:: St. Stephen's Musings ::

:: Monday, November 29, 2004 ::

Agia Sophia Academy In The News

The classical school where I teach Latin was recently noticed by the media.

One of my students was quoted as saying "On Latin days, we take the textbook home because we have to study."

Good girl.

:: Karl :: 9:27:00 AM [Link] ::

The Two Year Blogoversary

This Friday marks the two year "blogoversary" of St. Stephen's Musings.

When I first started out on November 26th 2002, I never thought 456 individual posts and 3,766 reader comments would follow. (Of course, one wonders if my contribution has been little more than "idle words" ... I hope not!)

For your faithful reading, insightful, spirited, charitable dialogue, and fervent prayers I thank you, dear readers.

Like last year's collection, the following "Best of 2004" list contains a small sample of my favorite posts, some of my more controversial rants, as well as several musings that drew a sizable number of comments and further discussion.

* Waterfall and Rocks of Grace

* Self Expression, Art, Worship and the Trivium

* Ontological Change and Iconography: A Debate with Josh

* The Trials of Bodily Illness

* Ecumenical Discord: Neither Silence nor Capitulation Are Options

* The Image of the Invisible God
Part I and Part II

* Star Wars Denominations

* The Liturgical Gripes Series
Part V
Part IV
Part III
Part II
Part I

* Rules for Naming a Boy

* Fighting the Extremes: Blogging about the Faith

* The Elasticity of Orthodoxy

* The Priesthood of All Believers: Giving Advice in the Church

* St. Maximus the Confessor and the Reformed Tradition

* Generational Curses and Party of Five

* A Conversation About Zen

* On the Transfiguration

* Independent Laborers: Freedom and Obedience

* A Calvinist Who Went to an Orthodox Seminary

* Cut to Pieces

* Where Nobody Needs a Savior

* The Home as the Little Church: More on "Ministries"

* Obedience: The Neglected Virtue

* A Strange Encounter

Have a blessed and joyful Thanksgiving Day and weekend!

:: Karl :: 8:11:00 AM [Link] ::

School Related Tidbits

* As a former news editor of a university newspaper, I'd love to see this short documentary about "how universities use tools such as 'speech codes' to force political views upon students."

* Try it. You'll like it.

* Keith muses about why so many Christians go to seminary yet why so many seminarians choose the Ph.D. route instead of active ministry.

* David Bentley Hart, summarizing the deconstructionist mission statement: "Every discourse is reducible to a strategy of power, and every rhetorical transaction to an instance of an original violence."

* Phillippa has gone back to college. Pray for her!

:: Karl :: 8:26:00 AM [Link] ::

Literary Theory Buzzword Bingo

I decided to play a little game during a recent lecture in my literary theory class. After creating an informal bingo card, I eagerly waited for class to start.

Epistemological strategies ... (wow, 30 seconds in and we've got one already) ... intertextuality ... (check!) .... western cultural hegemony ...(is there another kind other than western?) .... patriarchal oppression ...(is it possible to get through a literature lecture without this tired old motif showing up?) ... transgendered texts ... (oh, oh, one more!) ... discourses on class struggle."

Bingo! And in only ten minutes!

The problem here isn't so much with the terminology since it is, in some ways, actually quite useful. What drives me crazy is how often students use the words or phrases without having any idea what they are talking about.

For example, the most recent lecture was on "cultural studies" which is a code phrase for "Marxism rocks." It was abundantly clear during the class discussion that no one had ever read "Das Kapital", "The Communist Manifesto" or "Theory of Surplus Value" but only secondary sources on Marx or, as was painfully clear in a several instances, nothing on the subject of Marxism at all.

The fact that students in an upper-division college course can have such a lack of basic historical knowledge is one of the many travesties of modern education. As C.S. Lewis notes, students today "would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about 'isms' and influences" than the primary sources.

:: Karl :: 7:50:00 AM [Link] ::

Blog Roll Update

I make small updates to the blogroll on a regular basis but I thought I'd highlight just a few of the recent changes/additions for those of you who don't regularly check out my roll:

* Ray Fulmer is blogging from St. Vladimir's Seminary. Excellent ruminations the last few months.

* James' wife is Sophia Says. How many Orthodox husband/wife blogging teams are there now? I show 5 or 6 at last count...

* Josh Claybourn has joined forces with Paul Musgrave and Eric Seymour in a new blogging adventure. Definitely a "must link."

