partsofspeaking

OK, CT had an ad in its margins for a Bible study written by the Robertsons of Duck Dynasty. Give me a break.  These are the same people who have their names on a brand of wine, on underwear, on camping equipment, on mobile homes, on . . . . They are Church of Christ, by the way, so that sort of eliminates a lot of believers who would take issue with that denomination's teachings. What is more disturbing is the commodification and commercialization of Bible study and the failure of people to be able to study the Bible without this stuff.  I want to write a book on how to study the Bible for real people, but only because I think the average person should stay away from this merchandizing.

It's very hard not to have a conversation with anyone any more without Facebook coming into it.  As much as I promise myself I will only look at it to check my notifications, I end up scrolling down the newsfeed, and usually wasting time, getting annoyed, shaking  my head at some silliness, and occasionally learning something and being encouraged. Part of the problem is that I have an ungodly number of "friends" so I see too much stuff.  I could get rid of 75% of them and still have too many.  Today I defriended or defollowed someone I barely know due to a political post, a straw man argument that just hit me wrong and I said, I don't need this hassle.  I feel guilty and defensive about it.  Why? Also earlier this week, the daughter of a friend posted a highly disturbing post that sounded suicidal, and then two days later she posted that she was being required to see a psychiatrist by her employer, and she was arguing about the unfairness of it, the judgmentalis

We watched this on NetFlix the other night.  At first I was put out with the idea of reincarnation, but something about it--the actors, I guess--pulled me in to what left me almost teary-eyed.  I have always said I was a sucker for a dog story, even one as preposterous as this one. In short, Peter O'Toole plays a very hateful old man who makes life miserable for his remaining son, Jeremy Northam, who tries to have a relationship with him.  This is in pre-WW I England.  O'Toole's son was killed in the Boer War and his wife died after that, and he is bitter yet fails to see that his son has lost two loved ones also.  A strange Anglican priest (or dean, not sure of the hierarachy there) comes into their life, and when he drinks a rare, expensive wine procured for Northam by an odd Australian (Bryan Brown), the dean talks about his former life as a dog.  Like I said, way weird.  O'Toole had a dog as a child who ran off one day with a stray mutt friend and never came bac

My husband and I will often pick a movie on NetFlix.  He picks good ones that I would pass over.  We watched Night Train to Lisbon the other night, and an Italian film Bread and Tulips a couple of weeks ago.  Also Dean Spanley , which I'll write about elsewhere. Anyway, in the description to Bread and Tulips, it says that the main character meets a group of amicable weirdos.  We watched the movie based on that phrase, and we've been laughing about it since.  What is an amicable weirdo?  However, I didn't think any of the characters were weirdos.  They were wonderfully human, which is the charm of the film. I would like to be called an amicable (in the sense of friendly) weirdo.  I am odd; I own that, but I've met very few people who aren't odd.  I am reading the Carnegie Mellon Online Learning Initiative class in Statistical Reasoning (for a data analysis class I am taking this summer) and learning about the null hypothesis.  My null hypothesis is that everyon

I expect this post will make some people angry.  Sorry. Yesterday Maya Angelou died at her home in North Carolina.  I heard an interview with her by Terri Gross, whom I always liked to hear even though her world view rubs me the wrong way (and she really is sycophantic about some celebs she talks to).  It was an old interview, from 1986.  I was driving in the car to do my mother's grocery shopping, after having taken her to the doctor. Maya Angelou was 86. My mother is 86, and dying; perhaps not soon, but she is going down hill from cancer.  The contrast could not be more startling in my mind I heard Maya Angelou speak back around 2000 at, as I recall, a SACS conference, and that was a pleasure, although I would have rather SACS charged less for its conferences (which are out of sight) than get high end speakers like Angelou to speak at them.  At any rate, she did show a wisdom of age.  I have taught her poem "My Arkansas" in Intro to lit and read part of her first

A friend (in this case rather more of a former colleague) posted this on Facebook.   http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2011/04/27/urban-legends-the-preachers-edition/ This is great reading; the comments are better than the original article, because the comments eventually start taking issue with him.  Blogger citing blogger citing bloggers.  Occasionally one would cite a primary source.  The point:  take the preaching of the Bible dead seriously, and don't use an illustration unless you can verify it, which means in most cases, don't use it.  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is (but "probably" is not "definitely"). Note: A reader encouraged me to find and use my voice in blogging.  Thank you!

