Sunday, March 4, 2018
A Pungent, and Fitting, Quotation
“Stupidity is always amazing, no matter how often one encounters it.” - Jean Cocteau
Lenten Wave #18
“The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Saturday, March 3, 2018
The Dangers of Woke*
Washington Post: Attacking the NRA is really attacking everyday Americans
As I'm a member of liberal, trendier-than-thou form of Christianity, so much so that it is not uncommon to hear sermons in our churches that are based more strongly on the Op/Ed page of the New York Times than on Gospel themes, I've noted over the last three decades our creeping intellectual incestuousness. The fact that it is coincident with a dramatic decline in membership should not surprise anyone in the church's leadership, yet it does.
Once clergy and laity of a particular church or denomination begin to see themselves as morally superior to those who do not share their beliefs, or vote in an "unacceptable" manner, or aren't as "evolved" in their regard for the fashionable issues of the day, they become dismissive of them. Then, the sermons, the ministries, and the common conversations exclude recognition of any perspective that is not in complete harmony with that of the dominant vision, along with those who do not share the narrative of the dominant secular ideology. So, the church's statements or perspectives exist to appeal to the dominant peer group and not those outside of that bubble.
Church Signs that say "Everyone Welcome" should carry the codicil "As Long As You Agree With Us".
This seems to be spreading into the business world. For example, Delta Airlines announced it would no longer grant discounts to members of the NRA because...well, that's still a little vague. In other words, Delta made a business decision that appealed to the values of their leadership's peer group. Since fewer than twenty NRA members have ever sought a discount for their Delta Airlines tickets, it was hardly a popular program. However, by disassociating from the NRA, they disassociated from its 5,000,000 members, most of whom didn't use, care about, or notice the availability of the discount. This was insulting and disaffecting.
Delta's new-found "woke-ness" has cost it in public regard, stock price, and public relations. So much so that the CEO of the airline took to Twitter [the rampart of woke] to affirm the airline's support for the Second Amendment. Desperation, damage-control, and diapers seem to share the same odor.
I realized a few years ago, now that we live in a post-Christian society, how many of our private businesses have decided to preach and moralize out of the apparent assumption that purveyors of burned coffee-muck [I'm looking at you, Starbucks] or toothpaste [the insufferable Tom's of Maine] or fat-burdened ice cream [Benny and Jer, or whatever] are now to serve as our self-assigned moral arbiters.
The world was far less burdensome when over-educated coffee clerks [Baristas? Really? Is that a word?] and disposable ice cream containers didn't carry the mission to make the rest of us aware of what should be our correct response to social justice and other progressive issues. They should really look to mainstream Protestantism to see the results of moral incestuousness.
* I realize that not everyone is familiar with the term "woke". The fact that I am required to be is part of being an Episcopal clergyperson. I quote from the Urban Dictionary:
The NRA is a grass-roots organization made up of millions of decent, patriotic Americans who believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens make our country safer, not more dangerous. To suggest that it is responsible for what happened in Parkland is obscene. Police officers were called to alleged shooter Nikolas Cruz’s house on 39 occasions since 2010. The FBI was warned about the shooter in January and failed to adhere to its own procedures to follow up. An armed sheriff’s deputy was on the scene at the shooting, but he failed to act. And yet somehow the NRA is at fault? Please.I would observe that if the Washington Post is noticing this, the polling about this issue and the progressive response to it indicates that it has not been all that successful.
As I'm a member of liberal, trendier-than-thou form of Christianity, so much so that it is not uncommon to hear sermons in our churches that are based more strongly on the Op/Ed page of the New York Times than on Gospel themes, I've noted over the last three decades our creeping intellectual incestuousness. The fact that it is coincident with a dramatic decline in membership should not surprise anyone in the church's leadership, yet it does.
Once clergy and laity of a particular church or denomination begin to see themselves as morally superior to those who do not share their beliefs, or vote in an "unacceptable" manner, or aren't as "evolved" in their regard for the fashionable issues of the day, they become dismissive of them. Then, the sermons, the ministries, and the common conversations exclude recognition of any perspective that is not in complete harmony with that of the dominant vision, along with those who do not share the narrative of the dominant secular ideology. So, the church's statements or perspectives exist to appeal to the dominant peer group and not those outside of that bubble.
Church Signs that say "Everyone Welcome" should carry the codicil "As Long As You Agree With Us".
