In mathematics you don’t understand things, you just get used to them.
-John von Neumann
More to “belief” than a thought in your head
Before discussing a subject, Wright often begins by dealing with the potential pitfalls of contemporary linguistics:
This is where our word “belief” can be inadequate or even misleading. What the early Christians meant by “belief” included both believing that God had DONE certain things and believing IN the God who had done them. This is not belief that God exists, though clearly that is involved, too, but loving, grateful trust.
-N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, p.207
Coffee and beauty
This, an excellent quote from coffee aficionado Peter Giuliano appears in God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee:
“Fundamentally,” Peter told me, “my interest in coffee is aesthetic. My family is from Sicily,” he explained. “I was brought up by my grandmother, who didn’t speak English. I learned rom her that life is short, brutish, and cheap and that misery lies in wait for you. What interests me in coffee is the beauty of it. The beauty of the moment that coffee can create.” (p.234)
Throughout the hardest ups and downs of life in the past few years, coffee has been a consistant comfort. For a while I was afraid my love of coffee might simply a hedonistic pleasure or maybe even a chemical dependence. Though there surely a bit of both of those things involved, my heart said there was something more. A really good coffee is more like looking at a beautiful piece of art or reading a profound story. It’s like a piece of fallen creation that has been redeemed. It is a good thing in both the eyes of God and man. We as men just have refined techniques of preparing and brewing it. It is the Lord who made the fruit, beginning a long time ago somewhere in Africa. Like any of his creations, it has a purpose. Be amazed.
Along these lines, Doug Wilson has been posting a lot lately on creation and food, God and beauty in cooking. He mostly riffs of of Robert Capon’s quirky book, The Supper of the Lamb. Some of these are really worth reading.
Answer: The Library of Alexandria
My first week as a freshman in college, I was given the swift kick in the rear that is Dan Bukvich’s music theory and ear training course. 5 days a week. Very intense. No whining. I loved it, though I fell into some of the traps he sets for students early on.
I remember the very first lecture. After no introduction and with 80 students cramped together on the rehearsal room floor, we were taught a rhythm and concentration exercise involving plastic cups. After 30 minutes of this, he gave a short introduction and wrote a few notes on the chalk-board. He quickly mentioned that we would be learning a lot of something called “solfege“, and also said that the Library of Alexandra, which held all the knowledge of the ancient world, was burned in 391 AD as collateral damage when Emperor Theodosius had all pagan temples destroyed. Just an anecdote.
Back for class the next day. Chairs all out in rows. Exam! Test! Your first test of the semester already. This WILL count heavily in your grade. Etc. Take out a piece of paper. Write you name down. The test is pass or fail. One question: What year was the Library of Alexandria burned? OK, times up, hand you test into one of the TAs.
The collective murmer of “oh crap…” that went up from the room was a CLASSIC moment. From then on, my eyes and ears were glued to Dan. You learn to love him. Or not. Within a week, the class was down to about 50. They decided they didn’t really want to study music after all.
N.T. Wright on reading scripture and trying to meet with God
Reading scripture, like praying or sharing in the sacraments, is one of the means by which the life of heaven and the life of earth interlock. (This is what older writers were referring to when they spoke of “the means of grace.” It isn’t that we can control God’s grace, but that there are, so to speak, places to go where God has promised to meet with his people, even if sometimes when we turn up it feels as though God has forgotten the date. More usually it’s the other way around.) We read scripture in order to hear God addressing us – us, here and now, today.
– N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, p.188
Mad Lib Headlines
Tonight, on the front page of Yahoo, I was scanning headlines and saw:
Wow. Slow news day I guess. I’m sorry if you live in Cambodia and like yummy rats. I really am. But this headline sounds like it came straight out of a Mad Libs book!
Price of _________________ (an animal)
__________________________ (a multiplier)
in ________________________ (a foreign country)
due to ____________________ (a negative event).
You might end just as easily have ended up with:
Price of hamsters doubles in Canada due to power shortage.
or
Price of rubber duckies in Botswana triples due to flooding.
Leaving the boat to walk
What do we desire the Christian community to be? What do we believe Jesus wanted it to be? A vibrant community where the people care for each other with their time and money. Nobody is left hungry. Pregnant mothers are not alone. Sinners are accepted but also challenged by accountability and propelled by forward momentum. Everyone is also fed and strengthened with solid teaching and friendship. Sounds nice, eh? Make’s being a Christian pretty easy too. Maybe too easy… What about when it doesn’t work out that way? What if it’s a disaster or a circus where you’re at? Where do you turn?
We must certainly know how to take care of ourselves and make use of first aid in our own spiritual life. And when we are unable to be carried along by the stream of a fervent simply observance that is completely ordered according to the best and most living tradition, then we must know how to help ourselves. When the stream is dry, we must know how to leave our boat and walk. The fact remains that it is simpler, easier, more secure, and ultimately more perfect if a monk can live purely according to the spirit of his vocation, interested in his monastic conversation more than in his own interior reactions, and more concerned with te love of God and his brethren than with the incessant quest for signs of virtue in his own conduct.
