In the midst of writing an article about that fabled species, the introverted seminarian, the Pilgrim pauses to reflect upon that great, prototypical introverted manifesto, courtesy of the Atlantic Monthly:
"We can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood, when perhaps an Introverts' Rights movement has blossomed and borne fruit, it will not be impolite to say "I'm an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush."
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Friday, January 27, 2006
Bits and Pieces
* This quarter's course of personal study might well be referred to as "The Presidents of Princeton U." So far, I've covered Aaron Burr, Sr. (1748-1757), Jonathan Edwards (1758),John Witherspoon (1768-1794), James McCosh (1868-1888) and Woodrow Wilson (1902-1910). Put a little differently, the history of Princeton is profoundly caught up in the fickle shifts of enlightenment, romanticism, Scottish Common Sense philosophy, positivism, and, of course, the Great War. By the end of the quarter, I may even have developed some measure of school spirit!
* In spite of the bitter grumbling from my white, male colleagues about issues of 'reverse discrimination,' female Master of Divinity graduates are apparently still less likely to get jobs than men: Amongst the 2000-01 graduates, 72.7% of men found a job within less than a year after graduation, whereas only 44.4% of women did. The trend doesn't look any better for in later years either: Two years after graduation, all men surveyed had found a ministry position whereas 11.1% of women were still looking. (Under the circumstances, let's hear it for Shirley Tilghman: A university that didn't admit women until the class of 1976 (!) can surely do with a bit of feminization.)
* If I had a bit more gumption and a bit less "phear of philosophy" -- the non-political types that is -- I'd be sorely tempted to consider a paper on the historical similarities between enlightenment/romanticism and modernity/postmodernity. The reaction of emotion -- Gefühl -- against reason is a sufficiently intriguing correlation in both eras. Whether Bolger's immortality will match Blake's, and Kimball's work outlast Coleridge's remains, of course, to be seen.
* In the aftermath of not one, not two, but three stimulating and edifying lectures this week, the Pilgrim has picked up a bit of light, recreational reading.
* For the time being, though, I'm enjoying the deeply devotional qualities of Jürgen Moltmann's writings on the Trinity:
"The hope of the church is directed towards the parousia of Jesus, whom God has raised from the dead. He will come as 'the Son of God.' Here expectation of the parousia is expectation of the Son. The Son is expected as the saviour of his brothers and sisters. He will not come as the unknown judge. He will come as the familiar brother. We may hope for his judgment. We do not have to be afraid of it."
Amen.
* In spite of the bitter grumbling from my white, male colleagues about issues of 'reverse discrimination,' female Master of Divinity graduates are apparently still less likely to get jobs than men: Amongst the 2000-01 graduates, 72.7% of men found a job within less than a year after graduation, whereas only 44.4% of women did. The trend doesn't look any better for in later years either: Two years after graduation, all men surveyed had found a ministry position whereas 11.1% of women were still looking. (Under the circumstances, let's hear it for Shirley Tilghman: A university that didn't admit women until the class of 1976 (!) can surely do with a bit of feminization.)
* If I had a bit more gumption and a bit less "phear of philosophy" -- the non-political types that is -- I'd be sorely tempted to consider a paper on the historical similarities between enlightenment/romanticism and modernity/postmodernity. The reaction of emotion -- Gefühl -- against reason is a sufficiently intriguing correlation in both eras. Whether Bolger's immortality will match Blake's, and Kimball's work outlast Coleridge's remains, of course, to be seen.
* In the aftermath of not one, not two, but three stimulating and edifying lectures this week, the Pilgrim has picked up a bit of light, recreational reading.
* For the time being, though, I'm enjoying the deeply devotional qualities of Jürgen Moltmann's writings on the Trinity:
"The hope of the church is directed towards the parousia of Jesus, whom God has raised from the dead. He will come as 'the Son of God.' Here expectation of the parousia is expectation of the Son. The Son is expected as the saviour of his brothers and sisters. He will not come as the unknown judge. He will come as the familiar brother. We may hope for his judgment. We do not have to be afraid of it."
Amen.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
From the Trenches
[Much of the best theology the Pilgrim ever learned comes from children's books. There's the works by L'Engle, Ende's Neverending Story and Momo, and a number of others. Over the past few months, the Pilgrim has made the vicarious acquaintance of Alex, a little 8-year-old waiting for his second heart-transplant. The Pilgrim doesn't know Alex in person -- he's spending his days in the hospital, weighed down by a young body's worth of organs that function increasingly poorly due to his defective heart -- but knows Alex's grandmother, a hardworking Latina part of the school staff. The Pilgrim really, really meant to get Alex a Christmas present but was ultimately daunted by the shelves and shelves of boys' toys. Instead, though, the Pilgrim found a -- fortuituously republished -- edition of a book that she used to read during the many sick-spells of her childhood and still greatly values. There's a lot of wisdom and a good bit of good theology in The Brothers Lionheart.]
Growing up, my family's home never suffered a newspaper shortage: My parents subscribed to two daily deliveries and my father bought a minimum of three additional papers every day. Then there were the weeklies, the magazines, ... an amazing expense, really, considering that during those dayas most of my clothes were hand-me-downs from my mother's friends' kids. Every day after work, my father would pore over these papers, recognizing full well the political slants in each and using them, well before the advent of the prodigiously resourced internet, to get an optimally balanced perspective on national and international happenings. Once a week, my dad and I dutifully tore up papers and stuffed them into milk-cartons, to be stored in the basement and fed into the woodburning stove in the kitchen during the wintertime.
All that's to say -- my affection for newspapers is almost a birthright, albeit one that is being put to the test a bit in recent weeks: I'm spending a fair bit of time "underground," in the bowels of the local library, reading the New York Times -- from the 1910s. Flipping through microfilm pages, dutifully maneuvering the film to explore the entirety of the page, skipping the ads and sport-pages, deciphering the "letters to the editor"... It's really quite fun for the first hour or two, at which point it becomes both a serious eye-sore, in the most literal sense of the word, and a bone-grinding chore at that.
I'm searching for evidences of how Americans -- regular, secular Americans -- talked about God and country. Quite frankly, the awareness that in five or so weeks a team of scholars will be in the position to rake me over hot coals (... although, the very wise and kindly professor overseeing the project assures me, this will "probably not happen" ... ;) is steeling my resolve. For, aside from the wartime speeches of President Wilson, there's hardly a better source to be had on the matter. The following is an excerpt from an article on a speech given before the [Jewish] Educational Alliance on the subject of Americanization of immigrants, published on January 8, 1917. It may be of interest to Americans, immigrants and historians to read it with an eye towards what it communicates about love of God and love of country:
"Americanization means two things. One of them is allegiance. The American citizen may have no political bond whatsoever either in thought, in word or in deed with any land but America. His love for father and mother, left behind in a fatherland of pleasant associations, his love for art, even his religion may hold a place in some country other than this, but his political allegiance must be confined to the land of his adoption, his love for her and her institutions must be marked with the zeal of the convert. Either that, or this is not his home.
