The Heart of Anglican Bible Study

Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, gave a talk at the Lambeth Conference that went relatively uncommented-on over the last few months. Fulcrum has finally put the text up here. I want to highlight a tiny portion - though certainly his talk was much farther ranging and insightful than this small bit - that really struck me.

All this is of course nurtured by the straightforward but deeply powerful tradition of the daily offices, with the great narratives of scripture read through day by day, preferably on a lectio continua basis, so that ‘living prayerfully within the story’ is the most formative thing, next to the Eucharist itself, which Anglicans do. Classic mattins and evensong, in fact, are basically showcases for scripture, and the point of reading Old and New Testaments like that is not so much to ‘remind ourselves of that bit of the Bible’, as to use that small selection as a window through which we can see, with the eyes of mind and heart, the entire sweep of the whole Bible, so that our ‘telling of the story’ is not actually aimed primarily at informing or reminding one another but rather at praising God for his mighty acts, and acquiring the habit of living within the story of them as we do so. That, I suggest, is the heart of Anglican Bible study.

I've always read the Bible to "learn that bit"... It didn't really occur to me to take it in a broader context of the whole Story (and, yes, I will capitalize Story here!) I've been disappointed with our Sunday School classes at church recently because we've been reading books about the Bible, or about Christianity. And I think this is why I've been disappointed, but I didn't really know or understand why until I finished reading this article. I want to go to Sunday School (and every night in between) and READ the Bible - not to memorize specific vignettes, but to read and worship God in awe of his might and power. I want to talk about the Scriptures with other Christians, and see what they think, and see how they may fit the passages we read into the larger fabric of the Story. As we see the Story come to life, and as we see how we fit into the story, we also revel in the Glory of God.

Of course, I'm reminded of Tolkien here (I should've used an obscure Tolkien reference in my blog name, shouldn't I?) where Sam and Frodo are talking about the story, and how they are taking their place in it. Sam says, "Why, to think of it, we're in the same tale still! It's going on. Don't the great tales never end?" (From Two Towers, "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol") But I think Bishop Wright is making the same case - we ARE part of that great Biblical Story, and it's still going on. And it's up to us to see our part through as best we can, with God's help.

(Tip o' the Tinfoil Hat to Stand Firm)

Fame Junkies?

I am currently reading a book called Fame Junkies by Jake Halpern. It looks closely at the obsession (yes, that is the word he uses) that Americans have with celebrity. It's a depressing book, but an excellent look into what he calls the three subcultures of fame: the wanna-be-famous, the celebrity assistants (and hangers on) and the die-hard fans.

I was telling a friend about it, and we digressed into a discussion of "news". The book points out that more people watch "American Idol" than the nightly news. Why is that? Even worse was this: on January 7, 2005, there were five important stories. A breakthrough in AIDS research, a Bush pension insurance rescue plan, an opposition plan to thwart a social security proposal, an investigation report into the UN's oil-for-food scandal, and a mistress of an FBI agent arrested for stealing national secrets. On the tv headlines were "Jennifer Anniston and Brad Pitt have split up." A later word-count analysis of CNN's transcripts revealed that they gave this last story more coverage than ALL FIVE of the other news stories put together. Or how about the fact that the three major news networks devoted 26 minutes of airtime to the Darfur tragedy and 130 minutes to the Martha Stewart scandal? (p. 193-194) Ouch. What in the world does this say about our priorities?

So what is "news" supposed to be these days? Is it any information on recent events - the more lurid the better? Is it whatever fad is whizzing around the internet? Or does it have a more vaporous, yet deeper, meaning? Something like, "unbiased facts that deal with serious topics and events"? I favor the latter, but that's just me. Here's my beef, though: Why is it that I can only watch the first three minutes of CNN Headline News - after that it becomes a mishmash of ambulance chasing, scare tactics and stupid celebrity tricks? But I can then go on BBC News online and discover that India has launched a moon mission! A MOON mission! (On the CNN homepage? "Chimp takes Segway for a ride." India's moon mission is buried as a third level entry under "tech".) Now, I understand the need for "feel-good" stories. But I don't understand replacing stories of actual consequence with the lady who built a shed to live in because she's allergic to everything. (BTW, How many Americans knew that Venezuela persona non grata'd our Ambassador in early September?)

I could also go on a rant about the media bias today, but because Orson Scott Card does it so much better I will let him speak for himself. Go here to read his article Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On The Lights? If you're a sci-fi/fantasy fan, he's the author of Ender's Game and the Alvin Maker series. (He also wrote a fabulous novelization of the movie Abyss!) Regardless of what his faith is (He's LDS) and regardless of his political leanings (he's a Democrat) he is not afraid to point out that the emperor has no clothes. And that is amazingly refreshing these days.

Can an antelope be a document?

