partsofspeaking

N.T. Wright has a beautiful passage on p. 143 of Paul ( 2005, Fortress Press ). "And when the one who was now in heaven finally appeared, revealing his royal presence, this was not to be thought of in terms of his making a long journey from a far country. It would be more like drawing back a previously unnoticed curtain to reveal whathad been there all along." We do not need to fear Jesus' absence or abandonment. He said "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age." An eschatology which teaches Him not as King over this world now diminishes His authority. We are living in fear right now. Whether we want to admit it personally, we are surrounded by it from the media and some government authorities and we can't help but be affected by it. It's a fight, spiritually, psychologically, and physically, not to succumb to this fear which would isolate us. Too many of us have given in, not even knowing that we have. Last night my college had its ...

Six years ago today, about noon, my mother passed away at 86 from uterine cancer. She had been in hospice for about six weeks. The day is as vivid now as then, perhaps more so since I was in a bit of a fog then. Would my mother be proud of me since then? Well, I'm in my mid-60s, so it's not something I have to ponder too much. She and I were/are quite different, almost as opposite as can be, although I sometimes feel the tug of her nature in me, in good ways and bad. If she hadn't died then, I imagine she might have passed away sometime later, from heart disease; she had suffered a heart attack, but to show you the kind of stock she came from, she drove herself to the hospital three days later and didn't even know she'd had one until they told her. She just didn't feel too well. This was at 80.  I miss her. The death of one's mother, at any age, is not something that can be fully described, understood, or healed from.

Devotional for the time of COVID 2 Timothy 1:6-7 should be our go-to Biblical precept at this time. Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. In speaking to Timothy, his mentee in the faith, Paul wants to encourage Timothy not to let his in-born and culturally nurtured sense of inadequacy rule him. He wants him to not let older people’s opinions of him diminish his sense of mission and purpose, of giftedness and calling. He wants Timothy to know that he is prayed for. He reminds him of the background of sincere, genuine faith that Timothy saw in his mother and grandmother, not because Timothy inherited it but because he was allowed to see it on a daily basis and it formed a foundation for him. He reminds him that elders and Paul himself laid hands on Timothy to initiate his ministry, a sign that the church saw his giftedness and...

Strange story, but one with a point. When I was a little girl, I wanted to help my sweet mother cook. One day she said I could help with a lemon meringue pie, which she made from scratch. I would have to use the old mixer, which I guess hadn’t been used in a while. I detached the mixer head from its base. What happened next is a little bizarre. An army of cockroaches emerged from the base. I have never seen so many cockroaches at one time since, and I live in the South. They just kept coming. We sprayed, we smashed—well, I did. This put a major glitch in making the pie.   Finally the last one came out. All right, I know that’s gross, so I’ll stop. They were hiding and festering and breeding in that mixer base for, who knows how long? We had no idea. I shudder to think about it, and it’s been probably 55 years. I’ve thought about that story a lot lately because of the chaos we seem to be living in right now. I feel as if there is a thin veneer of civilization and laws ...

Interesting article that confirms what I already suspected. Loneliness feeds on itself, and I think aloneness does. Sometimes we just have to choose connection even when loneliness, like a whole pint of rocky road ice cream, feels better.

This line comes from one of my favorite (but despairing and chilling) Emily Dickinson poems, one I even put in a novel. After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’ And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’? The Feet, mechanical, go round – A Wooden way Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone – This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go – I attended a lecture years ago on explicating Emily’s poem, and this was how the professor interpreted the third line. “Was it He, that bore” – Jesus was a bore who we keep hearing about as bearing our pain and suffering but we still feel pain and suffer, no less, so why do we keep talking about this boring person and this boring, ineffectual, inapplicable message.   (Some of this I add...

Several years ago when the book The Shack was all the rage, I wrote a couple of pretty, well, scathing and maybe nasty critiques of it. I don’t critique anything I haven’t seen or read (except porn or really grotesque horror), so I had read it. I understood its attraction and I can’t say I wasn’t touched by it. It had some good parts. The author had suffered abuse in missionary kids school, something that has come to light for many others over the last twenty years. This was his way of working through that pain. But it also was highly problematic, theologically. One, the embodiment of God. Only Jesus embodied God in the incarnation.   Second, the racism of the mammy “God the Father.” That one still makes me shake my head. Third, “Sophia” as a fourth member of the Trinity. Wisdom in the Old Testament is a metaphor or stand-in for Jesus, the Word. Fourth, the subjectivity that drove the theology, and the cherry-picking of Scripture. Yet many people said “I really understood...

