Quote of the Day: Anais Nin

I've probably covered this before but I'm gonna do it again. It is especially pertinent in regard to political and economic philosophies and worldviews. A person can say something and different people see all kinds of diverging opinions about its meaning. That's why this saying keeps reverberating through my head these last few days.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Anais Nin

Quote of the Day: Simone Weil

From Simone Weil:

An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/simone_weil.html

My Grandmother and her Aunt Vinnie

My grandmother is 91. I called her yesterday and she is just as sharp as ever. We were talking and somehow we meandered to a discussion of cars. Her younger son, my uncle, will be retiring from GM soon and he began working for them in the sixites, with interruption for college and Vietnam. So we probably pushed off of that subject. She described in detail various features of a Model T Ford. Her family made the trip from Southeast Missouri to California and back when she was about 8 in that vehicle. And I never knew her to be a "car" person. They left in the fall and returned in the spring. Later in the conversation when I mentioned that my wife had made some pear preserves this weekend, she mentioned fond memories of an Aunt Vinnie who always had a compote on the table and preserves. Aunt V was the big sister of her dad, she born before the Civil War and he after. And their Dad fought for Indiana at Chickamaugua. Grandmother occasionally would spend a week with her Aunt Vinnie. And she said she always like that.

My grandmother has, all my life, told me stories of her growing up not far from Poplar Bluff, MO. I thought I'd heard everything. But I don't remember about Aunt Vinnie.

Priesthood of Believers

From Phyllis Tickle's The Great Emergence:

The computer, opening up as it does, the whole of humankind's bank of collective information, enables the priesthood of all believers in ways the Reformation could never have envisioned.

This is one of a number of pithy insights in this book. The thesis of the book is that Christianity goes though a period of change/revolution every 500 years. According to this view, around 500 AD, Gregory the Great took steps that deeply affected the faith. Then near the millenium, it was the time of the Great Schism. But of course, around 1500 the Protestant Reformation created a new style and the Catholic church was transformed as well.

Now a new thing is emerging. I like it and am excited about it.

Certainty

Am reading "Dreams of my Father" by B. Obama

He writes very well. There are lots of short and to the point observations that he makes that have provided me with food for thought. Like this one:

"Both Marty and Smalls knew that in politics, like religion, power lay in certainty- and that one man's certainty always threatened another's."

I've always had my issues with "certainty". In order to understand myself and others, assurance and confidence about basic beliefs and even the mechanisms of everyday functioning are very important. I've always had many doubts and then, even doubts about my doubts.

The Gematriculator

This was determined by the Gematriculator. This involves assigning numerical values to letters of the alphabet.

A special thanks to N. T. Wrong for informing us of this very important tool.

Back from Houston and Montreal

Just got back from a week of business in Houston (got an award from the ISA and visited my sister) and Montreal (a NATO meeting). Took no pictures in Houston. Stayed in downtown Montreal and didn't stray too far from the hotel. Here is a scene from a couple of blocks away where there is a brief vista of the mountains and the changing colors of the trees.

Read Phylis Tickle's "The Great Emergence". Great book. Got 100 pages into Obama's "Dreams of my Father". Also amazing.

Brad Cecil's Powerpoint Initiates the Emergent Conversation

I'm reading Tony Jones book "The New Christians" and learned that Brad Cecil was one of the members of the group that started the emergent movement. He made a famous powerpoint he showed that helped get them going. Here and Here too.

One frame shows these contrasts. Note how they fit with the previous post from one of McLaren's books:

Modern/Postmodern

*Enlightenment Project / Deconstruction Project
*Foundationalism / Web
*Objective Truth/ Contingent Agreements
*Scientific /Narrative
*Dualistic / Holistic (Sacred vs Secular)
*Empirical /Experiential

Ten years ago I would have thought this was nonsense. I was thoroughly in the Enlightenment/objective truth/scientific/empirical frame of mind. Afterall, I'm a scientist/engineer, that most enlightenment of all occupations. But now I'm seeing things differently. It is not that the old is now wrong so much as it is now subsumed in a developing new way of conceiving/feeling things.

The Modern World

To help my thinking, here are some notes on "A New Kind of Christian" by Brian McLaren.