This is a nerdy, librarian-type post. Consider yourself warned. ::grin::

Suzanne Briet, one of the founding presences behind modern day imformation studies programs, once posed the question, "Can an antelope be a document?" in her article/pamphlet called What is Documentation?. I won't go into all the gory details, but that argument has stayed with me since I read it at FSU. She is essentially stating that a document is evidence in support of a fact. Paul Otlet, writing slightly before Briet, said that you can have information (documentation) about objects, but the objects themselves become documents if you are informed by observing them. So... if you have a map, can it be a document? (Yes.) If you have a photograph can it be a document? (Definitely.) If you have a dinosaur bone, is that a document... does that inform us? (Yes, ask any museum curator!) Well, if a dinosaur bone is a document, can an animal in a zoo, say... an antelope.. be one? (If the zoo = the museum, then doesn't the antelope = the dinosaur bone?) If you're really interested in this, I recommend Michael Buckland's treatment of the argument here which he calls "information-as-thing."

I find this incredibly intriguing, and for 1951, it was amazingly farsighted. We catalog things now that don't even exist in the real "brick and mortar" world - electronic resources and video and all kinds of stuff. And we do that because we are informed by these bits and bytes that flash across our computer screen. So I was deeply reminded of Otlet and Briet's arguments when I saw this story on Wired's website: Browse the Artifacts of Geek History. There are books, of course, but they're covered in precious gems. And there's a Sputnik rocket. Dinosaur skeletons. An Enigma machine. Escher-like woodwork. A hand-painted book on dwarves, embellished with gold and silver. I could spend weeks in this library and never be bored!

But it got me thinking. In the library field, they're known as "realia." Which is quite a dry and dusty term for all these amazing objects that you can see and touch and manipulate. For Briet and Otlet, these items speak for themselves. We can have - and should have - books and papers telling us about each one (and many in this collection have just that!) I can read all about the Soviet Sputnik program, and how the Germans used the Enigma machine to send coded messages to their submarines in World War II. I can look at books of anatomy and physiology about dinosaurs and human brains. I can even read a book about rare books (doesn't that seem like a contradiction?), hand painted and studded with jewels. But all of those resources - however valuable - simply pales in comparison to being in a place where you can touch a skeleton. And hold a meteorite. And tap a code into a machine. And feel the rubies and brush strokes of a 16th century book on jousting.

What does that say about me? I'm not really sure, but I think I'd prefer antelopes to electrons any day!

Heebie Jeebie Alert

We live in the country. I've always known that on some level, but it really became clear this weekend. The professor had been out doing some yard work when he came barreling in the back door, rushed to the study, then headed outside again with camera in hand. I was doing laundry, thusly it didn't take much to distract me from that tedious chore and follow him out the door, intensely curious. I knew one of his hobbies was taking nature photos - hummingbirds, interesting flowers, creepy insects, bizarre cloud formations - so I assumed he'd found something curious to photograph.


I should've stayed in the house. Because now I'm afraid to venture into the yard for fear I'll tumble into something like THIS:

Now I know, for-sure-without-a-doubt, that We. Live. In. The. Country. And I also know without a doubt that pure evil exists, and it takes the form of arachnids with skull-like yellow markings on its seemingly armoured abdomen. The web itself was beautiful, perfectly formed and about four feet across. And there's the real problem. It was spanning two trees. In a place where I sometimes walk. AAaaarrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh.

Now, here's the real question... what kind of spider is it? I have no clue. We couldn't find it in the library's Spiders and Insects book. I am positively convinced of its poisonous lethality, razor sharp pincers, and affinity for humans as an after-dinner delicacy. (That cricket in its web was just for show, I am sure.) So if you know what it is, let me know. And then I can have those warning and caution signs printed for our back gate!

50 Greatest Villains in Literature

You just never know what you're going to find when you walk out the door in the morning. Or as Bilbo Baggins once said, "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Metaphorically speaking (of course) that can be applied to a few minutes of internet browsing combined with a hefty dose of serendipity. Today, while doing something completely different, I landed on an article that made my literature-major-antennae perk up and take notice.

The Telegraph (A London paper) got a few literary critics together and compiled a list of the 50 Greatest Villains in Literature. The article begins:

Compiling a list of the 50 Greatest Villains in Literature, without too much recourse to comics and children's books, proved trickier than we'd imagined - but gosh it was fun.

It's perhaps the nature of grown-up literature that it doesn't all that often have villains, in the sense of coal-black embodiments of the principle of evil. And even when it does, it's not always so easy to tell who they are. Is God the baddie, or Satan?Ahab, or the white whale?

Yet even writers as subtle as Vladimir Nabokov have spiced their work with a fiend or two. And here they are. We hope you'll furnish a few more we missed. These are the best of the worst: bloodsuckers, pederasts, cannibals, Old Etonians...the dastardliest dastards ever to have lashed damsel to track and waited for a through train.

So check it out. See where villains like Voldemort, the White Witch, Iago, Milton's Satan, Moriarty, and Sauron fall in the grand scheme of things. I'm still considering who I think was seriously overlooked. Certainly some Stephen King bad guys are missing - Randall Flagg and Annie Wilkes, and non-human characters like Cujo (who probably contributed to my deep-seated fear of large dogs!).