We have here one of the essentials of Americanization which the time since August 1, 1914, has made unavoidably plain. The other essential I shall call obedience to authority, and this is perhaps the most difficult truth which the Educational Alliance has to teach the newcomer to a land of liberty. I do not mean obedience to the written laws of this country. That we take for granted. The authority of which I speak is no magistrate on the bench, nor yet is it that law which we write with a capital letter. It is that which sets itself up in the heart of the individual citizen. It is the law which compels him to do more than his country requires of him. It is that inner domination, and I do not mean conscience nor any moral impulse, but that hot love of freedom which develops in a man eagerness and initiative to serve liberty unasked, undriven, uncommanded by any statute or any magistrate.
It is unfortuante the applicants for membershp in a democracy do not realize how much will be asked of them. A democracy is sometimes a terrible tyrant and always a difficult master. Liberty, freedom -- whatever we call it that brought them to these shores -- are not all receipt and no payment, all profit and no sacrifice. Tyranny means obedience, but liberty means obligation. This is not a land, where men are free, but a land where me nare free to serve and woe the individual or group of individuals that does not learn this far-reaching truth in time! It is one of the great tasks of the Educational Alliance to reform a habit of mind shaped under years of persecution, and to lead our newcomers to a realization that people in a free country have no longer anything to do with rights, but a great deal to do with duties. [. . .] The Educational Alliance makes use of the Jew's customs, his language, and his religion as the medium for his Americanization. It is the concern of the alliance to bridge the transition period for the immigrant, and to do this it endeavors to give him the new ideas through the medium a familiar language, the language of the Jewish faith and of the best Jewish life.
[. . . ] There are occasionally those who seem to fear some sort of disintegrating effect on Judaism from our Americanization. I deny with all the indignation of one who is proud and confident in his faith, that the influence of a system of liberty, justice and equality can be harmful to it. Those who think this misunderstand either Judaism or Americanism or both. Indeed, who shall say that the fulfillment of true Judaism is not through the way of true democracy?
There is one final consideration: Who is to be the judge that this or that man has become a good American citizen? Is it enough that the immigrant should say, and quite sincerely too, that his allegiance is complete? By no means. He must not only be, he must seem to be American. He must convince his neighbors beyond any lurking doubts. For he is not an American all by himself; he is an American in relation to millions of others, and that relation is not hte bond of formal citizenship, but the bond of common and general understanding.
If he is persistently misunderstood by great numbers of his neighbors, there is a flaw somewhere: his Americanization is not yet complete; he must look to it. He must be ever watchful. He must see to it that religious motives are not translated into political motives, that his ideals are not exploited by self-seekers who would make him the tool of their ambitions. He must make clear that any communal action, any Jewish organized movement, is for the good of the larger community. If he has programs, let him be overparticular to make these programs perfectly understood by all his neighbors. Let him make it plain that he will do nothing to help Judaism that does not help America; and that his highest mission as a Jew is to contribute his share with all the rest in solving the complex and often discouraging problems of democracy."
Growing up, my family's home never suffered a newspaper shortage: My parents subscribed to two daily deliveries and my father bought a minimum of three additional papers every day. Then there were the weeklies, the magazines, ... an amazing expense, really, considering that during those dayas most of my clothes were hand-me-downs from my mother's friends' kids. Every day after work, my father would pore over these papers, recognizing full well the political slants in each and using them, well before the advent of the prodigiously resourced internet, to get an optimally balanced perspective on national and international happenings. Once a week, my dad and I dutifully tore up papers and stuffed them into milk-cartons, to be stored in the basement and fed into the woodburning stove in the kitchen during the wintertime.
All that's to say -- my affection for newspapers is almost a birthright, albeit one that is being put to the test a bit in recent weeks: I'm spending a fair bit of time "underground," in the bowels of the local library, reading the New York Times -- from the 1910s. Flipping through microfilm pages, dutifully maneuvering the film to explore the entirety of the page, skipping the ads and sport-pages, deciphering the "letters to the editor"... It's really quite fun for the first hour or two, at which point it becomes both a serious eye-sore, in the most literal sense of the word, and a bone-grinding chore at that.
I'm searching for evidences of how Americans -- regular, secular Americans -- talked about God and country. Quite frankly, the awareness that in five or so weeks a team of scholars will be in the position to rake me over hot coals (... although, the very wise and kindly professor overseeing the project assures me, this will "probably not happen" ... ;) is steeling my resolve. For, aside from the wartime speeches of President Wilson, there's hardly a better source to be had on the matter. The following is an excerpt from an article on a speech given before the [Jewish] Educational Alliance on the subject of Americanization of immigrants, published on January 8, 1917. It may be of interest to Americans, immigrants and historians to read it with an eye towards what it communicates about love of God and love of country:
"Americanization means two things. One of them is allegiance. The American citizen may have no political bond whatsoever either in thought, in word or in deed with any land but America. His love for father and mother, left behind in a fatherland of pleasant associations, his love for art, even his religion may hold a place in some country other than this, but his political allegiance must be confined to the land of his adoption, his love for her and her institutions must be marked with the zeal of the convert. Either that, or this is not his home.
We have here one of the essentials of Americanization which the time since August 1, 1914, has made unavoidably plain. The other essential I shall call obedience to authority, and this is perhaps the most difficult truth which the Educational Alliance has to teach the newcomer to a land of liberty. I do not mean obedience to the written laws of this country. That we take for granted. The authority of which I speak is no magistrate on the bench, nor yet is it that law which we write with a capital letter. It is that which sets itself up in the heart of the individual citizen. It is the law which compels him to do more than his country requires of him. It is that inner domination, and I do not mean conscience nor any moral impulse, but that hot love of freedom which develops in a man eagerness and initiative to serve liberty unasked, undriven, uncommanded by any statute or any magistrate.
It is unfortuante the applicants for membershp in a democracy do not realize how much will be asked of them. A democracy is sometimes a terrible tyrant and always a difficult master. Liberty, freedom -- whatever we call it that brought them to these shores -- are not all receipt and no payment, all profit and no sacrifice. Tyranny means obedience, but liberty means obligation. This is not a land, where men are free, but a land where me nare free to serve and woe the individual or group of individuals that does not learn this far-reaching truth in time! It is one of the great tasks of the Educational Alliance to reform a habit of mind shaped under years of persecution, and to lead our newcomers to a realization that people in a free country have no longer anything to do with rights, but a great deal to do with duties. [. . .] The Educational Alliance makes use of the Jew's customs, his language, and his religion as the medium for his Americanization. It is the concern of the alliance to bridge the transition period for the immigrant, and to do this it endeavors to give him the new ideas through the medium a familiar language, the language of the Jewish faith and of the best Jewish life.
[. . . ] There are occasionally those who seem to fear some sort of disintegrating effect on Judaism from our Americanization. I deny with all the indignation of one who is proud and confident in his faith, that the influence of a system of liberty, justice and equality can be harmful to it. Those who think this misunderstand either Judaism or Americanism or both. Indeed, who shall say that the fulfillment of true Judaism is not through the way of true democracy?
There is one final consideration: Who is to be the judge that this or that man has become a good American citizen? Is it enough that the immigrant should say, and quite sincerely too, that his allegiance is complete? By no means. He must not only be, he must seem to be American. He must convince his neighbors beyond any lurking doubts. For he is not an American all by himself; he is an American in relation to millions of others, and that relation is not hte bond of formal citizenship, but the bond of common and general understanding.