I’m a big fan (and member) or TheDispatch.com, and get their newsletters. Jonah Goldberg recently wrote: I have a much less eggheady point to make about words and things than what my friend told me: They’re just different . I am a big believer in the power of words. Words convey ideas, and ideas shape how we see the world. (Physical things contain ideas too, but I’ll get to that.) But words don’t do the same things as things. Words don’t dig holes, flush toilets, start fires, move automobiles, etc. Things, admittedly with the effort of people, do that stuff. We have a word for when words replace the need for shovels, toilets, matches, or cars: Magic. In fiction, when people say magic words or phrases— abracadabra, shazam, Anáil nathrach, alakazam, hocus pocus , Ala Peanut Butter Sandwiches , Walla Walla Washington, Sim Sala Bim! —cool stuff happens. (In recent years, as we’ve become more internally directed, you’ll notice that magic phrases are used less and less in pop ...

I am reading The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr. Of course, I have not read her famous and awarded memoirs myself. I’m kind of a no-more-book-buying kick, since I have so many and most I have not read. She knows her memoirs. Although I am reading it for inspiration and guidance to pen my own memoir, which will be arrogantly title A Life Like No Other , or less so, Private Geography , I have read relatively few of them and I am learning about the genre. Memoir is a literary “memory.” Memory fascinates me, as I study learning and learning is mostly about memory. One thing we do know: Memory doesn’t exist without rehearsal. And Memory is not mimetic. We are not videocameras. Rehearsal of our own, saying and reprocessing the new information or experience soon after it happens. Rehearsal over time. Something tied to event, or someone, sends us back on those tracks. Memory v. imagination. Reflecting on the memory, rehearsing the incident and what we remember in a new cont...

This morning one of our associate pastors spoke to a small group of us gathered for the 8:30 service. We were all masked, as the mayor of the county where my church is located mandated.   He was not, since preaching with a mask would be quite confining. I wondered how we looked. One cannot really judge much of the audience’s reactions if everyone’s face is over half-covered.  

As I have written earlier last week, I am deeply involved in reading N.T. Wright’s work on the early church and Paul. It is challenging and radical, in a way; it is grounded in history and the Hebrew Bible in another. I confess to getting annoyed by his statements such as “In Ephesians 1, if Paul did write it…” Well, sorry. Why put it in a book about Paul’s theology if you don’t think it’s Paul’s? I think he does this for those “scholars” of the New Testament who question the authorship of certain books we conservatives take for granted (and the church did for 1900) years. I think he personally does believe Paul wrote what he is recorded as writing. One thing he has caused me to reflect on is the different between the gospel and the effects of the gospel. We in the contemporary, rather shallow 2020 church take the gospel to be our personal salvation. That is the effect of the gospel, not the gospel itself. When we take I Corinthians 15:1-8 as the entirety of the gospel, I think w...

As I’ve heard a million times, the preacher asked, “If you died today and God met you and said ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?’ what would you say?” I wouldn’t say anything because this scenario is nonsense. This makes it sound like job interview. We are fully known. There will be no reason for this question.

Interesting article from Bloomberg News: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-13/working-from-home-getting-your-dog-ready-for-your-office-return I have an apartment for work near my campus. I'm gone from three to five days at a time. When I come back, Nala is constantly by my side, following me from room to room. She doesn't understand how long I'm gone; just that I am. In fact, when I'm gone a couple of hours, she does the same. She's not my best friend, but she's my best companion.

We have a funny story in our family about one of my son’s friends when they were five or six. I was teaching the Sunday School class at a small church, and I asked a question. I don’t remember the question, but the little boy, who was a junior Viking, gave an answer. I said, “Well, no” (something I wouldn’t do now; it’s a trap, and the children figure that out quickly). His response. “Oh, damn.” I tried not to laugh. The other teacher and I looked at each other. I had to tell the child’s mother, and she cried. (I wouldn’t have. Kids hear stuff and experiment with new words, even if it is embarrassing.) She said he’d been playing with some older neighborhood kids. That’s a Sunday School answer we didn’t expect. Anyone who has worked in Sunday School or VBS or AWANA knows the drill—“What’s furry and small and has a big tale?” The children have learned that Jesus is the answer to Sunday School questions, so even if logic tells them “a squirrel,” the teach...

