partsofspeaking

Just want to ask. What does being offended have to do with anything? As someone in higher education, I have been scratching my head over this “safe space” and “trigger warnings” controversy.   While I can sympathize with a college student being required to read some of the really prurient stuff they are required to read by some professors, there is plenty in literature and history (and the current world) that could trigger reactions and work against the creation of “safe space.”   The world is not a safe space; we need only see that 14 people met their death at the hands of radicals during a holiday potluck for their workplace last week.   To lead students to think there is a safe space and that their demands for protection from offensive ideas is, well, beyond my ability to grasp. I am, or could be offended, every day by any number of things.   I turn the TV off, usually, which I imagine most do.   We recognize practices and attitu...

Fiction is only good if it is true.   That does not mean “factual” (historically or scientifically) or even “verisimilitudinous” (word I made up, meaning ‘resembling real life).   Truth in fiction is about how it reaches down to the human condition and touches us in a way that we say, “Yes, this is right, this is what it means to be human,” even if we do not like the characters or they feel very different from us in background.   Truth in fiction is hard to pin down; we know when it is not there (as in Hallmark Christmas movies, the genre I love to hate) more than we know it is there. (I should say that Hallmark occasionally gets it right; however, most of them seem to be like the “Church without Christ” in Flannery O’Connor’s novel Wiseblood .   Christmas without Jesus, although there is the random carol sung during a show as background music.) But we do know when it is there, when the story stays with us, like a good or bad dream we ca...

On Saturday the 5 th , I was privileged to attend a one-man show put on by actor David Payne about C. S. Lewis at Christmas.   Because I commit myself to thing and then want to get out of them at the last minute (bad habit due to overcommitment-itis) I went with a “well I paid for this and it will be good for me” blah, blah type of idea. I was quite pleased.   Since, as an academic, I have probably read more of C.S. Lewis and about him than most, and I don’t say that as a brag.   Being a bookish person is nothing to be proud of; it’s just who I am.   I can’t play the piano, do lifesaving, fix an engine, deliver a calf, or insert an IV catheter.   I can cook, sew, garden, teach, and drive a stick shift car, though.   It was neat to see how the script was put together, and the actor adopted a very Anthony-Hopkins style voice that is not his natural accent (well, accents are learned, but typical one, I supposed).   And it was...

--> Several years ago I bought a copy of the Book of Common Prayer (the Church of England version).   I am not entirely sure why and have only read it occasionally over the years.   It is part of my desire to understand the various flavors (or franchises, as Garrison Keillor called them) of the church, especially those of long tradition. So for December 6, I would have expected something about Advent.   Not so much.   It quoted the verse in I Timothy about praying for all men, especially those in governmental power, and that prayer and reflection went along those lines. Not to make a lame connection, but respect for governmental authorities are part and parcel of the Advent.   Joseph took Mary to Bethlehem out of obedience to Rome.   He went to that particular city out of obedience to his tradition (house and lineage of David). He went in obedience to the voice of God, taking Mary whom he could have divorced and shamed. Christian tr...

  I am not sure this passage is often thought of as a Christmas passage (Galatians seems removed from the nativity) but the passage points to the key elements.   1 What I am saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. 2 He is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. 3 So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. ...

Advent is about the big picture.  It is not about our individual selves, but the salvation of billions, the whole world, the whole heart of God.  And yet it is about the microcosm of the individual human experience.  Microcosm is an interesting word:  it means infinitesimally small, yet "cosm" mean world.  Each life is a tiny version of the whole world, in a sense.  Each human life reflects the life of the whole.  In that sense, our tiny lives should point us to the bigger world, not deeper within ourselves. This is the core of empathy:  what I experience and feel is what others do and equips me to be of ministry to others.  II Corinthians 1:3-6: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 ...

The heading of this blog says these are my thoughts and not to reflect any institution with which I am affiliated.  I have free speech rights and I take responsibility for them. Advent should cause us to reflect on the superiority of the Christian faith.   By that I don’t mean the Christian person.   To be a Christian is to recognize one’s fatal flaws, one’s rebellion and waywardness,   to see innate hypocrisy.   While the world tells us to trust ourselves, Scripture warns us about too much trust in our own “devices.”   I speak of the core world view of Christianity in distinction from that of secular thought, which proclaims values it doesn’t really believe, and from other religions, which are as absolutist as any Christian system but which we have been told, in the name of multiculturalism, are more open and accepting.   What I do mean is superiority psychologically, emotionally, historically, heuristically (what it ...