If he is persistently misunderstood by great numbers of his neighbors, there is a flaw somewhere: his Americanization is not yet complete; he must look to it. He must be ever watchful. He must see to it that religious motives are not translated into political motives, that his ideals are not exploited by self-seekers who would make him the tool of their ambitions. He must make clear that any communal action, any Jewish organized movement, is for the good of the larger community. If he has programs, let him be overparticular to make these programs perfectly understood by all his neighbors. Let him make it plain that he will do nothing to help Judaism that does not help America; and that his highest mission as a Jew is to contribute his share with all the rest in solving the complex and often discouraging problems of democracy."
Monday, January 23, 2006
MCMXIV
[The Pilgrim is doing a bit of work on the period of World War I these days and happened past this poem while doing so.]
MCMXIV
MCMXIV
Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;
And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day--
And the countryside not caring:
The place names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Like a Natural Woman
[The Pilgrim lost most of the past 24 hours to Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. She's now hopelessly behind on her work, but considerably more relaxed -- albeit still convinced that reading 40 pages on the sense of smell by a Scottish Common Sense philosopher is about as close to rigor mortis as one can get.]
Some time this afternoon, I made my way to aforementioned wedding/commitment ceremony (... the logistics of what to call the union are a bit complex, since due to the biologically rather mundane nature of the pairing, the marriage will for all intents and purposes be recognized as between one man and one woman, notwithstanding the man's intentions of completing the process of gender reassignment -- which, just in case you're wondering, is one of the interesting potential legal precedents for same-sex marriage ...).
The gathering was small -- "geeks and lesbians," as a friend of mine unkindly but uncannily described it -- , the ceremony brief, the presiding reverend a bit too casual, the DJ likely a family liability, but the wedding party looked beautiful and the families present supportive. One of the brides was tall and lean, her naturally curly hair tortured straight, with a demure smile and a soft, low voice. The last time I had seen her in person, she had gone by a different name, been considerably shorter (... heels will do that ...), and sported glasses and a beard; on the whole, she seemed more comfortable now.
The bride, without a doubt, had gone to great length to give herself the genuinely feminine appearance befitting her role. From what little I know about the matter of "passing" -- being accepted as, e.g., a member of one's chosen gender -- it is a tough and time-intensive business, involving, at a minimum, a great deal of effort (as the recent expose by Norah Vincent testifies), and, more frequently, gobs of counseling, hormone therapy, multiple surgeries, etc. etc. In the end, the cost -- financial, physical, emotional -- is exorbitantly high ... mind-blowingly, head-shakingly so ... unless, perhaps, one considers the costs and trials of "passing" for "normal" women-born-(a.k.a. non-trans)women.
I am personally not particularly frillily feminine; nevertheless, in order to "pass" as role-appropriately female, the list of steps required for me prior to an even moderately elegant event isn't exactly short. For today's wedding, for example, it included the following:
One wonders just how much there is actually "natural" when it comes to the "natural woman."
Some time this afternoon, I made my way to aforementioned wedding/commitment ceremony (... the logistics of what to call the union are a bit complex, since due to the biologically rather mundane nature of the pairing, the marriage will for all intents and purposes be recognized as between one man and one woman, notwithstanding the man's intentions of completing the process of gender reassignment -- which, just in case you're wondering, is one of the interesting potential legal precedents for same-sex marriage ...).
The gathering was small -- "geeks and lesbians," as a friend of mine unkindly but uncannily described it -- , the ceremony brief, the presiding reverend a bit too casual, the DJ likely a family liability, but the wedding party looked beautiful and the families present supportive. One of the brides was tall and lean, her naturally curly hair tortured straight, with a demure smile and a soft, low voice. The last time I had seen her in person, she had gone by a different name, been considerably shorter (... heels will do that ...), and sported glasses and a beard; on the whole, she seemed more comfortable now.
The bride, without a doubt, had gone to great length to give herself the genuinely feminine appearance befitting her role. From what little I know about the matter of "passing" -- being accepted as, e.g., a member of one's chosen gender -- it is a tough and time-intensive business, involving, at a minimum, a great deal of effort (as the recent expose by Norah Vincent testifies), and, more frequently, gobs of counseling, hormone therapy, multiple surgeries, etc. etc. In the end, the cost -- financial, physical, emotional -- is exorbitantly high ... mind-blowingly, head-shakingly so ... unless, perhaps, one considers the costs and trials of "passing" for "normal" women-born-(a.k.a. non-trans)women.
I am personally not particularly frillily feminine; nevertheless, in order to "pass" as role-appropriately female, the list of steps required for me prior to an even moderately elegant event isn't exactly short. For today's wedding, for example, it included the following:
- Wash and blow-dry hair, apply hair-product(s) as needed (... in my case, a touch of styling foam and a whiff of hairspray)
- Shave appropriate bodily surfaces; moisturize (... and tend to casualties of the dull blade)
- Contemplate nails; despair; eventually file rough edges and apply a coat of clear polish (... rinse, repeat, if you foolishly fail to surrender use of your digits for the proper drying duration.)
- Yank out stray hair on face (... grumble at brow-heavy family heritage ...), put metal clamp to delicate eye area to curl lashes.
- Apply make-up (... a world allll of its own.)
- Put on undergarments that push one's natural curves in and/or up, depending on perceived necessity.
- Put on panty-hose. Put on another pair of panty-hose. Repeat this process until you discover a pair that does not rip upon contact with human skin.
- Dress. Put on high heels. Scent yourself with an optional spritz of perfume.
One wonders just how much there is actually "natural" when it comes to the "natural woman."
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Redemption
If you're curious what the Pilgrim has been up to over the past week or so, the answer is shockingly mundane: Aside from making friends with the Enlightenment and the Trinity (... 200 pages of Pannenberg's systematic theology can feel to this tiny brain like tunnelling through a mountain with a dental drill...), re-introducing her body to yoga* and occasionally weeping in public restrooms, I've been reading -- fiction.
I've loved novels since I was wee (... my father raised me on a steady diet of Greek mythology, starting around age 2 ...); to this day, in the middle of 500-pages-per-week assignments, reading fiction keeps the other part of my brain churning. This does not, of course, allow me from reading fiction through a lens other than that of my preoccupations, interests and studies. And while I have a deep-seated dislike for very nearly everything that passes as "Christian fiction," archetypal themes of spirituality, transcendence, sin and salvation pop up in even the most "secular" of books**.
So, from two recently read novels, two very different books, both highly recommendable, a couple of quotes, one dealing with a girl and her father, the other with a man and his mother, on Redemption:
"Elphaba the girl does not know how to see her father as a broken man. All she knows is that he passes his brokenness on to her. Daily his habits of loathing and self-loathing cripple her. Daily she loves him back because she knows no other way. I see myself there: the girl witness, wide-eyed as Dorothy. staring at a world too horrible to comprehend, believing -- by dint of ignorance or innocence -- that beneath this unbreakable contract of guilt and blame there is always an older contract that may bind and release in a more salutary way. A more ancient precedent of ransom, that we may not always be tormented by our shame. Neither Dorothy nor young Elphaba can speak of this, but the belief of it is in both our faces."
- Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Live and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, pp. 382f.
"It might seem foolish to you," I said to Jennifer when we were discussing the trip again last month," but it was only when she said that, it was only then I realised. What I mean is, I realised she'd never ceased to love me, not through any of it. All she'd ever wanted was for me to have a good life. And all the rest of it, all my trying to find her, trying to save the world from ruin, that wouldn't have made any difference either way. Her feelings for me, they were just there, they didn't depend on anything. I suppose that might not seem so very surprising. But it took me all that time to realise it."
- Kazuo Ishiguro, When we were Orphans, p. 328
And, for good measure, a final quote from the latter of the two -- one of which I cannot fully say whether the author sought to induce the reader's agreement or disagreement ... but you'll just have to read it and see for yourselves:
"Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by [a sense of mission]. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years of shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm."
* It should be noted that the Pilgrim isn't grace-less, per se; she just occasionally tends to fall over for no particular reason. Needless to say, poses that require daintily balancing on one toe while flinging limbs into the various directions of the compass is a deeply humbling way of getting "grounded."
** Erich Kästner, the great German author, argued that good children's books were never those explicitly written for children -- I would argue that there are by the same token good "Christian" books are never those explicitly written towards that "market" (... and I have the evil that is Christian Bookstores to back me up on this.)
I've loved novels since I was wee (... my father raised me on a steady diet of Greek mythology, starting around age 2 ...); to this day, in the middle of 500-pages-per-week assignments, reading fiction keeps the other part of my brain churning. This does not, of course, allow me from reading fiction through a lens other than that of my preoccupations, interests and studies. And while I have a deep-seated dislike for very nearly everything that passes as "Christian fiction," archetypal themes of spirituality, transcendence, sin and salvation pop up in even the most "secular" of books**.
So, from two recently read novels, two very different books, both highly recommendable, a couple of quotes, one dealing with a girl and her father, the other with a man and his mother, on Redemption:
"Elphaba the girl does not know how to see her father as a broken man. All she knows is that he passes his brokenness on to her. Daily his habits of loathing and self-loathing cripple her. Daily she loves him back because she knows no other way. I see myself there: the girl witness, wide-eyed as Dorothy. staring at a world too horrible to comprehend, believing -- by dint of ignorance or innocence -- that beneath this unbreakable contract of guilt and blame there is always an older contract that may bind and release in a more salutary way. A more ancient precedent of ransom, that we may not always be tormented by our shame. Neither Dorothy nor young Elphaba can speak of this, but the belief of it is in both our faces."
- Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Live and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, pp. 382f.
"It might seem foolish to you," I said to Jennifer when we were discussing the trip again last month," but it was only when she said that, it was only then I realised. What I mean is, I realised she'd never ceased to love me, not through any of it. All she'd ever wanted was for me to have a good life. And all the rest of it, all my trying to find her, trying to save the world from ruin, that wouldn't have made any difference either way. Her feelings for me, they were just there, they didn't depend on anything. I suppose that might not seem so very surprising. But it took me all that time to realise it."
- Kazuo Ishiguro, When we were Orphans, p. 328
And, for good measure, a final quote from the latter of the two -- one of which I cannot fully say whether the author sought to induce the reader's agreement or disagreement ... but you'll just have to read it and see for yourselves:
"Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by [a sense of mission]. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years of shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm."
* It should be noted that the Pilgrim isn't grace-less, per se; she just occasionally tends to fall over for no particular reason. Needless to say, poses that require daintily balancing on one toe while flinging limbs into the various directions of the compass is a deeply humbling way of getting "grounded."
** Erich Kästner, the great German author, argued that good children's books were never those explicitly written for children -- I would argue that there are by the same token good "Christian" books are never those explicitly written towards that "market" (... and I have the evil that is Christian Bookstores to back me up on this.)
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
The Life & The Answer
[This week, the Pilgrim will attend the wedding of a recently divorced, pre-operative transsexual and her (formerly: his) new partner whom she met through the lesbian personals. Never let it be said that the life of a seminarian isn't filled with excitement.]
In unrelated news, the recent quote was taken from John Locke's The Reasonableness of Christianity, published anonymously in 1695.
In unrelated news, the recent quote was taken from John Locke's The Reasonableness of Christianity, published anonymously in 1695.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
The Month in Movies
And now for something completely different ...
I'm not a big movie-goer -- I'm not even a big movie-watcher. Netflix gets none of my paycheck and my Blockbuster card sees about as much action as I do*. Nevertheless, for the past month or so, I've broken with my past and presumed personal nature and taken myself (... and more often than not, just myself ...) to a good half-dozen movies. I'm still trying to get over a vague sense of guilt for pursuing this new-found interest on my own rather than as part of a group, but there seems to be something inherently solitary about watching a movie: Without popcorn-throwing, MST3K-ing (of which I am the worst offender!), smooching neighbors to ground one in the darkness of the theatre, it's easier to go allow oneself to dissolve into the reality of the silver screen for a couple of hours. All pseudo-philosophical rambling aside, however, here's a quick look in no particular order at the selection:
Mrs. Henderson Presents -- I went to see this one because I will on principle see any movie starring (... or co-starring, or written by, etc. ...) Christopher Guest. The man is easily the most versatile actor currently making the medium-sized bucks -- friends of Best in Show and amps that go to 11 take heart: For Your Consideration is on its way. Guest is a supporting playing in this movie, but -- to the tremendous credit of the rest of the cast -- that's just fine: I can't actually recall when I last saw a movie with this much chemistry between the male and female leads, especially in light of the (spoiler, sorry) complete absence of romantic intimacy between them. Oh yes, and the leads are Dame Judy Dench (70-something) and Bob "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" Hoskins. The movie is worth watching for the sake of their on-screen dynamic alone, as well as for some truly memorable quotes -- "Americans: Strange people, charming manners"; "Oh, you mean the pussy!" -- and, for those who find breasts more interesting than the Pilgrim does, a fair number of naked torsos. (As an aside, however, the R-rating here is patently ridiculous.)
Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic -- I admit it: I like funny movies and my sense of humor is none too delicate. (At the risk of shocking the gentle reader, the Pilgrim laughed her way through both Team America: World Police and the South Park Movie.) This being said, unless you're a die-hard Silverman fan, this one is probably a rental. The movie is by and large one of Silverman's shows, taped before a live audience. The problem here is not so much that it's shock-humor -- although she clearly works at shocking -- but that it's 1.5 hours of pretty one-note humor. Having seen very little of her work prior to this movie, after the first 20 minutes I could anticipate the punch-line to just about every joke. There are a few entertaining tidbits, most of them actually in the first third of the movie, but overall, not worth your $12.
RENT -- Ah yes. If you're a Broadway purist, do not -- let me repeat: do not -- see this one. I say this not because I'm a Broadway purist, but because I went to see this movie with a group of folks who are, and their chagrin and displeasure quietly permeated the theatre. As for myself, RENT was one of the musicals I had never seen on-stage and accordingly I found the movie *deep breath* enjoyable (... yes, I'm culturally stunted. AND easily entertained.) Much of the original Broadway cast is performing here as well, and while there are some clear additions, plot-changes, etc., some of which are a bit on the silly side -- a certain character doing Bon Jovi impressions in the Arizona desert (or, more likely, against a Blue Screen) is admittedly snicker-inducing -- for the most part the show's great fun and even moving in parts.