And the authors bring up a good question. Why is it that adult literature often has really distorted villains, such that we are never really sure they're a bad guy at all? And kids' books just nail it - you know exactly who the villain is and you rejoice in his ultimate downfall. Indeed, because you KNOW he's the villain you know, just KNOW, he will never triumph in his nefarious plans. Is it because the books for children have, as part of their structure, "life lessons" in the form of good guys and bad guys? With the implicit (or explicit) encouragement to be like the ones wearing white? And if so, is that really the ultimate purpose of literature? Should a book be read as an example of good and evil, a teaching tool for right belief, a way to discern and build upon a particular worldview?

Or, on the other hand, is literature simply a way to build upon more prosaic endeavours - the more you read the more you learn about good writing, the more you learn about good writing the better you write, the better you write, the better a student you become and so on and so on. The characters are interesting because if they weren't no one would read and ... well, you get the idea. (I'm not saying I have an answer here - it's an honest question.)

Well, I suppose I do have an ulterior motive, if not any kind of answer. The philospher is working on a book about classical education, and we've been having conversations about whether or not literature should be included as part of the trivium. And if it should be included... why? This summer we spent a large part of a West Virginia vacation with our favorite biologist debating this very question. We were talking about higher education, but the question applies equally well, I think, to juvenile literature. The philosopher managed to shoot down both of the theories I mentioned above, using his well-trained philosophic craft and deep understanding of the underlying issues. If I had a brain for that kind of thing I'd happily relate his conclusions, but I only vaguely understood him then and now that several months have passed the rhetoric is even more muddled in my mind. He tells me that he's come up with an excellent argument for the inclusion of literature in the classical trivium now, but I have yet to hear his exposition on that particular case.

So anyway, what do y'all think? Did you see any glaring holes in the villains list? And if you're so inclined to stretch your brain along the lines of my other train of thought, do you think there's a good argument for including the study of literature in the trivium?

[Enter 1000 Words Here]

The professor, my dad, and I went to Florida this weekend. Friday night we stayed at a hotel in Marianna (a very non-descript, hotel-at-an-interstate-exit sort of place). We drove over to Tallahassee Saturday morning. The professor headed for FSU's Strozier library, where he planned to spend the entire day working on his book about "the philosophic life and classical education" (the newest subtitle for his cranky book about philosophy).



My dad and I, on the other hand, headed down to St. Marks Lighthouse. It was absolutely stunning. It's right on the gulf at the headwaters of the St. Marks River, and offers a beautiful panorama of marsh, bayou, and coastline. As I stood looking out at this desolate landscape, I was in awe of God's creation. It is desolate at first glance, but as you stand quietly and watch, you see the grasses and palmettos blowing in the breeze, and then you start to notice the wildlife moving about - dozens of species of birds, and even a gator or two. The area is also a national wildlife preserve, and serves as a roost for over 250 species of birds. I wish I'd brought my binoculars, because we saw - I think - an ibis, a snowy egret, and a blue heron. There were many others, but they moved to fast to identify. Water birds are easy, because, well, they stand still near the water's edge for long periods of time!

As an aside, I won't really talk about the swarms of love bugs. There were so many at the lighthouse proper that dad and I only stayed a few minutes. They would land by the dozens all over your back and legs. If you stamped your feet they would fly about six inches away and land again. And our new car was positively covered in the things by the time we got back home. EEEEW.

Afer our jaunt to the coast, we headed back to Tallahassee for the REAL reason for our Florida Vacation. Dad and I had tickets to the FSU/Wake Forest football game. I won't go into detail. Dad's comment? "Wake wanted to lose this game. FSU wanted to lose MORE!" Still, we had good seats and we got to see Chief Osceola with Renegade and the Marching Chiefs. So it wasn't a total loss. (OK, the GAME was a total loss, but the trip wasn't!)

Do you sense a disturbance in the Force?

Over in Switzerland yesterday, they cranked up the largest supercollider in the known universe (I say "known" universe, because who knows what the little green men in other universes have done thus far!) CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) has assured the world's population that it is perfectly safe - the galaxy has been doing this for "Billions and Billions" of years so no need to worry that we're doing it underground in Switzerland. The skeptics, on the other hand, started wailing about miniature, invisible black holes and other destructive anomalies (though you'd think they could come up with a better name than "strangelets") consuming the earth and destroying all matter in its matrix.

Well, I've read that story already. It's by Stephen King, called The Langoliers. I'm not thinking so much about the time travel aspects of the story, but it's the description of the Langoliers themselves that strike a common cord. And if you saw that BAD made-for-tv version of this some years ago, visually they looked like black masses with teeth eating the world. (Yikes - now I sound like the cult of Cuthulu!) So these fearful folk should come up with a better description, otherwise King could sue them for infringement on his intellectual property!

Anyway, I thought of something much more practical and of real concern.... did you sense a disturbance in the Force yesterday? Could these "strangelets" actually be midi-chlorians, destined to overwhelm the world and create uber-Jedi? >(As an aside, in the linked article, doesn't the image of the Kennewick Man look at lot like Patrick Stewart??) So that, I think, should be our real locus of worry. I can see it now. There's going to be a huge influx of uber-Sith and uber-Jedi, fighting for supremacy in Manhattan, and - like Predator vs. Alien - we unfortunate commoners will be caught in the middle! Aaaah!