This seems to be spreading into the business world. For example, Delta Airlines announced it would no longer grant discounts to members of the NRA because...well, that's still a little vague. In other words, Delta made a business decision that appealed to the values of their leadership's peer group. Since fewer than twenty NRA members have ever sought a discount for their Delta Airlines tickets, it was hardly a popular program. However, by disassociating from the NRA, they disassociated from its 5,000,000 members, most of whom didn't use, care about, or notice the availability of the discount. This was insulting and disaffecting.
Delta's new-found "woke-ness" has cost it in public regard, stock price, and public relations. So much so that the CEO of the airline took to Twitter [the rampart of woke] to affirm the airline's support for the Second Amendment. Desperation, damage-control, and diapers seem to share the same odor.
I realized a few years ago, now that we live in a post-Christian society, how many of our private businesses have decided to preach and moralize out of the apparent assumption that purveyors of burned coffee-muck [I'm looking at you, Starbucks] or toothpaste [the insufferable Tom's of Maine] or fat-burdened ice cream [Benny and Jer, or whatever] are now to serve as our self-assigned moral arbiters.
The world was far less burdensome when over-educated coffee clerks [Baristas? Really? Is that a word?] and disposable ice cream containers didn't carry the mission to make the rest of us aware of what should be our correct response to social justice and other progressive issues. They should really look to mainstream Protestantism to see the results of moral incestuousness.
* I realize that not everyone is familiar with the term "woke". The fact that I am required to be is part of being an Episcopal clergyperson. I quote from the Urban Dictionary:
Although an incorrect tense of awake, a reference to how people should be aware in current affairs.
"While you are obessing with the Kardashians, there are millions of homeless in the world. STAY WOKE"
Lenten Wave #17
“Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.” - George Washington Carver
Ditto beaches and waves.
Friday, March 2, 2018
Bruce Metzger
His life gave The Word assiduous flesh and blood meaning.
If you like arguments, even those that sometimes devolve into fisticuffs, I suppose one could go to a sports bar in Boston and say something like, "How 'bout them Eagles"? Similarly, once upon a time, one could enter a saloon in Manila near Clark Air Force Base and begin to sing the Marine Corps Hymn. Or, if you really fancy a donnybrook, enter a room full of ecumenical Christian clergy and simply say "Bruce Metzger". If you do so, and are looking for me to have your back, I'll be hiding under a table.
Born in a small town in Pennsylvania in 1914, Bruce Metzger displayed the qualities of his era as he was polite, professional, ever a gentleman, helpful, hyper-competent in his chosen field, and would always wave at students at Princeton Theological Seminary as he left the parking lot. That could be a little daunting, as I discovered in the early days of my resident fellowship there. He'd be so busy making sure that he waved that his car would sometimes take an errant path. As a Presbyterian colleague noted when he pulled me away from the front grill of that mid-sized Japanese-marque car, "Careful, man. You almost got Metzgered."
His driving skills weren't what made him controversial, however. It was because, from the mid-20th century to our current day, no one has did more to inform our understanding of holy scripture than Metzger. It is in the translations that he oversaw, the Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version, that we have heard and read in worship during the bulk of my lifetime. Many of us, especially scholars trained to plumb ever deeper understanding from the fixed canon of scripture, appreciate his devotion and accomplishments. Others, whose faith depends not on interpretation and lyricism, but on the hardness of unshakable authority reinforced by an unchanging regard for a spiritual document, think him more or less the spawn of Satan.
Welcome to my world, folks. If you're looking for Christian love and charity, allow me to chortle.
Earlier in my clergy career I had attended what was the flagship seminary of the Episcopal Church. While there, earning a Master of Divinity degree, I was acquainted with a professor who had never left the seminary. He had earned all of his degrees there and had held a tenured teaching position for almost three decades. He had never served as a rector, chaired a vestry meeting, or dealt with an obstreperous altar guild. He simply taught his courses, occasionally published some prosaic bit of minor academic work, and generally behaved in an entitled, condescending, and sarcastic manner to those of us who had invaded his private domain.
So, over a decade later, now working on my doctorate at PTS, I felt some trepidation when being introduced to Metzger and discovering that he, too, had never left the confines of his seminary. He had arrived there in 1935 as a callow youth from a small college in Pennsylvania and had earned all of his subsequent degrees on that pleasant campus. The fact that he had married the seminary dean's daughter around the same time he was made a professor tended to reinforce my budding prejudice.