This is a summary of what his character Neo says regarding the Modern world.
It was the Era or Age of:

1. Conquest and Control
2. Machine
3. Analysis
4. Secular Science
5. Aspiration to and Confidence in Objectivity
6. Criticism: where you must debunk the others' misperception of what you know to be absolutely and objectively true
7. Modern Nation-State and the Organization
8. Individualism
9. Protestantism and Institutional Religion
10. Consumerism

G. W. "Chick" Allison - 60 years of Preaching

My Dad preached his first sermon about this time sixty years ago. Here is something I've written about him. (Update note: It has now been published in the Arkansas Christian Herald Vol. 28, No. 11, page 4, November 2008)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sixty years ago this November 7, G. W. Allison hitchhiked from Searcy to Dover to preach his first sermon. Also recognized by the nickname "Chick" and "George", he is a Church of Christ minister known throughout Northeast AR. He was raised in Pocahontas where at age ten, he nearly drowned in Mansker Creek. Later, he was baptized there. Later still, he performed his first baptism at that site. He declined a football scholarship at Arkansas State University to study the ministry at Harding University. Between terms, while working in Michigan, he met his wife, Frances Van Hooser. They have four children (Stephen W., Ronald M., Paula R., and Timothy S.) and nine grandchildren. The couple served several congregations in Oklahoma and Michigan from 1951-1958. They returned permanently to Arkansas, working with churches in Pocahontas, Rector, Searcy, Corning, Nettleton, Lepanto, and now completing his ministry in Egypt, where he was born.

He was the original host and is a frequent speaker for “Speaking the Truth in Love” on KAIT-TV. He has held over 350 gospel meetings across the eastern U. S. It is evidence of respect and appreciation for him that he has officiated at well over 1,000 funerals in Northeast Arkansas. G. W. has baptized a similar number in baptistries, creeks, and rivers. As you drive along highway 25 near the town of Strawberry, Arkansas look to your north as you pass over the Strawberry River bridge. In Aug of 1960 that was the site where cars pulled up to illuminate the river so that about two dozen souls could be baptized by him. He is unpretentious and free of affectation. He has no interest in nor places a value on status. For him, each human being is a precious child of God and is special. He has counseled many people. His experiences include wrestling a gun away from a man intent on suicide, preaching love and equality to a local African American church in a way that was ahead of his time , and later, helping to integrate them into his congregation.

One way G. W. has reached thousands of people has been through those he brought to Christ and who in turn are spreading the gospel . A well known example is Jimmy Allen, evangelist and long time faculty member of Harding University. Jimmy credits him as a model that one could be a Christian and still be an athlete and a real man. And, referring to him by nickname he says in his autobiography Fire in my Bones:

“One day before chapel began Chick asked me if I were a Christian ... He was the only one who talked to me personally about my salvation. We became friends and have stayed that way nearly fifty-five years.”

G. W. is also noted for his passion and accomplishments in athletics. He was voted Most Valuable Player on his high school football team, achieved All-State in basketball, and started for the Jonesboro American Legion baseball team that included eventual major league star, Wally Moon. Jimmy Allen who played basketball with him at Harding wrote in the above reference “He was as fast as doubled-greased lightning.” Unfortunately, a tragic car accident in 1960 ended G. W.'s sports participation at age 30. That same year, he began coaching his sons and other youngsters, continuing for many years in all these sports. He always brought out the best in his young athletes by his enthusiasm and positive style. This has been another avenue of his Christian influence. Oh yes, he is a lifelong St. Louis Cardinals fan.

The Semiotic Project - from GloboChrist

Picked up Carl Raschke's GloboChrist: The Great Commission takes a Postmodern Turn. Here's something interesting form a section titled The Semiotic Project.

Western theology has historically been joined at the hip with Greek philosophy, which in turn is built on the Indo-European language structure with its subject-predicate sentence construction, inferential logic, and conceptual classification system.
....

human language is far richer and does far more than the heirs of Aristotle, with their focus on propositions and categories used in rational system building, could envision.

This is exciting to me. It is exciting because it opens up the possibility that there is more to learn and there is room for hope. I kinda think it is this rational system building and language structure that leads to the Dawkins/Hitchens/Bertrand Russells of the world, a world that is a mechanical dead end.

I've struggled enough with German and Greek to know that the language one speaks and knows deeply affects one's World View. The quote and the postmodern turn with its emphasis on language and metaphor provide a new angle that there is more mystery out there.