Comments on the China Trip are on the Doc Summers on Tiger Mountain link on this page (may have to click on the Home tab to the left to show links).
In his discussion of those philosophers (in the lineage of Descartes) whom he referred to as instead ideosophers, Jacques Maritain wrote,
. . . a number of them would prefer, it seems, merely to be a channel for the stream of research, a vanishing instant in its ever changing self-awareness. Their misfortune is not to have seen that thought is not the harlot of time . . .
(The Peasant of the Garonne, 1968, page 102)
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…
From “Goodbye to All That,” by Steve Wasserman www.cjr.org/cover_story/goodbye_to_all_that_1.php
– on troubling changes in the culture of literacy:
The “most troubling crisis is the sea change in the culture of literacy itself, the degree to which our overwhelmingly fast and visually furious culture renders serious reading increasingly irrelevant, hollowing out the habits of attention indispensable for absorbing long-form narrative and the following of sustained argument.” Read more…
Dorcas Rose McBride, in The Convention, by Will D. Campbell:
“This is politics, much as I hate that word. We had an old governor in Mississippi who always said, ‘people don’t come to political rallies to think. They come to holler.’ And he kept getting elected.”
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…
Have you noticed some signs of our frantic times? Who hasn’t? Consider, for example, the ways we speak — I mean the way many people are speaking these days in the broadcast media. Where have the verbs gone? Living and thriving the participles (and occasional gerunds) . . . I mean to say, the participles dominate in spoken news reports: “President Bush arriving in Crawford, Texas, today.” “A massive earthquake in Peru killing hundreds today — officials desperately seeking to restore service . . . .” My guess is that this is “headline speech” converted to spoken newscasts, but then it does spill over into the broader reports. I don’t see it in written journalism and I hope I never do.
Such speech could be intentional but probably is not. The style heightens the sense of immediacy and urgency in speech and writing, but the frequent clumsiness in media speech suggests it is neither intentional or planned. The Greek style of the Gospel of Mark employs the technique effectively, though. Mark situates the life and ministry of Jesus in an active, brisk, sometimes breathless setting wherein his divine mission and human needs constantly intersect.
Some words, and some neologisms, get too much exposure; we use them too much. Here are some I could live without, at least in the senses and ways they are typically used:
incredible– It seems to be the omnicompetent adjective of the day and is rarely used in its literal sense. It seems not to mean anything, really. Or too much: despite the intended praise, who wants to be known as “an incredible human being”? Don’t we need more credibility?
in-depth — I weep for the numerous, more suitable adjectives scorned in favor of that awkward term.
impacted — there was a time when the term referred only to wisdom teeth and bowels. It’s still an unpleasant word, even for a universal, verbalized noun-cum-transitive verb. What and who isn’t being “impacted” these days by something or someone? Why, only the other day the local newspaper related how one car impacted another in a crash! Moreover, these days one must surely be most effective or influential when one is impactful.
I could go on, but I need to confess that as we Americans change our speech in ways alternatively annoying and delightful, people around the globe continue to outstrip us as they use and transform English. Someone said the other day that the global language is not English but broken English. I’ll not lament that a language that belongs to everyone must belong to none; rather, I am relieved that I do not have to conduct business and life using broken Chinese or Russian. But I am perhaps no richer for that and my being functionally monolingual. And so my respect for international friends and acquaintances who have made great efforts, successfully, to learn English grows deeper by the year.
Ah!–the sinuous path of pragmatism on the way to the “Chinese Dream.” Unique? Oh, no. Actually sounds American. We did, after all, build an interstate highway system that allows us in our powered conveyances to conquer the heights and hollows that Lewis and Clark, Daniel Boone, Jedediah Smith, and many others — not to mention the American aboriginals — took centuries to “discover” and to name. So, China wants to build a highway to the base camp on Mt. Everest. (By the way, one may ask, isn’t Everest in Tibet? Oh, no, not that Tibet, but the one now located within Greater China.) Tourists will benefit, they say. They deserve to see it. I imagine the pique of world-class mountaineers on hearing such a statement, climbers who trained for years for a shot at Everest, took their opportunity, and were lucky to come down alive. Knowing the life-and-death risks involved in climbing earth’s highest peak, elite adventurers have marveled at the presumptuousness of others less well prepared who seemed to take Everest too lightly and who all-too-readily paid for their misjudgment with their lives.