However, instead of some sour, contemptuous and self-satisfied niche scholar, I discovered an example of a vanishing species of Protestant teacher: The kind, gentlemanly, genuine person of faith. Even better, one who was actually interested in my subject area and thesis. Presbyterians 1, Episcopalians 0.
By the 1950's, Metzger had become the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary and was elected or otherwise named chairman or president of a variety of societies and organizations important to the study and translation of scripture. In addition, he carried a variety of honorary degrees from institutions around the world.
While he would annually publish books in his field, including a few that are still indispensable in understanding how sacred literature is translated, it is his work as a contributor to the National Council of Churches' Revised Standard Version of The Holy Bible that would have the most pervasive influence. As stated in its preface, the RSV translation would "preserve all that is best in the English Bible as it has been known and used through the centuries [and] put the message of the Bible in simple, enduring words that are worthy to stand in the great Tyndale-King James tradition." So important and mainstream was this new translation that one of the original editions was presented to then-President Harry Truman.
While it was recognized as the most accurate translation to date, as language is a living thing, it still was in need of some improvement, especially given increasing knowledge of Biblical languages permitted through continued archaeological research. By the 1980's, the translation of what would be known as the New Revised Standard Version would be organized, this time with Metzger as the chairman of its Committee on Translators. Since its release, the NRSV has become the standard text in use by the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Canada, and is officially approved by the Catholic Church. It is listed in the Canons of The Episcopal Church [of the United States] as its primary translation.
Consider the difference between these translations of Acts 10:34-35. The first, from the King James Version:
By the mid-1990's, after he had retired from the NRSV committee and from his professorship, he still kept office hours and worked on subsequent books about the challenge and need of scrupulous accuracy and lyrical sensitivity in scriptural translation. One day I, and a collection of my colleagues, stopped by to introduce ourselves, I suppose as fellow scholars, but I think mostly to have a moment with the one, true "rock star" of Biblical studies.
While in light conversation with him, I noticed a cremation urn, a cenotaph, sitting on a bookshelf in the office. While I was curious, imagining it perhaps to be the remains of his favorite pet or some such, one of my bolder colleagues did something I would have never thought to do: He asked him about it.
"That was originally a Bible in the Revised Standard Version. A Baptist preacher somewhere in the South took umbrage at anything that would assume to replace the King James Version so he lit it on fire at a church service. Can you imagine burning a Bible, any Bible, at a service? Anyway, he sent the ashes to me in the urn. It's a good reminder of how important particular translations can be to Christians."
Yes, that's one thing of which it was a reminder.
Bruce Metzger would, in the King James' formulation, cease to be mortal in his 93rd year, still recognized as the most influential scholar of the Holy Bible of the 20th and, thus far, 21st centuries. I am told the cenotaph, for those curious, continues to passed like a torch to subsequent translators of scripture.
Born in a small town in Pennsylvania in 1914, Bruce Metzger displayed the qualities of his era as he was polite, professional, ever a gentleman, helpful, hyper-competent in his chosen field, and would always wave at students at Princeton Theological Seminary as he left the parking lot. That could be a little daunting, as I discovered in the early days of my resident fellowship there. He'd be so busy making sure that he waved that his car would sometimes take an errant path. As a Presbyterian colleague noted when he pulled me away from the front grill of that mid-sized Japanese-marque car, "Careful, man. You almost got Metzgered."
His driving skills weren't what made him controversial, however. It was because, from the mid-20th century to our current day, no one has did more to inform our understanding of holy scripture than Metzger. It is in the translations that he oversaw, the Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version, that we have heard and read in worship during the bulk of my lifetime. Many of us, especially scholars trained to plumb ever deeper understanding from the fixed canon of scripture, appreciate his devotion and accomplishments. Others, whose faith depends not on interpretation and lyricism, but on the hardness of unshakable authority reinforced by an unchanging regard for a spiritual document, think him more or less the spawn of Satan.
Welcome to my world, folks. If you're looking for Christian love and charity, allow me to chortle.
Earlier in my clergy career I had attended what was the flagship seminary of the Episcopal Church. While there, earning a Master of Divinity degree, I was acquainted with a professor who had never left the seminary. He had earned all of his degrees there and had held a tenured teaching position for almost three decades. He had never served as a rector, chaired a vestry meeting, or dealt with an obstreperous altar guild. He simply taught his courses, occasionally published some prosaic bit of minor academic work, and generally behaved in an entitled, condescending, and sarcastic manner to those of us who had invaded his private domain.