-Thomas Merton, Mystics and Zen Masters, p.158
Merton the libertarian?
Thomas Merton on meeting modernism and the secular culture with the Gospel, not something else:
The important thing, therefore, is not for Christians to be found ready, once again, with a glib religious answer for another modern question, but for us to reaffirm, in terms at once contemporary and deeply serious, the Christian message to man’s liberty. We must reemphasize the call of the Gospel to healing and to hope, not merely reaffirm that everything is going to be all right because man is smart and will meet the challenge of evil with the best possible solutions.
And on Christians in politics. That is, not off-loading the work of the church to the feds:
…any claim that this or that policy or strategy deserves a “Christian” sanction and the blessing of the Church must be examined in the light of the principles we have seen. If in actual fact it amounts to the support of the abstract organization, granting or blessing a destructive power to coerce the individual conscience, it is to be rejected as fraudulent, as incompatible with Christian truth, and as disobedience to the Gospel commandment of love. In one word, the Church must not implicitly betray man into the power of their responsible and anonymous “public.” If it does so, it will destroy itself in destroying true freedom and authentic human community. We must certainly recognize the danger of individualism, but we must also be fully aware of where this danger really lies. (Emphasis mine)
(Thomas Merton, Mystics and Zen Master’s, p. 273, 274)
On Specialization
The fox knows many things; the hedgehog one big thing.
– Archilochus (Greek Poet ~640 BC)
The fox is clever and multi-skilled. A jack of all trades.
The hedgehog is a master of one discipline.
A frustration I see in a lot of people, places, and also in myself is the tension between these. Life demands that we be excellent (or at least decent) at a long list of things: parenting, computer skills, car mechanics, lawn care, cooking, reading, socializing, and so on. But it seems nearly all the great people that have gone before us were hedgehogs. They did one thing super well. They made a real difference in the world because they poured their life into one passion and discipline. We KNOW deep down that we could do something just as great, if only we were “allowed” to specialize.
Beethoven was brilliant, but he wouldn’t have written those piano concerto’s if he was busy painting his house. Einstien probably would have never published his works on physics if his job demanded he figure out how to format his data in Excel 2007 and attend that faculty meeting. Itzack Pearlman can play violin like no other because he was still practicing when his fellow violinists were working out at the gym, walking their dog, or what have you. A lot of these “greats” have horrible track records with relationships. They were often lousy husbands, wives, and parents. But if they HAD put the effort in to be a good parents, you and I would not even know they existed. They likely wouldn’t have ever made it to their magnum opus. Your 8-year old daughter inspired by watching the Olympic gymnasts on TV last week? Sorry. She should have started training 5 years ago for it to be anything more than a hobby.
People hoping for a career in high academia especially feel the heat of this. But Rene Girard chuckled when other philosophers scorned him for diving into too many subjects:
People will accuse us of playing at being Pico della Mirandola – the Renaissance Man – certainly a temptation to be resisted today, if we wish to be seen in a favorable light.
(Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, p. 141)
My thinking has been all wrong on this though. Comparing ourselves to others does not bring glory to the Lord. It is a wellspring of despair. Instead, I think we CAN be foxes and still make a difference in this world. We must open our eyes wider. Go kick it hard at work today then come home and fix the mini-van, play with your kids, and do something special for your wife.
N.T. Wright on the appeal of Celtic Christianity
…In particular, and related especially to the part of the world where I now live – Great Britain – the last generation has seen a sudden upsurge of interest in all things Celtic. Indeed, the very word “Celtic” is enough, when attached to music, prayers, buildings, jewelry, T-shirts, and anything else that comes to hand, to win the attention, and often enough the money, of people in today’s Western culture. It seems to speak of a haunting possibility of another world, a world in which God (whoever he may be) is more directly present, a world in which humans get along better with their natural environment, a world with roots far deeper, and a hidden music far richer, than the shrill and shallow world of modern technology, soap operas, and football managers. The world of the ancient Celts – Northumbria, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Ireland, and Scotland – seems a million miles from modern-day Christianity. That is, no doubt, why it is so attractive to people bored or even angry with official religion in Western churches.
But the real center of Celtic Christianity – the monastic life, with great stress on extreme bodily asceticism and energetic evangelism – is hardly what people are looking for today.-N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, p. 23
Wrights hits the nail on the head here. I find it attractive for these very same reasons. It’s still Jesus, but it’s a thousand light-years away from suburbia. I’ve been praying the office of the Northumbria community for a while (on and off). It’s simple daily liturgy and scripture reading schedule. From the comfort of your chair and laptop. No need for a cell at Skellig.