offend someone today . . .

. . . at least you'll know you're doing something.

also, start reading larknews, 'cause i simply can't quote all the funny stories for you. but here's one:

church celebrates fifty years of peace through irrelevance
cincinnati - rolling hills christian church has spent fifty years diligently cultivating a good neighbor image, and this week they celebrated their spiritual irrelevance and moral acquiescence with a sunday morning festival.

"we get along perfectly with everybody in the community," said pastor james doheny before climbing into the dunk tank. "peace is our value of choice."
during the celebration the mayor lauded the church for being "a friend of the entire city."

"there's not one negative thing that could be said about this church, and the citizens of cincinnati appreciate that," he said.

doheny thanked the congregation through tears, and promised to lead the church toward "fifty more years of benign accommodation."

go and do likewise. or, you know, not.

men, etc.

are you a manly man? (listen to bradley's elaboration on what that might mean. it's funny. and good.)

my mom: the first two men were the wrong three men.

me: so, math is fun.

arwen

"you don't have to put a sword in her hand to make her strong"
~l.t.

savage

what did the words exactly mean? he only half knew. but their magic was strong and went on rumbling in his head, and somehow it was as though he had never really hated p before; never really hated him because he had never been able to say how much he hated him. but now he had these words, these words like drums and singing and magic . . . they gave him a reason for hating p; and they made his hatred more real; they even made p himself more real..

~~~

one of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punshments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.

~~~

we haven't any use for old things here.
even when they're beautiful?
particularly when they're beautiful..

~~~

Christianity without tears - that what soma is..

~~~

we prefer to do things comfortably.

but i don't want comfort. i want God, i want poetry, i want real danger, i want freedom, i want goodness. i want sin.

in fact, you're claiming the right to be unhappy.

all right, then, i'm claiming the right to be unhappy.

not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.

[there was a long silence]

i claim them all.

today . . .

. . . has been a long time coming. well, here we are at last.

matchmaker

for anyone who hasn't seen scope's new fresh breath counts campaign yet, check out this ad. this sounds like the guy for me.

maramath for beginners

mara + bbqing = quasi-disaster
frodo + sam = tumnus + lucy = mara almost crying
mara + more than a little pain = whiney baby
mommy + daddy + mara + ravine/boardwalk = good walks
bugs + hair = no fun
mara - procrastination = 0
mara = kevin = lots of excuses
mara + amy = excellent catch-up chat
mara + justin = intense gin games

because kevin asks good questions

it's not simply that the unexamined life is not worth living.

i'd actually argue that the unexamined life is not lived. we are reflective beings: we plan, we foresee, we anticipate. socrates was, of course, referring to contemplation that goes beyond the immediate to the more philosophical. all the same, it is fair to assume that all the members of our species are
involved in some degree of self-examination.

analysis of this kind is impossible without a little contextualization . . . that is, in thinking about the meaning and purpose of my life, i must think about the meaning and purpose of life for my species, in general. anthrolopogy is both integral and quite natural. we all pursue it to varying degrees, often without noticing it. this is most often associated with the context of ethics, but it is equally visible when we strive for a promotion or for a date: we are simultaneously aware of a) what other members of our species ought to find impressive and b) what they actually do find impressive. (i'd love to discuss that discrepancy, but it's not really the subject of this diatribe!)

if i then come to believe that there is an entity who created this species, the character and intentions of that entity become important. if we call the entity "theos" and the study of its being "theology", then we can say that theology necessarily informs anthropology. which, as i've already argued, is essential to life. note: if theos exists, theology is significant *irrespective* of what it tells us about theos. whether we end up at deism or polytheism or whatever, the nature of the creator casts a shadow on the nature of man.

if people find that a partial history of theos' engagement with creation is recorded in a book, then theology must govern how that book is read - hermeneutics and bibliology.

if people organize into assemblies for worship, then theology must govern what they do when they are together - ecclesiology.

if people feel compelled to introduce others to theos, then theology must govern how they go about that task - soteriology, missiology, and homilitics.

various streams of theology - christology, pneumatology, hamartiology, eschatology, and so on - pertain specifically to the theos known as YHWH, but they are part of the essential theology of YHWH, and so necessarily inform the "practical" studies mentioned above.

maybe this seems really obvious . . . but we have to understand who YHWH is before we can understand who we are and how we are to engage with YWHW and one another.

meiosis

my mother doesn't understand me . . . but when i see myself through her eyes, i understand myself better. does that make sense?

i'm knee-deep in italo calvino's "meiosis" as i work on my last essay for until next semester . . .

