Anticipation

Where I live, the weather has been more unpredictable than usual.  If it is not raining cats and dogs, it is ferociously windy (like today) and warm, or very chilly.

That's fine, I guess, but I am so eager to get our church's community garden planted.  I am also anticipating the joy I will find in planting herbs in my backyard. 

Right now the good days are not so good for gardening, because the soil is still far to wet to get started. 

This is my testimony, my confession of anticipation.  What are you eagerly anticipating? 

Earth Day: High Holy Holiday of Immanent Religion

Today is earth day.  It is also good friday. 

Weird.

It all gives me pause, I mean, we live in a time when religion (or spirituality if you prefer) has become immanenitized (denying transcendence, otherness...making everything meaningful here in our plane of existence).  That is to say that we have moved our faith and hope away from a God who is truly "other" (though in radical relation to us) and placed them in things much closer to view: the environment.  Our day is one where environmentalism has some very real religious components. Today is one of those components: the high holy day we call Earth Day.

Religious environmentalism has its "big days:" earth day, arbor day, and international mother earth day.  It also has its own liturgy: "reduce, reuse, recycle," and "think globally act locally."  Its liturgical leaders are usually folk singers like Pete Seeger, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, Woody Guthrie, Dar Williams, etc.  I could press the analogies further showing environmentalism as a new immanent religion parodying Christianity (i.e. it has its own selling of indulgences....carbon tax credits...!), but you get the point. 

And today, this high holy holiday falls on Good Friday.  To me this is weird. 

I love the "environment," though I hate calling it that.  I prefer the term "creation," because its economy transcends an us/it dichotomy; it puts into view the truth that all being is a gift.  That said, I do not think worship of the earth is correct, nor do I think secularizing the world by calling it nature/environment is correct either.  That simply denies its givenness.

But Good Friday is here, and Easter Sunday is approaching.  It is the time when we remember that Christ died "once for all."  Jesus gave his life "for the life of the world" in order that the wounding of our world would be healed. The incarnation is not only for the good of humanity, but it is good for the cosmos as a whole.  God works to redeem all gifted being: everything!

So maybe reflecting on Earth Day in light of Good Friday and Easter might be the right approach to Earth Day!  The Earth is redeemable in the eyes of God, and the only way we can help it flourish is to live in it/with it the way God intended: gracefully. 

No more implications on how to do this today...just live gracefully toward others, and all the rest of creation!

Scream 4: Movie remakes, reboots, and sequals

I saw Scream 4 the other night.  I was a big fan of the original, but was not thrilled with the two sequels, so it was only my curiosity (and hope) that drove me to watch another possible bad film.

I think I loved the first one because it poked fun of Slasher film conventions all the while pulling off a tricky and hip slasher tale all its own.  Honestly, I often get a kick out of the self-referential tongue-in-cheek thing that Scream does so well (I must admit I am a huge "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Joss Whedon fan!).

Scream 4 is a flawed film indeed, but in the end, I loved it!  The story was implausible, but its commentary on the new slasher cycle, remakes, and reboots....H-I larious.  

Typically, like the opinion of Scream 4, I do not like remakes or reboots (Halloween is perhaps the worst of all).  So, I thought I would ask all my readers to ponder a question...is there a movie that would benefit from a remake?  If so, which one and why?

For my money, the only movie that should be remade is "The Highlander."  For me, it could use better cinematography, acting, and special fx.  But hey, that is just my opinion....what do you think?

The good life- trout fishing

So I just got back from fishing the White River in North Central Arkansas.  The landscape is gorgeous (part of the Ozarks), and so are all the trout.  I got to fly-fish and even hooked a few lovely rainbows, not to mention several elusive browns. 

The best part was going with my father "big poppie" and my little brother Joel.  We had a great time.  Check out some of the photos:

Me, Joel

Doc, Joel, Me

Me and Joel at the Two Rivers Fly Shop (with the owner)

Joel, Big Poppie, Me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What I've Been Reading

 Here is a list of titles that I have been reading over the past few months:

February
 Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology by Albert Borgmann (this is his philosophy of technological culture as it pertains to Christian community).  Very helpful
A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming by Michael Northcott (this is book provides a helpful introduction to global warming as well as a helpful ethical analysis. 
Diversity and Dominion: Dialogues in Ecology, Ethics, and Theology Ed. by Kyle S. van Houtan and Michael Northcott.  (has great essays from scientists, theologians, and social critics on a number of different topics)
On Being Creatures in On Christian Theology (Challenges in Contemporary Theology) by Rowan Williams (in modern theology, the doctrine of creation has fallen by the wayside...Williams picks it up and shows how powerful it is and must be).
Creation in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology by Peter Scott (Creation is a subversive doctrine that impacts politics...dont believe me, check this essay out)

March
 The Parasite (Posthumanities) by Michel Serres (this book explores how the world is nothing more than a set of parasitic relations.  It is a hard read, because Serres' arguments are elliptical and shrouded in fable.  His aim, I think, is to show how humans are nothing more than parasites...hence the post human part of his work)
In the Beginning...: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Resourcement) by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a Pope Benedict XVI) (this is a compilation of four homilies on the creation and fall accounts in Genesis.  It also has an ending summary essay.  It was an act of worship to read this little gem)
Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy by Bruno Latour
Natura Pura, The Invention of the Anti-Christ: A Week With No Sabbath by Conor Cunningham (wow, what a rousing little piece on the idea of autonomous nature...nature is indeed, graced!)
Religion and Secularity in a Culture of Abstraction: On the Integrity of Space, Time, Matter, and Motion in Strange New Word of the Gospel: Re-Evangelizing In The Postmodern World by David L. Schindler

