Fallen Into Knowledge

This one from Richard Rolle’s Commentary on the Ten Commandments:

“The Fifth commandment is that you kill no one, neither by plotting, nor by committing the deed, nor by ordering it or condoning it.  And under this commandment, illegal striking of any person is also forbidden.  There are spiritual murderers, those who refuse to feed the destitute in their need, those who slander others, and those who mislead the innocent.”

Okay, when did we forget this? Or have we merely limited “murder” to “First Degree Murder?”

This is my play’s last scene; here heavens appoint
My pilgrimage’s last mile; and my race,
Idly, yet quickly run, hath this last pace,
My span’s last inch, my minute’s latest point;
And gluttonous death will instantly unjoint
My body and my soul, and I shall sleep a space;
But my’ever-waking part shall see that face
Whose fear already shakes my every joint.
Then, as my soul to’heaven, her first seat, takes flight,
And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell,
So fall my sins, that all may have their right,
To where they’are bred, and would press me, to hell.
Impute me righteous, thus purg’d of evil,
For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.

It is always nice when I can write a paper on something as edifying as Donne’s “Holy Sonnets.” While the paper isn’t really any good, the sonnets are. Do yourself favor and go read them

I have been tagged by what seems to be the weblog version of a chain letter, except no one has promised me untold riches if I play along.  Tre tagged me and the price of release is to answer a couple of (not so simple) questions and tag some people myself:

How many books do you own?
hehe.  I think I’ll pass on counting, thank you - I am certain the number is well over a thousand:

I have more than that, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, on the floor…you get the idea.

Last book I read:
Well, beside the bible, the last book was the recent Harry Potter book.  Right now I am working on Walter Bruggemann’s book, The Creative Word:  Canon as a Model for Biblical Education.  I am really excited about this one, I already know that I recommend it.

Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me:

Oh boy, I refer you, dear reader to the above picture:  only five?!  Besides the Bible:

Stanley Grenz:  The Social God and the Relational Self:  A Trinitarian Theology of the Imago Dei.
I read this book a week after it was published, I grieve Dr. Grenz’s recent passing partly because the series of which this book was to be the first volume will not be completed.  I read this book as I was myself starting to think about how theology might be done after modernism (and after its characteristic mode of hermeneutics) and after rejecting the notion that humans can be autonomous agents.  Grenz came along at just the right time exploring what Human identity might look like in light of a robust Trinitarian theology and as shaped by a community.  Good material to think on.

John Howard Yoder:  The Politics of Jesus and Walter Bruggemann:  The Land:  Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith.
I’m cheating, I know; but these two books belong together in my mind.  Not because I read them at the same time, but because they represent a major shift in the way I read the Bible; Bruggemann in the Old Testament and Yoder in the New.  I just taught a class wherein I explained the rough outlines of this shift and it took 5 weeks, so I will not even attempt it here:  suffice it to say that the Promised Land is perhaps the most important Theological Symbol in the whole Bible, and we cannot understand what Jesus was up to sufficiently until we understand Him as speaking from within a collection of questions regarding Second Temple Judaism’s relationship to the Promised Land

Neil Postman:  Conscientious Objections; Stirring up Trouble About Language, Technology, and Education
I have read this book dozens of times; and I regularly assign portions of it to my students to read. Postman alerted me to several ideas, all of which are critically important:
Language - it is the means by which we render the world sensible.  Everything we know is the result of a question (consciously or unconsciously asked), every one of those questions was made possible by our capacity as language users.  It is therefore very important to study how language works, how we mean things, how we use it to make sense of the world, and the assumptions about the world embedded in the language we use.
Education:  Is primarily concerned with learning languages; that is, ways of talking about the world - modes of discourse.  For example, a scientific truth is not the same thing as a literary truth - learning the difference (and in which situations each is appropriate) is very important.
The Medium is the Message:  being one of Marshall McLuhan’s star pupils (along with Walter Ong), Postman understood that the technology we use to say something (be it oral speech or television) determines what we can and cannot say about that thing.  Technologies are not neutral:  they always give and take away.