Brokeback Mountain -- Probably my favorite of the bunch. The scenery is breathtaking, the acting really outstanding -- speaking as no particular Heath Ledger fan, if he isn't at least nominated for an Academy Award, I'll be sorely disappointed. The story is complex -- there's little romance about it, and the rough edges of the unfolding relationships are clearly visible: Lest the movie-watcher idealize the relationship between the two main characters, the movie doesn't skirt the pain and sense of betrayal of the wife who discovers that her husband is having a passionate affair with another man. Of all the movies, this is the one to catch in the theatre; the scenic shots and wide skies likely won't translate all that well onto the TV screen.
Munich -- For a quick summary of the events this "historical fiction" (Spielberg's words) takes on, go here. (... why yes, that's a link to a Journal of Counterterrorism & Security International article.) With the plot out of the way, let me note two things: First, this is, obviously, a movie with a point -- a point that isn't made in the most delicate way possible, as one might imagine, and if you haven't caught it by the final scene, the credits rolling across a view of New York with the World Trade Center towers front and center will make sure you do not leave the theatre without an apprecation for (spoiler, sorry) violence begetting violence. That being said, casting, acting, scene-design, etc. are excellent -- the movie is set in the late 70s in Europe, the time of my early childhood, and Spielberg captured the appearance, outfits, etc. of that era down to the style of glasses. Geoffrey Rush's character during those final scenes, for one thing, looks one heck of a lot like a certain former Austrian chancellor:
And compare with Rush's character on the right side of the image here. Linguists will also appreciate the sheer diversity of languages spoken -- and, for the most part, spoken well -- in the movie. Eric Bana's German is solid, the Italian is easily comprehensible (albeit clearly that of a non-native speaker), the French is better ... as for the modern Hebrew etc., I'll let my ANE friends decide.
And there you have it -- the month in movies.
* None.
I'm not a big movie-goer -- I'm not even a big movie-watcher. Netflix gets none of my paycheck and my Blockbuster card sees about as much action as I do*. Nevertheless, for the past month or so, I've broken with my past and presumed personal nature and taken myself (... and more often than not, just myself ...) to a good half-dozen movies. I'm still trying to get over a vague sense of guilt for pursuing this new-found interest on my own rather than as part of a group, but there seems to be something inherently solitary about watching a movie: Without popcorn-throwing, MST3K-ing (of which I am the worst offender!), smooching neighbors to ground one in the darkness of the theatre, it's easier to go allow oneself to dissolve into the reality of the silver screen for a couple of hours. All pseudo-philosophical rambling aside, however, here's a quick look in no particular order at the selection:
Mrs. Henderson Presents -- I went to see this one because I will on principle see any movie starring (... or co-starring, or written by, etc. ...) Christopher Guest. The man is easily the most versatile actor currently making the medium-sized bucks -- friends of Best in Show and amps that go to 11 take heart: For Your Consideration is on its way. Guest is a supporting playing in this movie, but -- to the tremendous credit of the rest of the cast -- that's just fine: I can't actually recall when I last saw a movie with this much chemistry between the male and female leads, especially in light of the (spoiler, sorry) complete absence of romantic intimacy between them. Oh yes, and the leads are Dame Judy Dench (70-something) and Bob "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" Hoskins. The movie is worth watching for the sake of their on-screen dynamic alone, as well as for some truly memorable quotes -- "Americans: Strange people, charming manners"; "Oh, you mean the pussy!" -- and, for those who find breasts more interesting than the Pilgrim does, a fair number of naked torsos. (As an aside, however, the R-rating here is patently ridiculous.)
Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic -- I admit it: I like funny movies and my sense of humor is none too delicate. (At the risk of shocking the gentle reader, the Pilgrim laughed her way through both Team America: World Police and the South Park Movie.) This being said, unless you're a die-hard Silverman fan, this one is probably a rental. The movie is by and large one of Silverman's shows, taped before a live audience. The problem here is not so much that it's shock-humor -- although she clearly works at shocking -- but that it's 1.5 hours of pretty one-note humor. Having seen very little of her work prior to this movie, after the first 20 minutes I could anticipate the punch-line to just about every joke. There are a few entertaining tidbits, most of them actually in the first third of the movie, but overall, not worth your $12.
RENT -- Ah yes. If you're a Broadway purist, do not -- let me repeat: do not -- see this one. I say this not because I'm a Broadway purist, but because I went to see this movie with a group of folks who are, and their chagrin and displeasure quietly permeated the theatre. As for myself, RENT was one of the musicals I had never seen on-stage and accordingly I found the movie *deep breath* enjoyable (... yes, I'm culturally stunted. AND easily entertained.) Much of the original Broadway cast is performing here as well, and while there are some clear additions, plot-changes, etc., some of which are a bit on the silly side -- a certain character doing Bon Jovi impressions in the Arizona desert (or, more likely, against a Blue Screen) is admittedly snicker-inducing -- for the most part the show's great fun and even moving in parts.
Brokeback Mountain -- Probably my favorite of the bunch. The scenery is breathtaking, the acting really outstanding -- speaking as no particular Heath Ledger fan, if he isn't at least nominated for an Academy Award, I'll be sorely disappointed. The story is complex -- there's little romance about it, and the rough edges of the unfolding relationships are clearly visible: Lest the movie-watcher idealize the relationship between the two main characters, the movie doesn't skirt the pain and sense of betrayal of the wife who discovers that her husband is having a passionate affair with another man. Of all the movies, this is the one to catch in the theatre; the scenic shots and wide skies likely won't translate all that well onto the TV screen.
Munich -- For a quick summary of the events this "historical fiction" (Spielberg's words) takes on, go here. (... why yes, that's a link to a Journal of Counterterrorism & Security International article.) With the plot out of the way, let me note two things: First, this is, obviously, a movie with a point -- a point that isn't made in the most delicate way possible, as one might imagine, and if you haven't caught it by the final scene, the credits rolling across a view of New York with the World Trade Center towers front and center will make sure you do not leave the theatre without an apprecation for (spoiler, sorry) violence begetting violence. That being said, casting, acting, scene-design, etc. are excellent -- the movie is set in the late 70s in Europe, the time of my early childhood, and Spielberg captured the appearance, outfits, etc. of that era down to the style of glasses. Geoffrey Rush's character during those final scenes, for one thing, looks one heck of a lot like a certain former Austrian chancellor:
And compare with Rush's character on the right side of the image here. Linguists will also appreciate the sheer diversity of languages spoken -- and, for the most part, spoken well -- in the movie. Eric Bana's German is solid, the Italian is easily comprehensible (albeit clearly that of a non-native speaker), the French is better ... as for the modern Hebrew etc., I'll let my ANE friends decide. And there you have it -- the month in movies.
* None.
Friday, January 13, 2006
Some Thoughts on Failure
[The Pilgrim will bake cookies for the first person to correctly and without the aid of Google et al identify the author of the following quote: "The difference between the law of works, and the law of faith, is only this; that the law of works makes no allowance for failing on any occasion."]
