"To a Thinker"

The last step taken found your heft
Decidedly upon the left.
One more would throw you on the right.
Another still -- you can see your plight.
You call this thinking, but it's walking.
Not even that, it's only rocking,
Or weaving like a stabled horse;
From force to matter and back to force,
From form to content and back to form,
From norm to crazy and back to norm,
From bound to free and back to bound,
From sound to sense and back to sound.
So back and forth. It almost scares
A man the way things come in pairs.
Just now you're off democracy
(With a polite regret to be)
And leaning on dictatorship;
But if you will accept the tip,
In less than no time, tongue and pen,
You'll be a democrat again.
A reasoner and good as such,
Don't let it bother you too much
If it makes you look helpless, please,
And a temptation to the tease.
Suppose you've no direction in you,
I don't see but you must continue
To use the gift you do possess,
And sway with reason more or less.
I own I never really warmed
To the reformer or reformed.
And yet conversion has its place
Not halfway down the scale of grace.
So if you find you must repent
From side to side in argument,
At least don't use your mind too hard,
But trust my instinct--I'm a bard.

-Robert Frost

I've been attracted to this poem recently given my new environ.

Living Art

Visiting the World Trade Center site last month was mournful and overwhelming, but on our walk around the site, my wife and I stumbled across an enclosed and air-conditioned bridge leading into a neighboring building. I want to say the World Bank, but am not sure about that. Anyway, this bridge was an art experiment set up by someone affiliated with MIT I think (again don't quote me on that). Cameras transmitted the walking people into filters which projected distorted, colorful, and abstract images onto video monitors thus setting up a living work of art in space and time, mirroring real people. I enjoyed it anyway...

Secularization

Is secularization the result of Christianization? Is secularization a response to the increasing complexity of modern societies? Is secularization the outcome of the deteriorating barrier between what is sacred and what is profane? When any society institutionalizes the sacred doesn't that institutionalization limit possibilities of what is sacred and then give some people control over the sacred, while others are forbidden? Religions try to capture what it is that transcends time, but ultimately that has socio-political implications -- some people are granted more freedom than others and the spectrum of possibilites is sharply limited. But in a secularized society, people are free to discover the sacred for themselves apart from any institution seeking to control its form by means of symbols (or rather idols)...

must go to class...

Apartment Pictures

Pictures of the apartment

I forgot a picture

This is an important picture which I forgot...it is of the Carol Gray Dupree Center for Children where Amy and I will be sending our child probably after she or he is six months old. The Center is owned and run by the seminary and is in our apartment complex.

PT Sem pic descriptions

The pictures I put up are postcards of the seminary. I haven't gotten around to taking pictures yet, so this is the best I have so far. Here are the buildings in the order you view them on the blog:

The first one is Erdman Hall built in 1981, which houses the Center of Continuing Education among other things.

The second picture is of Brown Hall built in 1865 and houses students.

The third is John A. Mackay Campus Center which has a few dining rooms, lounges, faculty offices, the Theological Book Agency, the Women's Center, and meeting rooms for students.

The fourth is Miller Chapel built in 1834 and was renovated in 2000. There are worship services daily and it represents the heart of the seminary.

The fifth is the Mackay Main Dining Commons...

The sixth is Templeton Hall which was built in 1989 and houses the administrative offices and some classrooms (speech and preaching labs and media and technology center.

The seventh is Tennent Hall acquired in 1943. In it is the School of Christian Education and the Reigner Reading Room which is a Christian education resource library. It houses married students, and faculty offices are there as well.

The eighth is just a picture of a Fall afternoon on campus.

The ninth is Stuart Hall in which most classes are held. It was built in 1876.

The tenth is the interior of Miller Chapel, the Joe R. Engle Organ highlighted.

There is the virtual postcard tour...