April
Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics by Timothy Morton (explores nature as an ideology and deconstruction...this is where, I think, Zizek gets his ecology from)
Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture by Louis Dupre (a genealogy of how the cosmos has been viewed from the early greeks into modern times.  Nature/Culture dichotomies help shape our modern world.) 
The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth  by David Bentley Hart (a stunning essay about a good free loving God and a free creation) 

ONGOING BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GROUPS:
The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture  by Wendell Berry
Living the Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight by Norman Wirzba
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle
Darwin's Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong by Conor Cunningham

David Bentley Hart on Divine Providence: Some Striking Passages

Recently, I read through David Bentley Hart's The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? for a second time.  It is a beautiful and stirring little book.  Certainly, potential readers should not judge this book by its cover or size, because it is a real theological treatment of evil, suffering, and goodness.  Hart's occasion for writing was the Tsunami in 2004.  In this book, he tackles many popular (and banal) arguments against God based on "natural evil."  In sum, his argument is that people are not rejecting the Christian God when they reject God on the grounds of "natural evil," rather they are rejecting some other deistic/impersonal/distant/God of power...not the God of love.  Below, are some lovely passages from Hart on the topic of Divine Providence.  It cannot be argued, Hart claims, that divine providence means that God wills everything to happen...or that God wills some to heaven and some to hell. 

It makes a considerable difference, however -- nothing less than our understanding of the nature of God is at stake -- whether one says that God has eternally willed the history of sin and death, and all that comes to pass therein, as the proper or necessary means of achieving his ends, or whether one says instead that God has willed his good creatures from eternity and will bring it to pass, despite their rebellion, by so ordering all things toward his goodness that even evil (which he does not cause) becomes an occasion of the operation of grace. And it is only the latter view than can be accurately called a doctrine of "providence" in the properly theological sense; the former view is mere determinism.

God has fashioned creatures in his image so that they might be joined in a perfect union with him in the rational freedom of love...

...For that very reason, what god permits, rather than violate the autonomy of the created world, may be in itself contrary to what he wills.  

 ...God can both allow created freedom its scope and yet so constitute the world that nothing can prevent him from bringing about the beatitude of his Kingdom.  Indeed we must say this: as God did not will the fall, and yet always wills all things toward himself, the entire history of sin and death is in an ultimate sense a pure contingency, one that is not as such desired by God, but that is nevertheless constrained by providence to serve his transcendent purpose.  God does not will evil in the sinner.  Neither does he will that the sinner should perish (2 Peter 3:9; Ezek. 33:11).  He does not place evil in the heart.  He does not desire the convulsive reign of death in nature.  But neither will he suffer defeat in these things.

Providence works at the level of what Aquinas would call primary causality: that is, it is so transcendent of the operation of secondary causes -- which is to say, finite and contingent causes immanent to the realm of created things -- that it can at once create freedom and also assure that no consequence of the misuse of that freedom will prevent him from accomplishing the good he intends in all things.  this is the same as saying that the transcendent act of creation, though it grants existence to creatures out of the plenitude of God's being, nonetheless brings forth beings that are genuinely other than God, without there being any "conflict" between his infinite actuality and their contingent participation in it.  As God is the source and end of all being, nothing that is can be completely alienated from him; all things exist by virtue of being called from nothingness toward his goodness...

...providence does not and cannot in any way betray the true freedom of the creature: every free movement of the will is possible only by virtue of the more primordial longing of all hings for the beauty of God (to borrow the language of Maximus the Confessor, our "gnomic will" depends on our "natural will"), and so every free act -- even the act of hating God -- arises from and is sustained by a more original love of God.  

 The original vocation of the creature -- which is the very ground of our existence -- is heaven in us, and indeed hell.  As Zosima tells Alyosha . . . what we call hell is nothing but the rage and remorse of the soul that will not yield itself to love.  The natural will must return to God, no matter what, but if the freedom of the gnomic will refuses to open itself to the mercy and glory of God, the wrathful soul experiences the transfiguring and deifying fire of love not a bliss but as chastisement and despair.  The highest freedom and happiness of the creature...is the perfection of the creature's nature in union with God. 

Providence then, ...is not the same thing as a universal telos.

To all this I say, Amen!

 

 

Whaddayaknow? Another theo-blogger likes my blog.

I spent some time yesterday afternoon catching up on a few of the blogs I like.  I was very surprised when I came across Brad East's Blog, Resident Theology.  His most recent post was a list of the best theoblogs of 2010....and mine was on there. 

I am thrilled, because it at least means that Brad (who is a good thinker and wonderful blogger) appreciates something about my blog.  And that is good enough for me.  Thanks Brad...for the kudos...and the silly self-promo that I took from it. 

BTW- you all should look at his list, he has some wonderful blogs listed.  The content of the blogs vary in terms of discipline (theology, biblical studies, philosophy, missiology, preaching, etc) and in terms of perspective (Reformed, Church of Christ, Catholic, Liberal Protestant, Radical Atheist etc).