Anastasis

Well, I’m back…for a moment.  Things are pretty busy at our house of late.  Work, reading and, of course, the girls keep me busy.  I rarely have a free hand to type anything.  I can’t think of a better reason to be indisposed, though.  I love my girls and I delight in taking on the role of a father.

All that said, I’ve decided to officially take a leave from blogging (not that I’ve actually posted anything in a couple of months).  Don’t expect anything here for, say, six months or so.  Perhaps by then I’ll have a little bit more freedom to sit down at the keyboard and type up the kinds of essays and observations that I’d like to.

Best to all of you,

C.

Here’s a link to a NY Times article that discusses the changes taking place in a Portland, Oregon, neighborhood.  These problems seem intractable and I don’t have any really good answers yet.  But it is a good thing that the residents recognize the forces at work.

…with the girls. The in-laws are here and we’re headed to Centennial Park later today for the Nashville Earth Day Festival. This is our second outing with the sweet new jogging stroller and it’s a beautiful day, so far.

I’m still reading Wilken’s The Spirit of Early Christian Thought. I said it earlier, but it’s a really beautiful book. Wilken captures a lot of the subtleties underneath the imposing edifice of patristic thought. Now, I’m aware that most of my CofC readers won’t see the point in reading such a book. But we owe so much to our spiritual ancestors — our vocabulary, our patterns of thought — most of the time completely unacknowledged.

More later on the reasonableness of faith via St. Augustine.

I’ve had by my bedside for a few weeks an anthology of essays by Allen Tate, one of those in the orbit of the Fugitives and Agrarians at Vanderbilt in 1920s and 30s. Here are a couple of excerpts from “The Man of Letters in the Modern World” (his Phi Beta Kappa address delivered at the University of Minnesota, 1952):

“[A]t our own critical moment, when all languages are being debased by the techniques of mass control, the man of letters…has an immediate responsibility, to other men no less than to himself, for the vitality of language. He must distinguish the difference between mere communication…and the rediscovery of the human condition in the living arts. He must discriminate and defend the difference between mass communication, for the control of men, and the knowledge of man which literature offers us for human participation.”

And later:

“It is a tragedy of contemporary society that so much of democratic social theory reaches us in the language of ‘drive,’ ’stimulus,’ and ‘response.’ This is not the language of freemen, it is the language of slaves. The language of freemen substitutes for these words, respectively, end, choice, and discrimination. Here are two sets of analogies, the one sub-rational and servile, the other rational and free…

In the triad of end, choice, and discrimination, [the man of letters'] particular responsibility is for the last; for it is by means of discrimination, through choice, towards an end, that the general intelligence acts. The general intelligence is the intelligence of the man of letters: he must not be committed to the illiberal specializations that the nineteenth century has proliferated into the modern world: specializations in which means are divorced from ends, action from sensibility, matter from mind, society from the individual, religion from moral agency, love from lust, poetry from thought, communion from experience, and mankind in the community from men in the crowd. There is literally no end to this list of dissociations because there is no end, yet in sight, to the fragmentation of the western mind.“

Go read this NY Times article on books and relationships.  The article speaks of dating relationships, but I know — experience will attest — that it’s applicable in friend relationships as well.

I was at work yesterday, when a co-worker made the comment that what God asks of us doesn’t make sense, that Christianity is not “logical,” that we cannot “think it through.” I think I know what she means, yet I have to disagree. Robert Wilken, in the introduction to The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, writes:

The Christian religion is inescapably ritualistic (one is received into the church by a solemn washing with water), uncompromisingly moral (”be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” said Jesus), and unapologetically intellectual (be ready to give a “reason for the hope that is in you,” in the words of 1 Peter). Like all the major religions of the world, Christianity is more than a set of devotional practices and a moral code: it is also a way of thinking about God, about human beings, about the world and history. For Christians, thinking is part of believing.

He goes on to quote St Augustine on this point, and I wanted to share that with you:

No one believes anything unless one first thought it believable….Everything that is believed is believed after being preceded by thought….Not everyone who thinks believes, since many think in order not to believe; but everyone who believes thinks, thinks in believing and believes in thinking” (On the Predestination of the Saints, 5)

In citing this, I don’t mean to downplay the truth that faith is, to a certain extent, a trusting leap. Moreover, I do believe that the emotions (namely, the love [caritas] that is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, Rom 5.5) play an important role in our faith. Try as I might, I’m no Lockean rationalist. Yet, I think that what Augustine said is critically important and the truth of what he says here has been lost in many Christian circles, who view the intellect with suspicion and believe that faith is undermined by thinking.

Again, our house (and our tulips!) are featured prominently in this WTVF piece from a couple of days ago:

pop_playerLaunch.asp?vt1=v&clipFormat=flv&clipId1=2356188&at1=News&h1=New Crime Fighting Initiative Improves Neighborhood

…where this thing stops, nobody knows.

Well, the Christian Chronicle is at it again.  As I’ve said before, the Chronicle just doesn’t know what to make of NI Churches of Christ.  Sometimes, it’s condescending; sometimes, it’s hostile.  You never know what you’re going to get.

So, I read with interest this month’s story (profile, really) which introduced the Chronicle’s readership to Florida College.  I have to hand it to them.  All in all this is a positive article.

And yet…

And yet…

They just couldn’t resist getting in a dig with the title of the article: “A Non-institutional Institution.”

Sigh.

Metro Police recently implemented a plan to end street-level drug dealing on our block. 18 arrests were made on Wednesday. Here’s some local news coverage:

WKRN (If you look closely you can see both me and my wife. H.’s voice also makes a special appearance.) UPDATE: Oh well, our moment of televised glory is now lost somewhere in cyberspace, a victim (apparently) of WKRN’s website re-vamp.

WTVF

The Tennessean

I am now the father of two healthy girls, born last night (2/29) at around 8:15pm.  Both babies and mother are doing well.

Remember us in your prayers.