Someone -- the name and details escape me, unfortunately -- recently suggested within ear-shot of me that the word "failure" for contemporary Westerners carries the kinds of emotional connotations that in past generations the word "sin" used to have. Whether or not he's correct -- and I suspect he is -- it's hard to argue that there's any force behind "sin:" There's a line of best-sellers working on rehabilitating the seven deadly sins (... the eight, by the way, used to be "melancholy"depression -- not pizza! ...), there are ads for resorts where you can in one fell swoop (and with one handy payment) accomplish all seven (... personally, on a bad night, I manage this all by myself in the privacy of my bedroom ...), etc.
In addition, of course, for the terminology of sin to be even marginally meaningful, one's view of the world and assorted places has to be one that accomodates concepts of "God," "offense," "retribution" etc.: At a recent dinner, the subject of Jack Chick tracts came up -- one of horror and disdain for the handful of enlightened Christians around the table. A bright and charming young gentleman, on the other hand, remarked that he found these, including their tendency to threaten sinners of all ages and transgressions with hellfire, funny rather than offensive -- why ought one to be bothered by a comic telling a trick-or-treat-er that she was heading to hell, if one didn't believe in hell in the first place?
Failure, on the other hand ... You may no longer be troubled by having failed a class, but rare indeed is the person who can contemplate being told by a parent, a spouse or employer that he's a failure or who can stomach the realization of having failed another person dear to her without ... well ... feeling like a failure. And failure is, after all, not an option (... more often than not, it's a foregone conclusion.)
Over the past couple of months, I've been reading a number of books on failure. That's not to say that they've got the very word printed on their title pages, less still that they, as a colleague of mine inquired, either seek to "advocate" or "remedy" the condition. These are novels, like Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day and 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature winner J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace: Beautifully written, sparse and eloquent portraits of middleaged men -- why is it that men seem to be considered more susceptible to failure when women, in my experience, have so much more range and opportunity to fail? -- for whom the realization of powerlessness, waste and personal weakness begin to bubble to the surface of their carefully constructed identities.
One of the reasons that failure is a subject close to my heart is the fact that I'm personally rather well acquainted with it. (If you think it odd for a 20-something girl to hold forth on failure, consider, for example, that my annual income is barely a fraction of that of my classmates -- a fact I regularly recall when handing over 50% of my paycheck to the friendly folks at the housing office -- and this after having been told on the first freshman day of Econ 101 that all of us would be wealthy unless we tried very hard not to be. By the same token, let us not get onto the subject of interpersonal relationships, or, for that matter, the Pilgrim's parents' assessment of their wayward daughter's place in life.)
Furthermore, I seem to be far from alone in this intimacy with failure*: I'm well acquainted with a number of wonderful, brilliant men and women at all stages of life and from all manner of career paths, who struggle with being perceived or perceiving themselves as failures, notwithstanding the fact that they are accomplished teachers, wise counselors, caring pastors, gifted writers, loving parents, devoted spouses -- it is enough to make the Pilgrim want to punch through a wall in frustration! And while this may seem odd, consider the many opportunities for failure that present themselves in American, not to mention in evangelical Christian society:
One can fail by not marrying, by failing to stay married as well as by staying married to the "wrong person." Failure may entail not getting a job, getting a "sub-standard" job, or, paradoxically and especially for women, getting a job. Being sexually unattractive may amount to failure -- but so can sexual attractiveness (... references available upon request for the penalties and occasional brutalities imposed for either.) On an even more personal note, graduate students' need to balance class-work, dissertation, writing for publication, teaching, and various extracurriculars (family, etc.) strikes me as a recipe for failure, or at least serious short-changing of certain areas.
Many times over the past couple of years, I've felt impelled to write a kind of "theology of failure". The trouble with this venture is the difficulty of doing so without trivializing or etherealizing a serious and almost universally painful subject. On the one hand, one could argue that the feeling of failure arises from holding oneself -- or being held by others -- to a set of wrong and/or unrealistic standards and that the solution lies in adjusting one's expectations of oneself and emancipating onself from others' demands (... in Christian terms, this may be presented in terms of "appealing to the right audience" (a.k.a. God).
This response, however, seems to side-step the issue: As life increases in complexity, the opportunity cost for each choice rises astronomically -- to do X means being unable to do Y, with Y rapidly approaching and even exceeding X in terms of benefit and desirability. More choice thus implies more potential for choosing wrongly, more potential for failure. As the old German adage puts it --"Wer die Wahl hat, hat die Qual." (He who has a choice to make, has suffering [in making the choice.]) Yet, as Hegel's progeny have pointed out, life cannot be lived in retrospective nor in theory -- we do not follow the rabbit trails of our choices to the end in any prescient intellectual sense before settling on the most favorable one, but rather continue to choose and follow, choose and follow ... and where choice is likely to lead to failure in one sense or another, failing to choose guarantees failure.
The best that can then perhaps be said about failure is that it is part and parcel of life, perhaps even of life lived well, since living for the express purpose of avoiding failure is surely the most depressing of all options. One might even take a page from Luther and "fail boldly" -- in my view a more appealing and even practical option than mindgaming oneself along the lines of "what would you do if you knew you could not fail?"
All this being said -- I'll be terminally surprised if anyone bothered to read this long, ambling, and ultimately fairly pointless entry. Suffice to say that in the midst of half-completed, not-quite-there posts, the Pilgrim had to put something to html, if for no better reason than to get over the evils of blogger's block.
* The Pilgrim would like to note that by this she's not referring to any of her exes.
Someone -- the name and details escape me, unfortunately -- recently suggested within ear-shot of me that the word "failure" for contemporary Westerners carries the kinds of emotional connotations that in past generations the word "sin" used to have. Whether or not he's correct -- and I suspect he is -- it's hard to argue that there's any force behind "sin:" There's a line of best-sellers working on rehabilitating the seven deadly sins (... the eight, by the way, used to be "melancholy"depression -- not pizza! ...), there are ads for resorts where you can in one fell swoop (and with one handy payment) accomplish all seven (... personally, on a bad night, I manage this all by myself in the privacy of my bedroom ...), etc.
In addition, of course, for the terminology of sin to be even marginally meaningful, one's view of the world and assorted places has to be one that accomodates concepts of "God," "offense," "retribution" etc.: At a recent dinner, the subject of Jack Chick tracts came up -- one of horror and disdain for the handful of enlightened Christians around the table. A bright and charming young gentleman, on the other hand, remarked that he found these, including their tendency to threaten sinners of all ages and transgressions with hellfire, funny rather than offensive -- why ought one to be bothered by a comic telling a trick-or-treat-er that she was heading to hell, if one didn't believe in hell in the first place?
Failure, on the other hand ... You may no longer be troubled by having failed a class, but rare indeed is the person who can contemplate being told by a parent, a spouse or employer that he's a failure or who can stomach the realization of having failed another person dear to her without ... well ... feeling like a failure. And failure is, after all, not an option (... more often than not, it's a foregone conclusion.)
Over the past couple of months, I've been reading a number of books on failure. That's not to say that they've got the very word printed on their title pages, less still that they, as a colleague of mine inquired, either seek to "advocate" or "remedy" the condition. These are novels, like Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day and 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature winner J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace: Beautifully written, sparse and eloquent portraits of middleaged men -- why is it that men seem to be considered more susceptible to failure when women, in my experience, have so much more range and opportunity to fail? -- for whom the realization of powerlessness, waste and personal weakness begin to bubble to the surface of their carefully constructed identities.