PT Sem pics

PT Sem

Humility in Humanity

In reading about foundationalism, anti-foundationalism, and post-foundationalism, it seems to me that despite the fact that the latter two attempt a separation from the premises of the first, these two approaches to theory always return to a foundation to validate claims. And I suppose it makes sense. How can one even ask questions without some kind of foundation, or rather truth commitment? Why would I argue, for example, for gay rights in terms of will, sin, etc, if I had no foundation for doing so? Even if a person thinks that he does not, she may rely on a foundation of skepticism, or argument for argument's sake.

Without making a truth commitment a true relativism would most certainly exist for the individual and the ultimate conversation amongst others will be halted because there will be no ground for argument to stand on, to further conversation. Why would, say, religions even want to have a conversation when pluralism is oftentimes equated with ultimate relativity and so everyone is right (or wrong)? The answer lies somewhere in the interconnectedness with each other, bound in an umbrella of conversation in which each make truth claims. Every person may in fact make a stand on a certain foundation, though respect for the stands of others should be implied in those foundational commitments.

As a Christian, I hold the truth to be embodied in the person of Christ and as such interpret my experiences from this perspective because I hold it to be the ultimate reality...am I right? As a human I have to say maybe not, but by faith I can hope.

It takes humility in humanity to respect the truth claims of the Hindu or the Scientist for me...I cannot put myself in the place of someone else, especially someone with a separate truth claim, but I can admit to myself that my truth claim is not the only one, and that there is the possibility of its untruth. This is not a relative interpretation that everything goes, but rather there should be interreligous, interdisciplinary, intercultural, etc conversation...

Why have a conversation at all...? For growth? To move farther along the parabola towards the utimate reality? What good does it do? If you say none, then you've found yourself at the impasse of postmodernist thought.

Where does the Bible, as a classic text (a text which transcends culture), fit within the overarching conversation. As readers we read for information and then impose information upon a text at the same time and so we are constantly interpreting and reinterpreting. What separates this text for me is its witness to the embodiment of truth: Christ. However, the Bhagavad Gita might do this for a good Hindu, or the Quran for a Muslim. The text itself is not the truth, but it is the avenue for understanding that truth, the witness to the truth. But this is not to say that it is the only avenue. Personal experience, secular influences, other religions, cultures can also be avenues as well -- these things are what are imposed upon the text. Your experiences homogenize and become your lens for reading any classic. Within the historicity of the Christian tradition each theologian has contributed an interpretation from particular lenses, and have ultimately shaped how we theologians today read and interpret Scripture as well...though exeriences are changing, cultures are changing, and uncharted territory is constantly coming into focus for Christians today and each poses new questions for theologians to grapple with that have not been grappled with before. Scripture is thus involved in the overarching conversation among Christians as a character in the drama, and as such in the drama of the world narrative...

more to say later...must read...I'm procrastinating again...

New Life and a New Perspective

The baby's head is the largest circle left center and he is lying on his back with feet in the air. The little dot amidst the black just above the head is one of the baby's arms (he was flailing at us as the sonographer was jiggling him. Just to the left of that dot is a black spot in the body of the baby -- that's the heart and it is beating really fast -- 150-something beats per minute I think which is apparently normal.

The really neat part was watching the baby do flips, and watching him or her burp. The burp shook the whole body.

I am still determining whether or not the baby is a monkey...the comfort with being upside-down is beyond my knowledge. Monkey or not that's our little monkey...

The baby is about 7 cm long and weighs approximately 3 ounces right now, which is very normal apparently.

But the expected due date is April 7...yes...this means that this is a birthday baby on my part.

The baby appears to be healthy -- two arms, two legs, a heart, an oversized head...the umbilical cord (I hope I spelled that correctely) is there, the heart-rate is good and the baby is active as can be (he or she gets that from her mother).

Amy and I are both very excited...I'm having trouble concentrating on studies and she's out having girl time with our neighbor. For the next day (or month) I'll be studying these pictures closely until the shock factor wears off.

We'll know whether or not the baby is male or female at the 20-month point if we choose to that is.