So, over a decade later, now working on my doctorate at PTS, I felt some trepidation when being introduced to Metzger and discovering that he, too, had never left the confines of his seminary. He had arrived there in 1935 as a callow youth from a small college in Pennsylvania and had earned all of his subsequent degrees on that pleasant campus. The fact that he had married the seminary dean's daughter around the same time he was made a professor tended to reinforce my budding prejudice.
However, instead of some sour, contemptuous and self-satisfied niche scholar, I discovered an example of a vanishing species of Protestant teacher: The kind, gentlemanly, genuine person of faith. Even better, one who was actually interested in my subject area and thesis. Presbyterians 1, Episcopalians 0.
By the 1950's, Metzger had become the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary and was elected or otherwise named chairman or president of a variety of societies and organizations important to the study and translation of scripture. In addition, he carried a variety of honorary degrees from institutions around the world.
While he would annually publish books in his field, including a few that are still indispensable in understanding how sacred literature is translated, it is his work as a contributor to the National Council of Churches' Revised Standard Version of The Holy Bible that would have the most pervasive influence. As stated in its preface, the RSV translation would "preserve all that is best in the English Bible as it has been known and used through the centuries [and] put the message of the Bible in simple, enduring words that are worthy to stand in the great Tyndale-King James tradition." So important and mainstream was this new translation that one of the original editions was presented to then-President Harry Truman.
While it was recognized as the most accurate translation to date, as language is a living thing, it still was in need of some improvement, especially given increasing knowledge of Biblical languages permitted through continued archaeological research. By the 1980's, the translation of what would be known as the New Revised Standard Version would be organized, this time with Metzger as the chairman of its Committee on Translators. Since its release, the NRSV has become the standard text in use by the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Canada, and is officially approved by the Catholic Church. It is listed in the Canons of The Episcopal Church [of the United States] as its primary translation.
Consider the difference between these translations of Acts 10:34-35. The first, from the King James Version:
Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.Now the NRSV:
Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.The message in the latter is not only clearer but, in its more accurate form, a stirring reminder of what made Christianity particular. It is no small wonder that the passage is annually offered on Easter morning.
By the mid-1990's, after he had retired from the NRSV committee and from his professorship, he still kept office hours and worked on subsequent books about the challenge and need of scrupulous accuracy and lyrical sensitivity in scriptural translation. One day I, and a collection of my colleagues, stopped by to introduce ourselves, I suppose as fellow scholars, but I think mostly to have a moment with the one, true "rock star" of Biblical studies.
While in light conversation with him, I noticed a cremation urn, a cenotaph, sitting on a bookshelf in the office. While I was curious, imagining it perhaps to be the remains of his favorite pet or some such, one of my bolder colleagues did something I would have never thought to do: He asked him about it.
"That was originally a Bible in the Revised Standard Version. A Baptist preacher somewhere in the South took umbrage at anything that would assume to replace the King James Version so he lit it on fire at a church service. Can you imagine burning a Bible, any Bible, at a service? Anyway, he sent the ashes to me in the urn. It's a good reminder of how important particular translations can be to Christians."
Yes, that's one thing of which it was a reminder.
Bruce Metzger would, in the King James' formulation, cease to be mortal in his 93rd year, still recognized as the most influential scholar of the Holy Bible of the 20th and, thus far, 21st centuries. I am told the cenotaph, for those curious, continues to passed like a torch to subsequent translators of scripture.
Lenten Wave #16
“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.” - Mother Theresa
I have one quibble. Some of us can find God in the deafening noise of the surf.
Thursday, March 1, 2018
Sorry, But I've Had Four Scotches and This is Funny*
Man issues warning after losing thousands during online monkey purchase
*A cultural reference, and not an admission of drunkenness, for those who would report me to ecclesial authorities.
*A cultural reference, and not an admission of drunkenness, for those who would report me to ecclesial authorities.
A Pungent Observation
When I was coming of age, it was conservatives who wanted to ban things. They wanted to ban certain movies, types of music, some books, etc. Words and thoughts were of particular concern to them. I believe the current term for this, the one that is used mostly by morons, is "problematic".
Nowadays, it's the liberals who want to ban the same things. Two perspectives that share the same grotesquerie, depending on their place in history. Remarkable, isn't it?
Nowadays, it's the liberals who want to ban the same things. Two perspectives that share the same grotesquerie, depending on their place in history. Remarkable, isn't it?
No Surprise, As He Was Often Uncomfortable Around Christians
Former President Barack Obama is not planning to attend memorial services for the late evangelist Rev. Billy Graham this week.
