| so i'm jumping ship (like rats from a boat). i'm following the exodus away from xanga to here. what can i say?
i'll blame it on the new user interface (ach!) and only partly on my desire to be cool like everyone else.
please do stop in, keep up, update me about where all of you, good friends, have transplanted yourselves. and we always have an air mattress and a cup of coffee or tea for you.
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| so i'm going to geek out about something right now. fair warning.
recently i've been mourning the way our bibles constrain us to read them. they been so battered, first by liturgical setting and then by private devotional reading, that the stories they present are completely lost in the apparatus. i've been secretly plotting to make my own edition, sans chapter verse markings, where single works (like luke-acts) are put together, and without any annoying section headings. and then i found this. this is cool.
the books of the bible
it's the edition of the bible that i just described. finally some people are freeing scripture from unthought out traditions; finally people are free to hear what the Spirit says in the text. i am excited.
also check out this review.
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| on reflection, i think the basic is christian stance is one of confusion. if we identify with the disciples more than anyone else (perhaps after Jesus), then confusion is our fundamental response to God's revelation of himself.
when i read the Gospels, i can't help but be caught by how strange Jesus seems to act. picture the night of the last supper as narrated by john. the guys are at a party, eating some good food, telling stories, nudging each other in the ribs at private jokes. suddenly Jesus starts speaking about leaving them. what a mood killer. just a day or two ago he rode into jerusalem with the crowds fronting him as a political revolutionary. now he's talking about leaving. but it fits, a little, cuz Jesus has been talking about death. he's been a sort of funk this entire trip to jerusalem. like he's paranoid of the other establishment religious leaders. but he's the miracleworker. he's the one with the big ideas. so they go with it.
the disciples must be so confused. they must cringe at the moment to moment fear of having their feet knocked out from under them. you never know what to expect with Jesus.
i sometimes think that when i'm most disoriented feeling, when i don't know quite what God is doing in my life, only that he is actively surgically altering something or other within me, then i am closest to true religion. similarly, when i'm "caring for the orphan, the alien, and the widow"--however poorly my attempts at it go--i am often quite certain that i have no clue what i'm doing. all my actions seem inconsequential; if God is present here--if Christ is present here--i can't see how. and that confusion is, perhaps, the holy presence of God.
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| i am reading eugene peterson. i never thought i would. i never thought i would enjoy it. i never thought i would be challenged. but i am.
there are parts of my evangelical identity that i hate, that i hate very much. my tendency to draw lines boldly in permanent marker and fixate on them. another is the thomas kincaide-max lucado syndrome that i find myself feeling warm and comfy in in spite of myself. yet i need to be careful not to jettison everything with one unreflective push of a button.
even in my academic pursuits, i believe the point of theology--the point of any interaction with christianity as a thing in itself (which is always a second order move)--is lived spirituality. the living following after Jesus in this very moment. and that's something that (some) evangelicals get right. like this series by eugene peterson.
so i'm trying to read the bible and live like Jesus. and trying to keep my vocabulary on the everyday level that i actually live.
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| i am bringing together the irish and phenomenology (but only at the level of my reading material and the tea i'm drinking).
and they said it couldn't be done...
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