accept it all (one of the reasons why I’m not currently a Lutheran pastor), But I find myself very frequently going back to Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms, the Augsburg Confession and its Apology. The Small Catechism in particular is a key work for me.
The Rule of Benedict/John Cassian’s Institutes and Conferences: Three books for the price of one… Benedict’s work is fairly widely known in Christian and Episcopal circles and is justly honored for its wisdom, structure, and humanity. Cassian’s works are still fairly obscure—and that’s to our detriment. The early church didn’t write systematic theologies. However, Cassian’s work is the closest that you’ll come to a systematic spirituality. Filled with theological and psychological insight, Cassian focuses less on doctrines and more on practices, on communicating a path for cultivating disciples. I find myself at a place in my spiritual and intellectual life where I can’t see these three works as truly distinct from one another. The Rule is in many respects a distillation of Cassian and yet the Rule becomes a lens for reading Cassian as well.
Monastic Practices: This is a supremely practical book written for Cistercian novices. It introduces them to the basics of the monastic spiritual practices. Ever since I first encountered it in a theology library in Tokyo during undergrad this book has been having on me.
On Christian Doctrine: This is Augustine’s main work on hermeneutics–how to read Scripture and get stuff out of it. The center of his argument is caritas: If you are reading and you find something other than love, read it again because you missed it. Of course, love is not a gooey do-whatever-you-like; it’s love with depth and integrity. Like the Rule & Cassian, this one has been very influential in my spiritual and intellectual lives.
The Soul in Paraphrase: This was a very important book for me because it introduced me to the notion of the religious affections. It gave me a vocabulary for thinking about a range of human experience I didn’t know how to describe. In many ways this book laid the groundwork for me to appreciate what Stoicism is really about and therefore monastic spirituality which is fundamentally a kind of Christian Stoicism.
The Temple: For a sacramental Anglican who loves poetry, this is simply a no-brainer. Herbert’s verse sings. He soars up to great heights but—just as important—he plumbs great depths too. His poetry of misery in relation to God is second only to the Psalms in my opinion.
The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters: This work begins by affirming that the creed is not an easy thing for modern people to affirm. Then, rather than making excuses for it or weaseling out of it, affirms the importance of a literal reading of the Creed and ties each article into classic Christian theology and spirituality, explain why each one is important and the broader ramifications of it.