. . . narrating this story becomes more complicated than when it was a question of a single cell, not only because the description of the relationship must take into account so many things that happen at the same time but above all because it's necessary to establish who is having relations with whom, before specifying what sort of relations they are.

actually, when you come right down to it, defining the sort of relations isn't after all as important as it seems, because saying we have mental relations, for example, or else, for example, physical relations doesn't change much, once mental relationshop involves several billion special cells called neurons which, however, function by receiving stimuli from such a great number of other cells that we might just as well consider all the trillions of cells of the organism at once as we do when we talk about a physical relationship."

ekklesia

maybe you won't do it no matter how nicely i ask. so, i'm taking a chance. we both know it.

just read this story - it's carver's "cathedral", if that matters.

i experienced something similar the other day, you see. in a chapel whose walls are my brown brown hair i knelt at the altar behind my eyelids. it's been a while.

my home must always be within walking distance of a swing set.

that's no longer a mere luxury.

apologetics begins at home

i like plato. i really do. but i much prefer socrates.

suckily, you can't get pure unadulterated socs. he never wrote anything down, so you gotta read plato to get to socs. the trouble? sometimes plato puts his own ideas into socs' mouth.

scholars (who ostensibly know these things) debate and determine which texts are really socratic and which are platonic. even once this is figured out, the reality is that you can only ever see socs through plato's eyes.

i like the church. i really do. but i much prefer God.

the good news is, you can get pure unadulterated God. even though He's never written anything down (you can read the church to get to God, but sometimes the church puts its own ideas into God's mouth.)

BUT, God is alive and, as He ostensiblty knows these things, He helps us when we debate and determine which texts are really God and which are the church (or not). even once this is figured out, the reality is that you don't have to settle for seeing God through the church's eyes.

and that's why God is better than socrates.

ahem. maybe not the only reason.

p.s. this was written in defence of the class kevin and i will be teaching next year.

before i come undone

"what do you want for your birthday?" well, we're going to chapters in a minute so i can come up with a reasonable answer. 'cause there's nothing anyone can say if i tell the truth: i long for fresh adventure! (hard to gift-wrap, i know!)

i concluded a long time ago that it's infinitely harder to write eloquently about joy than about sorrow, so it's no surprise that i'm struggling now. it's just that life is so full. brimming with hope and paradox: a garden in my room, a book in my ears, a song in my eyes.

when i used to play badminton there would be times when my whole right arm would get impatient. it would looooong to smash the birdie, but the set-up would be wrong time after time. the feeling moved up my arm into my whole body until i was just buzzing to smack the birdie over the net with every bit of energy i had. it wasn't out of frustration or anger or sadness; it wasn't cathartic or competitive. it was restlessness.

it's not that i'm bored, you know. and it's not because i just finished reading the narnia series.

maybe we're just made to long for adventure. to buzz like that with everything we've got. until the right set-up arrives?

amended @ 11:18 to add: go here. thanks!

take my hand

must report that i have really missed my sharon. and the last seven hours haven't made up for three years of barely connecting. boo. but yay.

do yourself a favour: go and see the movie "live and become."

"Hips don't lie, but Men and Beasts do" ~ lewkhira

in timeline, paul walker says, "we've got 650 years of knowledge on these guys. if we put our heads together, there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to get out of here and home in 20 minutes."

after all, what does the past have to teach us, anyway? we are by definition more progressive, more advanced, more inclusive, more intelligent, better equiped to do anything. but it's not just arrogance, you know?

there's a resentment that builds up, too. we inherit problems and feel try to atone for the sins of our fathers, and are so bitter against them for leaving us such a legacy.

what, you could have done better? look around! we do it over and over. every generation inherits a fallen world and, just to make sure, we all take turns killing it all over again. we have no moral high ground to stand on, friends. so, if it's not actual superiority, why this attitude?

in everything that rises must converge by flannery o'connor, a young man in the urban south deeply resents his mother's racism. why does her son respond with such violent contempt? the real reason?

he had wonderful memories of the old farm house he'd spent a childhood weekends in. for generation upon generation it had served as the home of plantation and slave owners. that was his family legacy . . . until the world grew up and they eventually gave up the property.

he lost something he loved, simply because it had been gained and maintained through dispicable means. the horror of southern treatment of blacks effectively tainted the most beautiful part of his childhood.

he hates his mom because he desperately wants the gift . . . but can't stomach accepting it because of how it was bought.

"he never spoke of it without contempt or thought of it without longing."

green kangaroo

strongly suspect that my sissy and her boyfriend are in love, and that my parents are, too. my bedroom is between my sister's and my parents', so "love is all around me." the best love is the kind where you don't have to pretend. and you can make funny faces and smell weird and it's ok.

yesterday, i met up with a friend and realized that i was dressed as dumpy as i get in public (baggy jeans and my rmc hoodie). because i know justin loves me no matter what, even if he's never said so.

bought sugar-free vanilla syrup from starbucks. i miss kat.

um, that's bad.

only i could pull an all-nighter to write an 800-word essay. (that's HUNDRED, not THOUSAND.)

"i love writing" is not equal to "i can do it effectively and in a timely fashion."

apparently.

p.s. hey, we got to 10,000 hits long before the first of june. thanks, friends!