It seems like the generation before us is dying. This week, John Lewis of the Civil Rights Movement, and J.I. Packer, went to eternity. I'll write about Lewis elsewhere. But I'd like to quote this article , a book review of Alistair McGrath's biography of Packer from the late '90s. (I've read McGrath's biography of Calvin, so I'm sure this one is excellent). In explaining Packer's frustration with the pietism of the holiness teaching in the Keswick movement in England (a movement that deeply affects our own evangelical teaching on the Christian life): *That's when, by "a happy accident," he found the Puritans. Gaining a reputation for bookishness in CU circles, Packer had been asked to oversee the library of the OICCU shortly after his conversion. "Just out of nosiness" ("I'm a nosy person"), he started sniffing through the books. He found an edition of John Owen's On the Mortification o...

Just to remind those who come to this blog: I have lots of books: www.exploringpublicspeaking.com (a worldwide "bestseller" Open Educational Resource text for college public speaking Traveling Through, Cross Road, and Legacy (trilogy, faith-based fiction) The Unexpected Christmas Visitors (novel) Bringing Back Abundance (novel) Long Lost Family and Long Lost Promise (mysteries) Leading in a Strange Land (Bible Study) The Gospel According to Lazarus and The Gospel According to the Samaritan Woman

I frequently show Brene Brown’s short cartoon video on empathy. My students like it. It’s clever and relatable. I finally broke down and bought one of her books: Daring Leadership. It’s a more recent one so I guess I skipped several earlier ones. The book fascinates and frustrates me. Her connectedness, honesty, and transparency—I guess what she would call vulnerability—comes through in the books. There is a lot of wisdom there about relationships and authenticity and other topics. It has challenged me to deal with fears and “armors.” I want to keep reading, but in short bites. I’m not sure what would happen to my brain if I tried to read a few chapters at once. On the other hand,  I have questions.  She keeps talking about her research. Is this published anywhere? What is the methodology? What does she actually research (I think it’s organizational leadership, which is what my Ed.D. is in) but it seems more like humanistic psychology. And she owns a company, ca...

Let me recommend The Dispatch, a relatively recently-begun news service started by Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes, formerly of other conservative news magazines ( National Review and The Weekly Standard ). David French is highly involved, and he speaks for the Christian conservatives. They are Trump skeptical (fine with me) and highly entertaining. What I like is their morning newsletter, which I find very helpful in getting the facts as well as an analysis from an intellectually respectable conservative viewpoint. Jonah could cuss less, but he knows that, and I need to write David French about how much I appreciate him. It’s about $100 a year.   I am a member.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/desean-jacksons-blind-spot-and-mine/614095/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

This song is quite inspiring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIahc83Kvp4 I thought this morning of the connection between an action at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and at the end of the world. I do not think the connection is imaginary. Luke 4:14-21. 14  Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15  He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. 16  He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17  and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: 18  “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,      because he has anointed me      to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners      and recovery of sight for the b...

A friend and I were planning a trip to Paducah to see the National Quilt Museum (now it's canceled due to an illness in her in-law's family). So before the cancellation, I thought I would look at the status of COVID there. I found this at https://www.14news.com/2020/07/17/western-ky-records-alarming-spike-covid-cases/ The Green River Health Department reported another double-digit spike in coronavirus cases on Thursday. Exactly 29 new cases were confirmed - 12 in Ohio County, eight in Daviess County, three in McLean County, two in both Henderson and Webster Counties, and one case in both Hancock and Union Counties. This is a spike?  If we had 29 more traffic deaths in a 7-county area, would we call it a spike? And these are cases, not deaths.  Based on the national fatality rate of about four percent of those who test positive, that might be one death.  Of course, it's 300 miles away, people I don't know, and not my death. COVID is bad and I'm not interest...