One of the reasons that failure is a subject close to my heart is the fact that I'm personally rather well acquainted with it. (If you think it odd for a 20-something girl to hold forth on failure, consider, for example, that my annual income is barely a fraction of that of my classmates -- a fact I regularly recall when handing over 50% of my paycheck to the friendly folks at the housing office -- and this after having been told on the first freshman day of Econ 101 that all of us would be wealthy unless we tried very hard not to be. By the same token, let us not get onto the subject of interpersonal relationships, or, for that matter, the Pilgrim's parents' assessment of their wayward daughter's place in life.)
Furthermore, I seem to be far from alone in this intimacy with failure*: I'm well acquainted with a number of wonderful, brilliant men and women at all stages of life and from all manner of career paths, who struggle with being perceived or perceiving themselves as failures, notwithstanding the fact that they are accomplished teachers, wise counselors, caring pastors, gifted writers, loving parents, devoted spouses -- it is enough to make the Pilgrim want to punch through a wall in frustration! And while this may seem odd, consider the many opportunities for failure that present themselves in American, not to mention in evangelical Christian society:
One can fail by not marrying, by failing to stay married as well as by staying married to the "wrong person." Failure may entail not getting a job, getting a "sub-standard" job, or, paradoxically and especially for women, getting a job. Being sexually unattractive may amount to failure -- but so can sexual attractiveness (... references available upon request for the penalties and occasional brutalities imposed for either.) On an even more personal note, graduate students' need to balance class-work, dissertation, writing for publication, teaching, and various extracurriculars (family, etc.) strikes me as a recipe for failure, or at least serious short-changing of certain areas.
Many times over the past couple of years, I've felt impelled to write a kind of "theology of failure". The trouble with this venture is the difficulty of doing so without trivializing or etherealizing a serious and almost universally painful subject. On the one hand, one could argue that the feeling of failure arises from holding oneself -- or being held by others -- to a set of wrong and/or unrealistic standards and that the solution lies in adjusting one's expectations of oneself and emancipating onself from others' demands (... in Christian terms, this may be presented in terms of "appealing to the right audience" (a.k.a. God).
This response, however, seems to side-step the issue: As life increases in complexity, the opportunity cost for each choice rises astronomically -- to do X means being unable to do Y, with Y rapidly approaching and even exceeding X in terms of benefit and desirability. More choice thus implies more potential for choosing wrongly, more potential for failure. As the old German adage puts it --"Wer die Wahl hat, hat die Qual." (He who has a choice to make, has suffering [in making the choice.]) Yet, as Hegel's progeny have pointed out, life cannot be lived in retrospective nor in theory -- we do not follow the rabbit trails of our choices to the end in any prescient intellectual sense before settling on the most favorable one, but rather continue to choose and follow, choose and follow ... and where choice is likely to lead to failure in one sense or another, failing to choose guarantees failure.
The best that can then perhaps be said about failure is that it is part and parcel of life, perhaps even of life lived well, since living for the express purpose of avoiding failure is surely the most depressing of all options. One might even take a page from Luther and "fail boldly" -- in my view a more appealing and even practical option than mindgaming oneself along the lines of "what would you do if you knew you could not fail?"
All this being said -- I'll be terminally surprised if anyone bothered to read this long, ambling, and ultimately fairly pointless entry. Suffice to say that in the midst of half-completed, not-quite-there posts, the Pilgrim had to put something to html, if for no better reason than to get over the evils of blogger's block.
* The Pilgrim would like to note that by this she's not referring to any of her exes.
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Identity
"Roman thought which is fundamentally organizational and social, concerns itself not with ontology, with the being of man, but with his relationship with others, with his ability to form associations, to enter into contracts, to set up collegia, to organize human life in a state. Thus personhood, once again, does not have any ontological content. It is an adjunct to concrete ontological being, something which permits -- without this disturbing the Roman mentality in the least -- the same man to enact more than one prosopa, to play many different roles. . . . . This identity -- that vital component of the concept of man, that whidch makes one man differ from another, which makes him he who is -- is guaranteed and provided by the state or by some organized whole. Even when the authority of the state is called into question and man rebels against it, even then, if he succeeds in escaping punishment for this hubris of his, he will look at some legal and political power, to some concept of the state, to give him his new identity, a confirmation of self-hood."I enjoy Zizioulas' writings, even though -- unlike some of my colleagues -- I do not view Eastern Orthodox theology and ecclesiology as a panacea for all that's wrong with the Church. (I'm far more interested in rehabilitating Augustine -- the poor chap has taken a reputation as the root of all evil in Western Christendom.)
- John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion
That being said, however, I think Zizioulas' reflections on the ancient Roman conception of what makes a person, what shapes identity and gives her value, are oddly pertinent for contemporary Western views. Today's man or woman wears a number of different prosopa, plays a number of different roles: She is a consumer (... as a friend of mine during my college days proudly proclaimed from his web-page ...), a voter, an American, a stake-holder, a customer, an employee, a student, a Republican, a professor, a Nike-wearer, a tax-payer, an attender, a "current resident," a driver (... remember the "driveres wanted" commercials? ...), a Protestant, a home-owner, etc. etc.
Unlike in the Roman empire, today's primary identity assignation comes from an "empire" only loosely connected to the officially recognized government, namely from the service and consumer industries. Those were, of course, formative in the Roman era as well, just like state-imposed identities remain significant in contemporary society, but it seems to me that conspicuous consumption is the lense through which all identities -- political, religions, familial, etc. -- are filtered: One knows what it means to have a political or religious identity by analogy to one's identity as a consumer. Long before the Jr. High students I know think of themselves as politically or religiously identified, they know themselves to be GAP-wearers, Death Cab for Cutie-listeners, Netflix-customers, etc. and their other, adult identities will be shaped by these oddly primal understandings of themselves.
As Zizioulas writes, even in the midst of human rebellion against such externally imposed identities, a person will look towards some other identity to be provided for him -- ideally one that allows him the reassuring sense of having independently chosen. No wonder there's an entire stereo-typed generation out there trying to "find themselves"!
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Exegesis drives Seminarian to Drink
Since these are very nearly in bad taste, I should note how the following pictures came about:
At some point during the past quarter, I had my assorted Hebrew grading junk spread out on the beautiful wooden living room table of a couple of my friends who happen to have a -- post-modernly -- well-stocked collection of spirits. I was probably in the process of remarking on a particularly tough-to-translate verb-form or a mysterious correlation between the NIV translation of a passage and a student's homework assignment (... the seminary equivalent of the LXX's inspiration, no doubt ...). Somehow, apparently, it seemed like a good idea to illustrate the severity of exegetical distress by taking pictures of yours truly with a (capped! note the cap!) bottle of Bacardi:
Ahem. And this is why blogs can be damaging to your academic and professional well-being.