Jorge Luis Borges:  Labyrinths; Selected Stories and Other Writings.
Along with Umberto Eco and George Steiner, Borges is, for me the ideal scholar.  His knowledge was vast - when reading his stories one gets the unshakeable feeling that he might know everything.  His knowledge was general - that is rather than following the herd and specialising in one thing (thus making knowledge a career) all three of these people sought to understand the world in which they lived.  And finally, knowledge and the world were for Borges a playground, infinitely interesting; this interestedness made their vast knowledge welcoming, as if they were saying “come along and let me show you around.”  This attitude is sharply contrasted by another man who may have known everything, but who used that knowledge to lord it over his readers: James Joyce.   Borges stories are endlessly fascinating and thought provoking.

Martin Luther King, Jr.:  I Have a Dream; Writings and Speeches that Changed the World.
One of my two Heroes (the other is Bonhoeffer).  Dr. King’s revolutionary actions were a direct result of his faith.  his writings clearly show that he saw his actions as being the logical result of the Gospel.  Bonhoeffer was exactly the same way, and as a consequence of their Faithful and Radical lives, when they speak they truly speak with Moral Authority.  If Protestants had Saints (like Catholic ones, people who the church recognizes as living exemplary Christian Lives) these two should be included in their number.

Whew.  Now I get to Tag Five People:

Joyce:  Because I know she thinks and reads, and I got to her first.

Ian Durias:  Because I have no idea what would be on his list and would like to know.

Brad Jenkins:  You are always asking for book suggestions, now it’s your turn:  What are you reading, brother?

Grant Watson:  Who is very bright, and who reads a lot.  As far as I know he does not have a weblog of his own (though he is more than capable of making this site look like a virtual Yugo) so he can post in the comment section.

David Horstkoetter:  Who can also post in the comment section, and who I would also like to know about

Also, please feel free to place unsolicited responses in the comments:  I am always on the lookout for good books

So Finals week is almost over for me; my last project is due Thurs. by 5pm. But this afternoon I needed a break - to get outside and breathe some. So I decided to ride down to Powells and use the gift card that someone so kindly gave to me. I just happened to be trying to cross the Steel bridge when the first of the ships came in for the Rose Festival, a fun coincidence. An enjoyable bike ride. And a successful trip to the bookstore (books by Jameson and Wendell Berry). It worked.
Also, while fixing dinner I heard the good news that Portland has met the first goal of the Kyoto Protocal. Portland is the only city (hopefully just the first) in America to do so. It makes me proud to live in Portland knowing that this city is taking the Prorocal and global warming seriously, even though the nation is not.
Okay, Back to the school work.

Well, the trailer for the new Harry Potter Movie is up on the web, it is due to be released in November.  However, it is just in time ot get excited about the sixth book in the series:  Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, due out on Saturday, July 16.  I for one, am excited about my one day a year devoted to Harry Potter madness

Today, instead of doing school-reading like I should have, I read “This Place on Earth,” which is about Northwest ecology, both what has been done, and also what could be / needs to be done.
Here is a nugget of wisdom:

Community, I am beginning to understand, is made through a skill I have never learned or valued: the ability to pass time with people you do not know or will not know well, talking about nothing in particular, with no end in mind, just to build trust, just to be sure of each other, just to be neighborly. A community is not something you have, like a camcorder or a breakfast nook. No, it is something you do. And you have to do it all the time.

This beautiful quote is from the introduction to Schopenhauer’s “The World as Will and Representation:”

I am afraid, however, that even so I shall not be let off. The reader who has gotten as far as the prefaceand is put off by that, has paid money for the book, and wants to know how he is to be compensated. My last refuge now is to remind him that he knows of various ways of using a book without precisely reading it. It can, like many other, fill a gap in his library, where, neatly bound, it is sure to look well. Or he can lay it on the dressing table or tea table of his learned lady friend. Or finally he can review it; this is assuredly the best course of all, and the one I specially advise.

I just watched a new trailer for the upcoming movie “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” If you know what I am talking about, you are already excited and are not reading this anymore, but have already clicked on the link below. If you are still reading, stop and click on the link below. I mean it. Now.Amazon.com: Welcome

(edit: Comment originally posted by Tre )

According to JK Rowling’s website, the Half-blood Prince is neither Harry nor Voldemort. We know that Harry is a pure-blood, but if it’s not Voldemort, then who? My money’s on Hagrid, who is two half-bloods; giant and wizard. I know it sounds weird, but it sounds weird enough to make sense in Rowling’s world. Or it may be a new character…

And, oh man, did I just tip my hand as a geek… Though I only scored 26.4% on the test…