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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.

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 . . . .

It’s old news, except in the mainstream. The Associated Press Story ran in the Cox newspapers this week. Donald Miller wrote Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality about five years ago. It’s selling like hotcakes (I-Pods?) and has been for some time. He is not alone in wanting a culturally relevant Christianity that repudiates exclusivism and judgmentalism, rules, hard-shell traditions that don’t promote the Christ-life for all people. Read more…

So, Advent is “Coming,” and we grapple with mystery. Some of us with abstractions, others with personal fervor. Can one who has in delight cradled a newborn transfer all the reciprocal sensations into his or her heart — the center of being, of life? The “Yes” is possible because we are whole, integrated beings, whose cradling arms enable our hearts to cradle the Child, or is it the other way around? Read more…

What about Pentecostal Scientology? It was in the news this morning. I’ll bet L. Ron Hubbard never anticipated that combination, but he and his ilk shouldn’t be surprised. After all, Scientology is but one of the synthetic, or to use a term Catherine Albanese has used (A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A History of American Metaphysical Religion) to describe popular religious habits, combinative groups or cults that take their cues from various metaphysical teaching traditions and teachings. Read more…

From the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia we learn of three historical Saints Valentine, martyrs all in the second century; a bishop, a priest of Rome, and a Christian, possibly a priest, in North Africa. Medieval folk associated the Feast Day of St. Valentine, February 14, with the pairing of birds and from there with lovers or loved ones exchanging notes and gifts. So the 13th Century literature includes references to Valentine’s letters.

As with most traditions we have choices for celebration here, both of them worthwhile and affirming. Leaving aside the scattershot patterns of giving Valentine’s cards as children (though one might reserve a special card for some One), the feast (festival) day celebration recognizes the sacrifices of ancients willing to die for a glory far greater than themselves yet a glory in which they had been given a non-negotiable part; or Valentine’s Day recognizes the glory of men and women held together in a commitment far greater than the bonds achieved through their own (or society’s) strength and resolve. Of course at best I do mean Christ-ian marriage, and if we may not celebrate it on Valentine’s Day, then how could we be satisfied, or inspired, by anything less? How better to picture sacrificial love than in service to one’s beloved? Paul the Sent said no less about it when he described Christ as laying down his life for his bride the church.

You married men must love your wives, just as Christ love the church and gave Himself for her, to consecrate her, after cleansing her through His word, as pictured in the water bath, that He might present the church to Himself as a splendid bride without a blot or wrinkle or anything like it, but to be consecrated and faultless. This is the way married men ought to love their wives, as they do their own bodies. The married man who loves his wife is really loving himself, for no one ever hates his own physical person, but he feeds and fosters it, just as Christ does the church, because we are parts of His body. Ephesians 5:25-30, Williams Translation

On a previous post from December 3 I mentioned the conception of “god” or “God” in the Chinese tradition. The emperor could be seen as a god of sorts. I have visited all too briefly with my Chinese academic friends about this, but one comment resonates with my growing understanding of the ages-old “secularity” of Chinese society and belief: even without the modern, naturalistic, atheistic world view of most educated Chinese today, to have “God” is something very difficult. In traditional China, the emperor–Son of Heaven or tianzi–dominated over the people, and together they constituted the main reality of the world. There has been no “emperor” since at least 1912, but there has been no lack of authoritarian government. Beyond mundane boundaries, though, and subordinate to the world itself, is the traditional Chinese conception of a god or God, and it is well-nigh inconsequential: “It’s hard to be a god in China,” said one friend. And I must say it can be hard to accept the idea of a loving, redeeming God and along with that idea, the concept that a Chinese person would need such a god. Read more…

Filling in for Alex in the Faith Bible class this morning, I read from C. S. Lewis’ The Four Loves on the way to thinking through the Incarnation with the class members. I love doing this stuff! Lewis wrote a beautiful treatment about the distinctions between Need-love and Gift-love, among other things, and in his discussion of Charity asserted that God is love, insisting that we can understand any of this at all only by starting with God: Read more…

The biggest story of the early “holi-day” season? No, not at all. chicagotribune.com — nativity story It is a story relating to an increasingly familiar theme, actually: No, says the Chicago mayor’s special events office, New Line Media cannot advertise their film Nativity Story at the Christkindlmarket in Chicago. Risks being preferential to one “faith,” offensive to non-Christians. Hmmm. Could be! Read more…