[Don't lose control of yourself. The headline is meant as an observation, not a criticism. Such discomfort is representative of his generation's relationship with religion.]
[Don't lose control of yourself. The headline is meant as an observation, not a criticism. Such discomfort is representative of his generation's relationship with religion.]
Lenten Wave #15
I've always found surfing competitions abstract. It's like holding a prayer competition. The activity is insular, dependent on what the individual surfer matching what some judge, sitting comfortably under a canopy on the beach, thinks is important. I don’t know exactly how you can judge a surfing contest, as what may appear to the observer as the clumsiest moment in wave riding is actually something of sublime experience to the surfer. As is a common expression in the surf community, “The best surfer out there is the one having the most fun.”
I remember the first time I achieved a life’s dream of actually riding within the tube of the wave, the so-called “green room”. I lasted about three seconds before being crushed by the wave and held to the bottom as if by a giant hand. When I was done coughing up the water, something made more difficult by the fact I was also laughing with joy, I felt like the best surfer on the beach. The others, the ones who were able to stay on their boards, might have disagreed, but I know there was no one happier than I was.
In prayer, I offer up to God what I think is appropriate. I'm never all that sure about it. though. Like my style on the waves, I feel as if all of my prayers are clumsy. Yet I always receive an answer. When I pray, whether with a congregation or in those quiet moments on my own, I know the happiness that Christians can know. It doesn’t matter what others think, or what I think, of my spiritual abilities. God has granted me a way to know happiness and, with others, be the best Christian I can be.
Sometimes, when there is no one around to judge me a lunatic, I even give a joyful laugh.
In prayer, I offer up to God what I think is appropriate. I'm never all that sure about it. though. Like my style on the waves, I feel as if all of my prayers are clumsy. Yet I always receive an answer. When I pray, whether with a congregation or in those quiet moments on my own, I know the happiness that Christians can know. It doesn’t matter what others think, or what I think, of my spiritual abilities. God has granted me a way to know happiness and, with others, be the best Christian I can be.
Sometimes, when there is no one around to judge me a lunatic, I even give a joyful laugh.
- an excerpt from Reading Water, which I really hope gets finished and published this year.
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
Scotland Will Get One Foot of Snow; Cancels Everything
Well, so much for Celtic fortitude. Also, the Glasgow vs. Dundee soccer match has been cancelled.
'Avoid travel' in red area says minister
'Avoid travel' in red area says minister
Lenten Wave #14
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." - Albert Einstein
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Stories Like This Always Make Me Homesick for Northeastern Ohio
McDonald's manager in Cleveland accused of firing shots at customers
I mean, he's the manager. That's part of his job.
Bonus: It's just three miles from the house in which I grew up and the McDonald's to which we'd go when I was in high school. Ah, memories.
I mean, he's the manager. That's part of his job.
Bonus: It's just three miles from the house in which I grew up and the McDonald's to which we'd go when I was in high school. Ah, memories.
A Cogent, Sober Explanation
What does “identity politics” mean?
“Identity politics” is the term given to a popular practice in which politicians divide people into group identities and inform them that they’re victims of a shadowy, systemic, oppressive power structure, and anyone who disagrees with them on any social issue is not an individual with valid ideas worth considering but is bigoted, full of hate, and wants them and everyone in their group to die a terrible death.
Why do politicians encourage identity politics?
To position themselves at the top of the actual societal power structure.
“Identity politics” is the term given to a popular practice in which politicians divide people into group identities and inform them that they’re victims of a shadowy, systemic, oppressive power structure, and anyone who disagrees with them on any social issue is not an individual with valid ideas worth considering but is bigoted, full of hate, and wants them and everyone in their group to die a terrible death.
Why do politicians encourage identity politics?
To position themselves at the top of the actual societal power structure.
Another Lenten Wave
“The waves are like life, man. And I don’t mean that like in those books about surfing. Waves aren’t about metaphysics or Eastern religion or Californicated gibberish. Everyone tries to apply some deep meaning to life, too. They create massive organizations to define it. Folks have tried throughout history to apply meaning to it, and life resists it. Life is just life. That’s why it’s like the waves. All of that verbiage, all of those words to try to turn a wave into something mystical, and the wave just is. You can tell me about energy and gravity and moon phases and [stuff], but I don’t care. I know it’s just a wave. You just ride it. Like, it’s just life, we just live it. And even when we think it’s over, we still ride it.”
- Stash, a surf bum [never did get his last name, but the story is found here].
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