Back in the fall, for some reason I have forgotten, I told the play director at my college that I would write her a play.  She likes to do original work in the fall (it also saves royalties).  My motivations were that I wanted to see if I could do it and thought it might be nice to see the students produce something I wrote.  Of course, it's not like I don't have dozens of others projects. I worked on it a bit through the school year, getting maybe 25 pages done, but once graduation had passed I knew I had to finish it.  I had fashioned it in my head for six months, and I literally wrote it out of thin air.  I finished the first draft Sunday and sent it to her. It is a murder mystery-farce-parody.  It parodies a lot of Agatha Christie tropes, and it pays homage to old screwball comedies of the '30s and '40s that usually starred Cary Grant.  One person is rather violently murdered but he is a bad guy killed by another bad guy; we can't have someone we care about

These were my notes for a lesson on Song of Solomon last week.   I post these because perhaps they can help someone. I should say here that I am a conservative evangelical with a high view of Scripture, but not always the party line view.  I believe it should be interpreted in its grammatical-historical context.  I am not strict on eschatologically but very strict on others, especially when it's a question of syncretism, dualism, or modalism.   There are two basic interpretations to Song of Solomon: (a)     More or less true story in poetic form about one of Solomon’s love affairs, celebrating the beauty of the man-woman romantic, filial (friendship, affection), and sexual relationship. (b)    Allegorical about God and Israel or God and the church If it’s the first one, why is it in the Bible?   Was this just another conquest for him, or something earlier in his life.   Solomon is in the story, because of references to kingship.   Some have interpreted it as a lo

Last night my husband wanted to watch a movie on NetFlix so we chose The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep, having heard it was good.  What was good about it was Streep's performance, of course, and some of the other acting.  That is about all I can say for it.  Anecdote:  A colleague, whose father teaches at Oxford, has her doctorate from Oxford, and taught there as well, told me that when she was growing up, Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister and that told her that women could do anything and were not constrained in their potential success by being a woman.  Ironically, Thatcher would not have held to the political views of feminists.  She got where she was because she bypassed those ideologies and ways of being and faced the world of men head on.  She didn't let her womanhood become an issue when she saw bigger problems for her country.  She was PM of the country, no her sex.  All the movie did was make me a bit angry and make me want to read a real bio of her.  Where d

In his book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction , Eugene Petersen writes about an encounter with a Red Cross bloodmobile worker who asked him, "Do you engage in hazardous work?"  Petersen, a Presbyterian pastor, answered yes.  The worker looked up at him, saw his clerical collar (this must have been a while back; it's hard to believe anyone would wear those anymore) and smiled.  "I don't mean that kind of hazardous." This story resonated with me a great deal in reference to my research.  According to various websites, such as this one, http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/10-most-stressful-and-10-least-stressful-jobs-of-2013/, being a college professor is one of the least stressful and most rewarding jobs in the country. This is an interesting assertion.  I do find it rewarding and less stressful than say, an emergency room nurse, and I have often said that during training nurses are given some kind of pill to make them not hurry just because ther

I could be accused of writing provocative titles on these blogs.  I wish my novel titles had more salacious titles; maybe I would sell more.  Rape and Its Aftermath would be a good title for them.  My computer has an adware thing that is driving me crazy.  I will go get it fixed tomorrow.  I am writing a play, a parlor mystery.  It is a different kind of writing for me.  All dialogue, same setting.  It is a bit derivative, borrowing from The Philadelphia Story, Keeping Up Appearances , and Agatha Christie.  It is also a comedy, which means the murder victim is a bad guy.  Some might say it is in bad taste. Anyway, back to my title.  Fortunately, our pastor did not preach on Proverbs 31 on Sunday.  I am sure his wife would have disabused him of that if it had been his plan.  He gave a much better sermon based on post-resurrection appearances of Christ.  However, the Sunday School (we call them life groups now) was on Proverbs 31.  What a cliche. If anybody thinks the Proverbs 31 w

Having been a Christian for four decades, I have heard many sermons on prayer.  Most of them were meant to be guilt-inducing, I think.  How many times have I heard that John Wesley got up and prayed at 3:00 in the morning?  I wish preachers would understand that what John Wesley did in his prayer life has no impact on us. This is not to say that we should pray less.  Prayerlessness is our great sin; perhaps I should say the wrong kind of prayer is our sin.  A study of the Bible shows that the way we pray is pretty off base. We pray for God to intervene in the past because we did stupid things and don't want to face the consequences.  We pray for extremely self-centered things for our own convenience.  What verb describes our prayers? Cajole - Come on, God, you said .... Demand  - we take boldness seriously! Plead -  Please, please, please let me win the lottery Bargain - If you do this, I'll do this Bug - I know I've prayed for this for thirty years, but here I am

This evening I am returning to blogging, having reached two milestones:  the end of the school year, and the passing of my second critical milestone in my doctoral program, meaning that I am ABD and admitted to candidacy.  That really just means more work, and soon.  While I doubt that my claim to be the world's oldest living doctoral candidate cannot be substantiated, I doubt there are very many older than me.  One other woman in my program is older, but she's not in candidacy, not yet (but will be).   I am sure there are doctoral students somewhere in the U.S. in their sixties, but heaven knows why.  I used to say, having not gone through it, that doctoral work was jumping through hoops.  Maybe, but they are high hoops with flames around them.  And in the case of an action research dissertation, they keep moving and getting bigger and smaller at the same time. I have three months of not having to get up for class at 8:00.  What a blessing.  I also have a long list of pr