On Twitter I got sent, and I foolishly went, to a review of Mary Trump's "biography" of Donald Trump, Too Much and Never Enough. (A title that could probably be used for many, many people). The reviewer started with this: However, because he might yet destroy our republic and is already the most improbable and spectacular world-historical monster since the chancellor of the German Reich killed himself in 1945, filling in the details remains important. And Mary Trump ’s “ Too Much and Never Enough : How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” is the converse of the standard Trump account — not shocking but definitely surprising. Um, what about Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Stalin.... and a few others? He will not destroy our republic. We will if we don't wise up. Let's stop blaming someone else for our own sins. Talk about "too much." Now, you won't find anything positive written by me about Donald Trump. He's appalling. But here we are ...

Like fish in water, we don't see it. Getting people to see our hyper-individualism is so hard. Once seen, what do we do about it? This is not to extol collectivistic cultures; they have their own set of challenges (euphemistically speaking). It is to say we do not realize the toxicity in our own over-self-absorbed way of thinking and being. We need only look at the Bible, First and Second Covenants, to know we do little on our own. We are even expected to repent on corporately as well as individually. Example, Daniel's prayer in chapter 9: he prays "we" and despite being a blameless man to those around him, includes himself in their sin that led to the exile. We moderns do not want to take responsibility for others' sin, understandably. But the sense of community and identity with one's people was so strong in the past that corporate repentance was not questioned.

This "title" apparently means middle-class, middle-aged white women who demand. Period. They seem to have a certain kind of haircut (rather unattractive). Demanding is never good. Getting good service when it's been paid for, however, is not immoral. I am a white, almost senior, middle-class woman who expects service but also pays well for it. The people who have dubbed such women Karens are the same who would decry any other kind of stereotype. These same people stereotype police. It works both ways--well, apparently not. Who is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to boycott a Latino-owned company that hires 4000 Latinos? Why would anyone think Wayfair was openly trafficking children on its website? Looking at social and mainstream media (and that includes Fox), one would be convinced everyone on the planet has lost their minds. I think not 

The old saying, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride" seems to apply today. Our discourse about COVID seems less about medical and scientific facts than about what we wish COVID were or were not and what we wish COVID would do or not do and what we think the government should do or not do about COVID. We talk more about what we think about COVID than about what COVID is. Indeed, I doubt most people understand why it is so bad and what it does to cells that makes it more serious than the seasonal flu, but not as bad as some other coronaviruses. As I've written before, I doubt we will ever get solid statistical data. For one thing, people take multiple tests. If a person takes three tests and on the third comes up positive, those three tests (and two negatives) do not represent discreet persons. There are reports of false positive and false negatives. People who die from COVID are mixed with those who die from COVID. Political entities are too invested in the nu...

Reading N.T. Wright is not easy proposition. I have finished How God Became King and The New Testament and the People of God , and am reading Paul (not his major work, but a series of lectures that covers his general arguments about Paul. From these books I think I have gleaned a pretty good idea of his arguments and proofs. It is essentially a book about hermeneutics and intepretation principles, hinging on narrative structures and a deep, truly immersive historical/cultural investigation of how Jews, Greeks, and Romans would have seen their own time and the faith in relation to it. 1. We must read the New Testament and Paul particularly in terms of Second Temple Judaism, its view of Messiahship, and its view of Jews in relation to the rest of the world and God's plan. 2. We must see the overall narrative structure of creation/covenant that is about the eventual restoration of the creation through the covenantal death of Jesus and His resurrection to be King. This is a si...

This is an Amazon review not posted on Amazon. My most honest opinion is that you should not waste your time on this book, or at least not your money. He is not an historian. He is a sociologist, and he uses sociological models for studying the present to study the Roman empire in the first four centuries of the "Common Era." That is a presuppositional error, both about history and research methods. He also ignores any numerical data in the New Testament, claiming there were much fewer than 5,000 Christians in Jerusalem a few years the fall of the Temple, when the New Testament had recorded there were that many a few years after the crucifixion. He also claims there were actually very few martyrs in the whole of the Roman Empire, maybe about  100. So what were Peter and Paul and John and the writer of Hebrews worried about?  He also seems to think the spread of Mormonism in the U.S. is a template for the spread of Christianity. Faulty logical and analogy. This is not ...