At some point during the past quarter, I had my assorted Hebrew grading junk spread out on the beautiful wooden living room table of a couple of my friends who happen to have a -- post-modernly -- well-stocked collection of spirits. I was probably in the process of remarking on a particularly tough-to-translate verb-form or a mysterious correlation between the NIV translation of a passage and a student's homework assignment (... the seminary equivalent of the LXX's inspiration, no doubt ...). Somehow, apparently, it seemed like a good idea to illustrate the severity of exegetical distress by taking pictures of yours truly with a (capped! note the cap!) bottle of Bacardi:
Ahem. And this is why blogs can be damaging to your academic and professional well-being.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
The Light on the Far Side of the Blizzard
It's been raining since New Year's Eve. The downpour interrupted itself barely long enough to allow for a bright, glorious first morning of 2006. The Pilgrim doesn't mind the weather; it seems like a fitting final cleansing after a sordid, grimy year.
In these parts of the country, winter isn't the dead season it tends to be elsewhere. In the desert climes of Southern California, it's really summer that turns the landscape white -- with parched grasslands, burning-hot sands and fire-hazard woods as far as the eye can see or at least as far as human hydration technology won't reach. Winter, by contrast, is lush and verdant, and the rains, the only hint of "real weather" much of So. Cal ever gets, are the source of the land's renewal. In the mornings, the mists hang deep in the foothills and in the evenings the lights inside the apartment windows glow brighter than at other times. The Pilgrim keeps a watchful eye out toward the higher peaks to see whether and when there'll be a chance to ski.
The last couple of days have been a bit of forced downtime for me. Much as I hate to admit it -- and despite the reservations with which I make this public statement, knowing full well that some of my dearest friends are probably at this very moment devising Blogspot accounts to remind me that they have indeed "told me so" a long time ago -- the "working vacation" of the past couple of weeks has taken its toll.
In addition to doing a goodly chunk of grading, I've roped myself into an interesting translation project -- the German works of a recently deceased Bonhoeffer scholar, due to be published in the U.S. this fall. The original translation was done a while ago, with serviceable but not exactly publishable results. The author's wife, a highly skilled translator herself, has been correcting aforementioned translation, but given the considerable amount of work to be done and the at times technical -- legal -- subjectmatter, a couple of days prior to "break," the sponsoring faculty member/resident ethicist offered me a part in the "patch up" team.
There's likely no money to speak of in the project; I have no illusions about the wages paid to translators of great but nevertheless passably obscure theological works, and in this case the money will go, as rightly it should, primarily to the author's widow and the original translator -- neither of whom I'd begrudge a penny. On the other hand, of course, the bitch-goddess -- with apologies to Ms. James and Lawrence who have unfortunately begun their steady creep into my casual vocabulary -- of partial publication credit is wagging her seductive tail: Having my name even in tiny print on the fourth or fifth page of a published monograph would make a desirable addition to my under-nourished CV.
Balancing being fiscally responsible -- otherwise known as "providing myself with sufficient income to support an otherwise modest life-style with a pesky habit of graduate education"-- with keeping up ye olde GPA, whipping a couple of papers (one in need of editing, one as of yet non-existent) into shape for presentation before so-called "learned societies" in the spring, doing the things I genuinely enjoy (teaching, research) and, last but not least, maintaining a modicum of physical, emotional and spiritual health -- work enough for two Pilgrims, in my humble opinion, and I'm not even a Ph.D. student (yet?).
In the midst of this jumble lies my one, limited, humble, personal New Year's resolution: To practise being kinder to myself -- to treat the Pilgrim like a friend or even an affable stranger, rather than the cranky, co-dependent aunt one basically dislikes but to whom one feels obligated because she put one through college. And the year that very nearly began with Annie Dillard ends with her:
"You quit your house and country, quit your ship, and quit your companions in the tent, saying, "I am just going outside and may be some time." The light on the far side of the blizzard lures you. You walk, and one day you enter the spread heart of silence, where lands dissolve and seas become vapor and ices sublime under unknown stars. This is the end of the Via Negativa, the lightless edge where the slopes of knowledge dwindle, and love for its own sake, lacking an object, begins."
- An Expedition to the Pole
In these parts of the country, winter isn't the dead season it tends to be elsewhere. In the desert climes of Southern California, it's really summer that turns the landscape white -- with parched grasslands, burning-hot sands and fire-hazard woods as far as the eye can see or at least as far as human hydration technology won't reach. Winter, by contrast, is lush and verdant, and the rains, the only hint of "real weather" much of So. Cal ever gets, are the source of the land's renewal. In the mornings, the mists hang deep in the foothills and in the evenings the lights inside the apartment windows glow brighter than at other times. The Pilgrim keeps a watchful eye out toward the higher peaks to see whether and when there'll be a chance to ski.
The last couple of days have been a bit of forced downtime for me. Much as I hate to admit it -- and despite the reservations with which I make this public statement, knowing full well that some of my dearest friends are probably at this very moment devising Blogspot accounts to remind me that they have indeed "told me so" a long time ago -- the "working vacation" of the past couple of weeks has taken its toll.
In addition to doing a goodly chunk of grading, I've roped myself into an interesting translation project -- the German works of a recently deceased Bonhoeffer scholar, due to be published in the U.S. this fall. The original translation was done a while ago, with serviceable but not exactly publishable results. The author's wife, a highly skilled translator herself, has been correcting aforementioned translation, but given the considerable amount of work to be done and the at times technical -- legal -- subjectmatter, a couple of days prior to "break," the sponsoring faculty member/resident ethicist offered me a part in the "patch up" team.
There's likely no money to speak of in the project; I have no illusions about the wages paid to translators of great but nevertheless passably obscure theological works, and in this case the money will go, as rightly it should, primarily to the author's widow and the original translator -- neither of whom I'd begrudge a penny. On the other hand, of course, the bitch-goddess -- with apologies to Ms. James and Lawrence who have unfortunately begun their steady creep into my casual vocabulary -- of partial publication credit is wagging her seductive tail: Having my name even in tiny print on the fourth or fifth page of a published monograph would make a desirable addition to my under-nourished CV.
Balancing being fiscally responsible -- otherwise known as "providing myself with sufficient income to support an otherwise modest life-style with a pesky habit of graduate education"-- with keeping up ye olde GPA, whipping a couple of papers (one in need of editing, one as of yet non-existent) into shape for presentation before so-called "learned societies" in the spring, doing the things I genuinely enjoy (teaching, research) and, last but not least, maintaining a modicum of physical, emotional and spiritual health -- work enough for two Pilgrims, in my humble opinion, and I'm not even a Ph.D. student (yet?).
In the midst of this jumble lies my one, limited, humble, personal New Year's resolution: To practise being kinder to myself -- to treat the Pilgrim like a friend or even an affable stranger, rather than the cranky, co-dependent aunt one basically dislikes but to whom one feels obligated because she put one through college. And the year that very nearly began with Annie Dillard ends with her:
"You quit your house and country, quit your ship, and quit your companions in the tent, saying, "I am just going outside and may be some time." The light on the far side of the blizzard lures you. You walk, and one day you enter the spread heart of silence, where lands dissolve and seas become vapor and ices sublime under unknown stars. This is the end of the Via Negativa, the lightless edge where the slopes of knowledge dwindle, and love for its own sake, lacking an object, begins."
- An Expedition to the Pole
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