Part of the problem comes from the necessity of talking about angels among auditors some of whom will be thinking only in the most sentimentalistic terms (diaphanous fairy-like creatures, baby-faced cherubs, with musical accompaniment of the sort I despise so intensely that I won’t name any examples lest you turn out to like that kind of drivel), while others will know full well that angels don’t exist. Preaching gets significantly more comfortable when a sizeable proportion of the congregation is, if not on the same page as the preacher, at least reading from the same book; St. Michael protects me from self-indulgence by minimizing the risk of my preaching in too comfortable a situation tomorrow evening.
So I will come clean to readers by acknowledging at this midpoint in the poat that yes, I do believe in angels. I don’t feel as though it’s up to me to disregard the church’s teaching ttradition at that point, especially as it has been fine-tuned by wiser theologians than me (Margaret helpfully observes that her current theologian-hero, St. Thomas Aquinas, had a lot to say about angels. She has a point, though I doubt that many people would want to hear me lecture on St. Thomas’s theology of angels.)
I have an idea of where I want the sermon to go, though, now, so I’ll switch applications and just write for a while. I won’t spoil it for the throngs who scour my blog eagerly hoping for a clue to the content of my next homily.
DRMA (say, whatever happened to Dave Rogers? I mean, not the Time’s Shadow Dave Rogers, but the Connect and Empower Dave Rogers?): "Love Hurts" by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris; "Pass It On" by Bob Marley and the Wailers; "Discontent of Winter" by the Reivers (Ha!, turned Trevor on to the Reivers this week); "Soul Makossa" by Manu Dibango; "Blue Monk" by Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk; "A Long December" by Counting Crows.
“I'm more sure than ever that I know what education is: Learning to love more and more of the world.”
And, I presume to add, “learning to love the world more and more.” Heidegger wishes he’d come up with that one, David. Tell the world!
First, I’m too cheap to waste an egg. I like eggs, and it would be a shame not to eat it (Scots-baiters out there will have a field day with this one). Second, I doubt that anyone would take seriously anything I would say about a dropped egg. Even people who hang a round shopping malls would have more sense than to think me a guru. Third, someone would have to clean it up—either me (which I would rather not be the case) or a hard-working maintenance person at the mall (someone who already copes with too much mess generated by sloppy consumers). An egg on the floor, no one needs. Fourth, did I say I’m too cheap to waste an egg?
Sorry, Steve, you’ll have to do better than that.
David Weinberger sets out ten ways to become a guru (none of them involving food waste), which you might think improves my odds. Unfortunately for me—perhaps fortunately for the world—these too are all non-starters. For instance, David recommends referring to Tim Berners-Lee as “Timmy Bacon-and-Lettuce,” but I hardly ever have reason to refer to Tim Berners-Lee at all, and if I called him by an absurd pet name everyone would think I had gone off my chump (not at all the same thing as becoming a guru). I don’t know what “air brackets” ;are, but if they’re as expensive as Air Jordans, I have to forgo them, too. That leaves prevaricating about my past predictions that the dot-com economy would last forever, except that I was predicting that the bubble would pop any day now (and no one should ever believve anything I say about The Market, because I’m the guy who left the computer graphics field in 1983 because there was no future in it).
I like wearing suits.
The “being late to meetings because atoms got in the way of my bits” idea has potential, but whenever I talk about “atoms” people assume I mean my relatives. I got married before I knew what an NDA was. We wash our clothes with an organic, environmentally-benign detergent that we buy at our local health food market, whose manufacturer’s name you wouldn’t recognize even if I could remember it. I can’t do favors of any kind for the Russian Mafia, because the Orthodox Church would complain that it’s just another example of Western denominations elbowing in on their prerogatives. I think the next-to-last suggestion wouldn’t work, either, and I don’t know how to backdate my weblog.
That leaves “Never give a short answer.”
Hmmm—I’ll be waiting for my guru certificate from Darwinmag.com in the mail. Thanks, David!
But more to the point, I want to know how David got to be a guru. I want to be a guru; is there an application I can fill out at Darwin.mag? Would a write-in campaign help? Would it influence them if I offered some free copy-editing (viz., that they used “affect” where they wanted “effect” in their summary of David’s Claim to Fame)?
[Ed. note: Margaret reminds me that not only is David a guru and I’m not, but—well, it’s a story. Once upon a time, when Margaret was still in college, she served as president of our mutual fraternity house Alpha Rho Upsilon (“All Races United,” a local fraternity, as though you hadn’t guessed). During Rush week, a visitor to ARU evidently misunderstood the convergence of Margaret’s status as house president and her status as a religion major, and asked where he could find Margaret, the spiritual leader of the fraternity. So David’s a guru, Margaret’s a spiritual leader, and I’m neither a spiritual leader nor a guru.]
After a harrowing escape like that, there’s nothing for it but to head out for some ice cream, which I did with my new (fewer than eight months together; I can’t imagine having known her so short a time) beloved. The kindly proprietor of the ice cream store assured us young lovers that he, too, had felt the earth move.
DRMA: "Because We Can" by Fatboy Slim; "Bye And Bye" by Bob Dylan; "Johnny Appleseed" by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros.
P.S. If I read the longitude and latitude correctly, the epicenter of the earthquake (43.98, 69.80) was very near to Brunswick (43n55, 69w58), where Margaret and I were at college. And my Electronic Music professor liked my assignment, even though it was (ahem) a little late.
DRMA: "Rags" by the Waterboys; "Take Me Back To Tulsa" by Bob Wills.
DRMA: "Mink Car" by They Might Be Giants; "New Favorite" by Alison Krauss & Union Station; "Old Man Kensey" by R.E.M.
Does that conjunction seem particularly unnerving to anyone else? Yes, we’ve known all along that W was unswervingly headed for Iraq, for reasons more personal than diplomatic (whatever anyone says about what a bad apple Saddam is), and yes, we’ve known for a long time that his public speaking tells the world a lot about how deep and thoughtful a leader he is. But when I compare side-by-side Kulikauskas’s gentle human wisdom with W’s bellicose narcissistic incoherence, I shudder at how horribly the US governing caste misunderstands its own identity, its relation to its world neighbors, and finally misunderstands the very ideals of justice and prosperity that it claims to uphold.
If, still more scary, those aren’t just deliberate fabrications, and if this whole persiflage is not a gruesome power (oil) grab by a coterie of venal robber barons.
(Frank, is that direct enough for you, or do I have to call W a vulgar name?)
No, it was something pastel. Whatever.
But then, don’t you know, I had to find the image I’d been thinking about online, and what with subsequent editions of the books series, and the recent movie on top of that, and my ignorance of the artist’s name, it was a serious challenge to find that image. I tried to scare up three good images of the individual books, which I might then paste together into a substitute for the poster (I’m pretty sure I once had that poster, but I haven’t the faintest idea where it might have gotten to).
But I finally found an online representation of the poster itself; as you see above, it’s pretty washed-out by flash glare in the central panel, and has low contrast anyway, but it’s there, at ringlord.com (there’s a much larger version there). If anyone has a copy she or he’d be willing to scan and share with us, I’m moderately confident that there isn’t another example floating around the web.
DRMA: "Bitter Root" by the Indigo Girls; "Underture" [from Tommy] by the Who; "Driving Force" by Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists; "Down Along the Cove" by Bob Dylan; "Debra" by Beck; "How to Fight Loneliness" by Wilco.
He seems like a nice guy.
Has he written any books?
Would he come speak to us?
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