* With the addition of Christina, there are now 6 bloggers (including me) from my parish. Very exciting!

* I'm always on the lookout for new Orthodox bloggers. Send me an email or make a comment if you find one not listed on my roll or if you become one yourself!

:: Karl :: 8:07:00 AM [Link] ::

Social Contract, New Book, and Fellowship 9/11: Random Monday Musings

* Grace reveals, in a scathing yet brilliant "social contract", the idealogy that infects many of our co-workers, family, and friends:

"Since we are too intelligent and enlightened to tolerate mere Christianity or any other traditional religion, we will offer instead our own religious beliefs, which are that good and evil are almost interchangeable, stuff is good and basically there isn't anything to believe in. And you can believe us on this. In fact, we insist that you do. Your religion leads to peace of mind, human dignity and theosis; ours promotes spiritual decay. You see the problem..."

Not counting our own sinfulness, there are days when I think that even Islam takes a back seat to radical secular materialism as the most dangerous adversary of the Church in our time. "Brave New World" has always been the more accurate prediction of our cultural future than "1984" ever was.

* I wouldn't be suprised to see this classic as a required text in my next literary theory class.

* Fellowship 9/11 shows us a Middle Earth kept in constant fear by 'Orc Alerts' and lulled into accepting a piece of legislation, the Patriot Scroll, that infringes on basic civil rights. It is in this atmosphere of confusion, suspicion and dread that Aragorn, backed by the secretive 'Fellowship Group,' makes his headlong rush towards war in Mordor - and Fellowship 9/11 takes us inside that war to tell the stories we haven't heard, illustrating the awful cost to soldiers and to orcs and to their families."
--Props to Jan

:: Karl :: 7:55:00 AM [Link] ::

A Pig Gains No Glory From The Attempt To Fly

I've been told, by a couple of different people recently (and on more than one occasion in the past), that I would make a good priest.

Thinking about my vocation is one of the many issues that percolates in my soul on a daily basis. However, despite the endorsements, I have my doubts for reasons very similar to the musings of S.M. Hutchens:

I am convinced, quite contrary to a great deal of pious wisdom on the subject, that the possession of certain gifts, even in abundance, is not necessarily a sign that one will have the opportunity to employ them in this life, or the blessing of God in their attempted use.

This is because I, and many others I know, have certain powers whose use I firmly believe we have been forbidden-- which must apparently remain latent indefinitely, at least in this life. There are other gifts I regard as far smaller and less important I have been forced to exercise, much to my irritation and chagrin, consistently. It would appear, if not from our lives, then those of the martyrs, that from a strictly pragmatic point of view God is a great waster of his best resources.

We don't, however, have access to the Grand Scheme of Things, don't know precisely what we've been made for, don't know what God values most in us, or what we shall become in glory.

We are like Jane Studdock [from C.S. Lewis' "That Hideous Strength"], who wanted to be admired and valued for her intellect, but finally had to come to grips with the fact that those whose valuations she really cared about in the end valued her for other qualities.

In evaluating our own gifts and callings we need to take this consideration into proper account. While lack of aptitude provides adequate reason to forego some ambitions (a pig gains no glory from the attempt to fly), its possession, alas, does not necessarily demand its exercise--although, of course, it might.

:: Karl :: 8:24:00 AM [Link] ::

A Strange Encounter

"Hey buddy....I think you dropped something!"

I looked up to see who had interrupted my reverie and the face that greeted my gaze was owned by a bright-eyed man in his forties--obviously homeless yet strangely serene. Even in his dirty clothes he seemed almost out of place there on that busy downtown city street.

When his eyes met mine, they seemed to burn into me. I gave him a quizzical look, annoyed that he was talking to me and wondering what kind of drugs he was on. But it was what he said next that scorched the most:

"Your smile!"

It is true, I don't smile often though I'm easily amused. I've been told by others that the worst aspects of my shy, introspective, and brooding personality come through most clearly when I'm not smiling--which is most of the time, I must admit. It probably wouldn't hurt me to pick up that smile and put it on once in a while.

The man quietly walked on, whistling to himself. I am tempted to wonder if it was my guardian angel who tried to tell me what I dropped.

It wouldn't surprise me.

:: Karl :: 7:50:00 AM [Link] ::

Prayer: Tracing Over the Lines

Watching young children writing out Latin vocab words this fall in my class made this response by Fr. David Moser to a question on prayer all the more poignant.