At least now adventurers will be able to conserve energy by taking the road to the base camp located at 17,000-plus feet (so said the spokesman quoted in the AP report). To possible altitude sickness they would add carsickness!
But in 2008 the Olympic torch will be taken to the summit of Everest! That’s an astonishing goal–possible surely, but the tortuous drama of it, and with no guarantee of success, makes it seem so improbable. Could that be just the point, though? Back to the dream, then . . . . In the world’s largest country, with the longest “Great Wall,” with the largest dam–the Three Gorges, and there are myriad other superlatives, one might be excused for being audacious. Having been named the host country for the 2008 Olympics after a long wait (actually twice, their 2000 bid having been denied), China will put on the world’s greatest show in Beijing and other venues. In fact, China itself will be the great venue, and China will be proudly, resplendently on display, and the world will be impressed. Guaranteed. The arrival of the Olympic torch in the hand of a climber will punctuate China’s grand statement that the Chinese have indeed stood up (Mao Zedong) and in a spectacular way (yes, in yet another way) long prepared for, long dreamed of, indeed, long anticipated.
What, you say, about the ways China has not and will not have arrived by August 2008? Yes, there will be many ways, but they will be less visible. On this point China warrants credit, even if not every Chinese has an equal slice of the dream, or even knows anything about it. Suffice to say for now that more Chinese will become acutely aware of the world beyond the borders of the Middle Kingdom — Zhongguo — and their thinking; their dreams will respond to the pull both of their own land and the recognition coming from lands beyond. At no time in human history will the world have paid more attention to China — no, not even at the time of Liberation in 1949, nor even during the height of Chairman Mao’s power in the Cultural Revolution, nor even during the Tiananmen Incident. No, the Olympics will be the height of exposure, and accomplishment, to date. You will know it when the climber and the torch reach the Everest summit.
How would you like to be on the media crew?
The Crossroads Academy and V-5 Institute Board has had little help from me recently, but I haven’t “quit” either, especially when I get opportunities to meet with some of God’s good men and women. So I and mine did this past weekend at the Rominger home in Tecumseh. The occasion was filled with conversation, board business (redefining, reorganizing), spiritual devotion, some great meals (thanks Janelle) and a good dose of Oklahoma history courtesy of Dr. Don Rominger. It is a rich history, and none are more aware of it than the numerous American Indians who in the twisting course of events had much befall them in Anglo-America. Yet they–and the rest of us–are part of a much more complex America that includes everyone (not always happily) but still permits special identities. That is no more so than with Indian identity, tribal belonging.
This past weekend our board president received, in absentia, a token, a totem of unity and patriotism, a gift in honor of his own military service, patriotism, and love of the United States and what our nation best represents, a ceremonial working/battle axe. It was also in honor of his sons, one of whom, a Marine lieutenant, still is recovering from burn injuries received in Iraq from a roadside bomb that killed most of his brothers-in-arms. Those injuries will force his retirement, which he must accept, though reluctantly, and earlier than he wished.
The giver? An elder representing the Citizen Pottawatomie tribe of Oklahoma. The recipient and his son? Members via Mexican ancestry, in part, of the Yaqui tribe. Yet all are citizens of the United States, heirs to a tradition of patriotism based not in what some consider a threatening militarism but in their convictions that they can best serve their country as members of a proud, distinguished service branch of the American Armed Forces. And these Marines have served well.
The United States includes many amazing people, humans whose backgrounds, convictions, and accomplishments can only evoke encouragement and admiration. I learned this past weekend about the long tradition of military service among the Cheyenne of the Middle and Northern Plains. Where in the social histories do we learn that the Indians are more than just a formerly oppressed group? Where do we learn that among them, always, have been individuals and groups who transcended the difficulties of accommodation and integration to the larger Anglo-European society, who came to share fully in it, yet who, paradoxically, retained their traditions as best they could? I am interested to learn more about the American Plains warriors whose love of country is a lesson for all Americans — not to glorify war, though some surely might, but to be reminded that in a world where wars will occur, there are patriots whose best response is to take part.