The Sam B. Hall Jr. Lectureship has been a feature on the ETBU campus since 1993 when it and the professorship were started. This year we will have a banquet and guest lecturer from The University of Mary Hardin Baylor, Dr. J. David Holcomb. His talk on the implications of recent Supreme Court decisions for religious liberties will capture some attention and provoke discussion. The event is on February 22 at 7:00 p.m. in the Heritage Room of the Jarrett Library. Call 903.923.2083 for ticket information.
Marvelous, delightful, Pappadeaux Salad (mine had grilled chicken). It is not like the others.
Have you seen this?
Here and there, in the newspapers, advertisements, books, yes–in student papers–but even in publications from those folk who should know better, I find the expression, “As I was pouring over this idea,” or “I poured over his book,” or some whatnot . . . .
World, let’s not let the vulgar tongue take us down that trail! One “pores” over something of interest such as a book; one does not “pour.” The infinitives are, respectively, “to pore” as opposed to “to pour.”
There! Now wasn’t that snippy of me? Now, the interesting and instructive thing about these forms is that they both appear to come from the same Middle English “pouren,’ but somehow their spelling reflects a history of either transitive or intransitive usage. Or they may be considered to have nothing to do with one another. There is at least one instance of “pore” being used for “pour” in Chaucer.
February 21st, 2009
Jerry
“Of hasty marriage, wasted time, false hopes, and misjudged powers the race of men must ever exclaim, ‘If only I had known!’ But we do not know. If you doubt this dark ignorance, listen to the average man discussing politics. You will be appalled that each vote counts one; and you will recall that men choose demagogues, not merely through wickedness, though that ingredient is always present, but through ignorance.” — George Arthur Buttrick, Christ & Man’s Dilemma, Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1946.
Astonishing cynicism, or a way to insight? Bear in mind Buttrick wrote right after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and a world war had darkened things already for many years (consider the Asian and African experiences, not just the period between 7DEC41 and VJ Day). And he focused his discussion on the dilemma of our ignorance, our inability to generate Light for life.
Of the demagoguery he mentions there are examples held fast in memory, the “Kingfish” Huey Long of Louisiana who was murdered at the capitol in Baton Rouge in 1935. Without forgetting his populist devotion to Louisianans, I associate Long’s remarkable saga with Sinclair Lewis’ fascistic Berzilius “Buzz” Windrip in It Can’t Happen Here (1935). “Berzilius” rings as “Beelzebub” in my ears; but, well, it was a satire, though with plenty of American referents. Others have suggested other loose parallels — among the worst Hitler comes to mind.
It is not that people are “bad” or that they choose demagogues – and what American politicians can rise to the top unless they can “draw the people together” unto themselves to some degree? No, “bad” doesn’t get it. Says Buttrick, our known burden of ignorance pales before the “worse burden and deeper need” – that we are wicked. We know that, too, and mostly deny it. Though in admitting it we cannot help ourselves, we need a deliverer. A demagogue? No, but someone who can also take our mortality to task and assure us of Life. So, Buttrick ended his chapter on these themes this way:
- Man is constitutionally ignorant, endemically wicked, irrevocably mortal; but he knows it, and is therefore above his ignorance, sin, and mortality; yet he is not delivered from his lower life by his own power, but remains helpless without the Great Companion.
- There is no book logic to uphold, or refute, these contentions. There is only the logic of life: the reader must ask himself if this description of the paradox of human nature is true or untrue of his human nature.
- If he finds any truth in the description, he may be willing to ask further if the new-old words of the creed have an answering truth: “God of God, Light of Light, Very God of very God; . . . who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, . . . and was made man.” (from the Nicene Creed)
I cannot resist musing about the avaunts in the concents of Stephenson’s Anathem who just might occasionally suffer from the acedia Kathleen Norris exposes in her new book Acedia & me: a marriage, monks, and a writer’s life. Can you see, with me, the auts (avaunts) poking their heads out their doors and windows to see what everyone else is doing?
And among the four groups — the Unarians, Decenarians, Centenarians, and Millennarians — does the denomination suggest its members vary in their ability to cope with “the noonday demon” called acedia? Do the Millennarians, who are allowed to emerge once every thousand years, have a special gift of focused discipline that allows them to endure? Or do the others do better? How do they vary in their encounters with boredom, or depression, or apathy? Stephenson may have some answers from the geek-sci-fi- side; I’m reading Norris for hers.
Klassen and Zimmermann have given me much to think about in their book The Passionate Intellect: Incarnational Humanism and the Future of University Education. One chapter subheading alone rings the bell of reflection during my day: “Thinking is not optional: It is part of your Christian identity.” It is not just that our university is starting a Quality Enhancement project related to our accreditation, and that project focuses on identity as a key component of Christian servant-leadership development. It has everything to do with the deeper purposes of my teaching, so it is indeed a passionate proposition. I hope my students come to share in it.
Here’s an entry to build on past this evening. What do techno-hypermodernism, medieval monastics, and we in our own frictional existence have in common?
9/16–The primary reference is to Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, which should be in release since September 9th. (See the article in the Sep 2008 Wired .) Set on the planet Arbe where the people are either the Saecular (anti-environmental consumerist, sybaritics) or the monastic avaunts or auts who live and think amid ritual in the mathic world inside walled concents (sounds a bit like “cloisters,” eh?). The four divisions of auts — Unarians, Decenarians, Centenarians, and Millennarians — are free to venture out of their assigned or chosen (?) concents according to classification: by year, decade, century, and millennium.
Time is the central focus.
Already this sounds restrictive. But suppose there could be an inversion of socio-cultural values that prized slowed time rather than life-lived-at-ever-increasing-velocity-with-no-end-in-sight — and decreasing returns on one’s efforts?
Some things to consider short of further comment for today:
First, the Christian tradition holds and provides an ideal, or varieties of the ideal, for maximizing time: one in forms of the monastic tradition; another in expressions of Pietism; and another in personal expressions of piety and devotion, to name three examples. And then — shall we never forget? — Sabbath, with an extra bolt of wisdom from the Israelitic/Judaic tradition.
Second, Jesus said something about rest; perhaps we should attend to that, too.
More later . . . .
Opportunity abounds for historical perspective to triumph! At least in tiny cliques of the historically informed here and there, where the sages cluck their tongues and reiterate endlessly, “Here we go again!” I refer to presidential election politics, “of course.” Read more…
This morning, Barack Obama is the nominee in a historic process that continues perhaps into the next presidential term. What to make of the Democratic primary and nomination processes? Allison Krauss sings it well: Read more…