"Is it ok to pray spontaneously or should I always use formal prayer? Is it ok to just 'pour my heart out'...or just know that God knows what is going on?"

It is certainly a good thing to pray spontaneously. The prayer book is like a "primer" for prayer - a lesson book on how to pray. The scripture says that "we
do not know how to pray as we ought" and so the Holy Spirit teaches us to pray. How does the Holy Spirit teach us - in the school of prayer that is the Church.

Those formal prayers in the prayer book are the examples of how to pray, they are the "pouring out of the heart" of people who were experienced in prayer (the saints). We begin to learn to pray by mimicking the examples.

When you learned to write in school, weren't you give letters to trace over and over until you could do them without thinking, and then words to trace over and over and so on. Even now you use those same letters and words in your writing - the letters and words you traced have now become your own and are the means of expressing your own innermost thoughts and feelings.

We "trace over the lines" of the prayers by copying them over and over until they sink in and become "natural", then we use those prayers as the letters and words of our own innermost spiritual expressions. That's the "role" of the "formal" prayers in the prayerbook.

The Fathers, when speaking about prayer of this kind, also teach us that it is a good thing to add our own spontaneous prayers in as much as we are able to our private prayers. Once you learn the basics of how to pray from the prayer book, then you combine and re-combine the elements of the prayers that you learned into new prayers - your own prayers.

:: Karl :: 8:47:00 AM [Link] ::

On Campus, Poem, and a New Translation: Random Friday Musings

* I was on campus at the university all morning on Thursday doing research for a paper, working in the computer lab, and reading literary theory textbooks at the local coffee shop. While I was there it dawned on me that it had been 6 years since I'd spent more than 4 hours in a row on a college campus. Being a part-time commuter student for so long had made me forget how much fun it was to be a "real" student....

* The collective mood on campus has never been so despondent and suicidal. Hmmmmm....it couldn't have anything to do with the events of Tuesday night, now could it?

* My sister-in-law is a very talented artist. Check out her latest poem.. (The wife and I were at the same party, helping the kids make carmel apples).

* This is hilarious. One of my favorites is their version of John 6:53-54:

Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, if you think you are eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking his blood, you are an idolater, and you have no life in you. Whoever recognizes that I'm speaking figuratively here, even though I could not possibly have chosen a more misleading way to phrase it, is a true disciple, and he has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."

:: Karl :: 8:47:00 AM [Link] ::

Post-Election Pledge and Random Election Musings

* My version of the post election pledge: I promise to prayerfully support the President, even if I didn't vote for him and constructively criticize the President, even if I did vote for him.

Care to join me?

* The amount of vitriolic hatred, infantile poutiness, and ignorant fear mongering already spewing forth from ... (well, you all know who you are) is truly disheartening. I am sad to say it is not very surprising. Grow up, folks.

* Apparently Oregon has decided to change the name of the state to "The People's Socialist Republic of Oregon."

* Time will tell if I was right. I really hope not.

* Two things we clearly need to ignore in the future: exit polling and the mainstream media. Both now fully exposed for the jokes they've become.

* Andrew Sullivan, bemoaning the role moral issues played in the elelction, warns that "the intensity of the passion, and the inherently totalist nature of religiously motivated politics means deep social conflict if we are not careful."

When are people going to realize that secular materialism is a religion too and that its stranglehold on the Democratic Party is as frightening to some as the evangelical influence on the Republicans is to them?

Update: Joe Carter has some excellent notes on the election aftermath as does Jay.

:: Karl :: 11:16:00 AM [Link] ::

Training Them in Love

My wife and I have been musing about how to approach the privileged responsibility of parenthood. I've been thinking about these two quotes:

"Parents cannot give what they do not have...i.e. if they don't have the things of God fully in their hearts, they won't transmit them on to their children". Fr. Anthony Coniaris, from a talk given at our parish fall retreat.

"Here also, however, is a warning for those who wish for their children to follow their faith...You cannot accomplish this through false means. You cannot make or preserve Christians by 'mere conservatism.' It must be done through love. You cannot accomplish through law what can only be done in grace. You must do more than train your children, you must train them in love, for only love can propagate desire for the orthodoxy that is truly Christian." S.M. Hutchens, from Touchstone's "Mere Comments".

Lord have mercy.

Update: "Fatherhood, the burden of love, my unworthiness, the treasure entrusted to me in this little one--this is my cross, my calling, my path to Christ."

:: Karl :: 8:12:00 AM [Link] ::