THE LAND OF UNLIKENESS

Pixar’s Wall-E (2008) tells the story of an impolite robot, a world that is collapsing in every imaginable way (biologically, socially, economically), and a human race that has divorced itself from that world. The demi-god of the ruling commerce culture declares that the planet is toxic and forbids the return of the exiles. Freed from the tragic cost of doing business terrestrially and floating aimlessly in space aboard their interstellar pseudo-ark, the Axiom, humans decline into overweight, non-ambulatory automatons, divorced even from each other, aside from superficial conversations via the heads-up video display inches from their faces that filters out the real for the virtual, the simulacra. The fact that the H.U.D. is transparent is more a salve to their eroded consciences than it is a legitimate window to the real. In one of the most poignant scenes of the film, the robot Wall-E, having stowed aboard the Axiom, interrupts several of the ship’s denizens in their dematerialized reverie, and introduces himself. And for many on the Axiom, robot and human alike, the introduction of this personal, conversant presence is unwelcome. Wall-E does not accept, or rather can not fathom the terms of their anti-dialogical existence. He lives for relationship and, even in this alien environment, can not help but make friends. But, at times, even making friends can be an impolite act – to contest what in Wall-E was really toxic, the exchange of real conversation for a fetish with commercial simulacra.

This is the kind of impoliteness that Graham Ward calls for in The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Post-Material Citizens. The act of being a citizen does look crass next to the polished acquiescence to consumerism and endless materialism. But for the theologian, who is not a citizen of this world, Ward’s is a call to a radical kind of impoliteness, the scandal of the Christ.

Admirable as it may be, man’s capacity to manufacture and produce useful objects even of the highest quality, such as the machines of our modern technological civilization, is not to be directly associated with human personhood. Perhaps on this point the contrast we have been making here between man as a person, on the one hand, and man as an individual thinking or acting agent, on the other hand, becomes more evident. The ‘creation’ of a machine requires man’s individualization both in terms of his seizing, controlling and dominating reality, that is, turning beings into things, and also in terms of combination of human individuals in a collective effort, that is, of turning himself into a thing, an instrument and a means to an end. Hence, it is only natural that the more collectivistic a society, that is, the more it sacrifices personhood, the better the products it achieves. But when we say that man is capable of creating by being a person, we imply something entirely different, and that has to do with a double possibility which this kind of creation opens up. On the other hand, ‘things’ or the world around acquire a ‘presence’ as an integral and relevant part of the totality of existence, and, on the other hand, man himself becomes ‘present’ as a unique and unrepeatable hypostasis of being and not as an impersonal number in a combined structure. Un other words, in this way of understanding creating, the movement is from thinghood to personhood and not the other way round. That is, for example, what happens int he case of a work of real art as contrasted to a machine. When we look at a painting or listen to music we have in front of us ‘the beginning of a world’, a ‘presence’ in which ‘things’ and substances (cloth, oil, etc.) or qualities (shape, colour, etc.) or sounds becomes part of a personal presence. And this is entirely the achievement of personhood, a distinctly unique capacity of man, which, unlike other technological achievements, is not threatened by the emerging intelligent beings of computer science. The term ‘creativity’ is significantly applied to art par excellence, though we seldom appreciate the real implications of this for theology and anthropology.

John D. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 216

Like Mercy

This poem came out of studying The Cappadocians, three men and one woman who were 4th centery Eastern, Greek speaking xtians who had a huge part in the formation of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. They were affirming the goodness of Creation in the midst of all the muck and dung that we seem to endlessly make out of our lives and world. This has often been a great struggle for me. So there are Hebrew and Greek words referring to various human, social realities. Nietzsche has breathed in my ear in times of agnostic, nihilistic struggle in the past so he shows up dueling with Macrina. I wrote it during a rain storm outside the GF Java Cafe in my hometown of Jamestown, TN. Continue reading ‘Like Mercy’

The following is a paper that is in progress.  Any comments or criticisms are welcomed. Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, composed in 1930 for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 50^th anniversary, is in the vein of some of his earlier works, such as his groundbreaking and controversial The Rite of Spring.  But Stravinsky’s symphony is doing more than reminding the listener of his earlier work.  Rather it plays against and challenges rigid distinctions between sacred and secular music and gives insight into not only his approach to this dichotomy as a composer but may also reveal hints of his own spiritual complexity and ambiguity. Continue reading ‘Igor Stravinsky and sacred/secular music’

I’m sorry we’ve been so absent lately. I know you miss us, a lot. But we’ve been really busy, and we know you’re a patient folk. Besides, we gave you that lovely Bulgakov Blog conference, and we know you still haven’t read every post yet, and you certainly haven’t read every comment made by your fellow readers. Come now, can’t you make at least one comment yourself?

This would be an excellent opportunity for me to offer my sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to the conference. Whether you made a large or small contribution, we are in your debt for what turned out to be a fascinating and thought provoking event!

In any event, we were busy. I was in Chicago with many of you at AAR. However, Aron seems to have joined that contentious group of protesters who haven’t quite come to terms with the AAR/SBL estrangement. Fear not, they’re getting back together, maybe even by 2011. Aron made up for his absence by attending the Chesterton Conference in Niagra, Ontario. Look for his paper to appear here soon once I steal it from his laptop.

I’ve recently become interested in the Bible again after reading Irenaeus’ Against Heresies and teaching the Revelation unit in my advisor’s Seminarian course a couple times.I’m currently writing a paper on the regula fidei, and at Joshua’s suggestion began reading up on some literary theory, including Northrop Frye (although I wonder what you had in mind when you made that recommendation, JADR). Anyway, I stumbled across this bit in Frye that made me laugh, and for lack of anything substantial to post at the moment, I thought I’d toss this one out there:

It took me some time to hit on the right formula for a course in the Bible. I consulted the curricula of other universities, and found that they gave courses called “The Bible As Literature,” which involved chopping pieces out of the Bible like the book of Job and the parables of Jesus, saying, “Look, aren’t they literary?” that approach violated all my instincts as a critic, because those instincts told me that what a critic does when he is confronted with any verbal document whatever is to start on page one at the upper left-hand corner and god one reading until he reads the bottom right-hand corner of the last page. But many people who have attempted to do that with the Bible have flaked out very quickly, generally somewhere around the middle of Leviticus.

- Northop Frye from Northrop Frye and Jacy McPherson, Biblical and Classical Myths

“A Discussion in Sophiology and Magic:  Renaissance Precursors to Bulgakov” — PART TWO, cont.

Meanwhile, the Longest Overtly Sophiological Poem I know
by Janet Leslie Blumberg (Deep Grace of Theory)

Meanwhile, let me regale everyone with two passages from the longest overtly Sophiological poem I know. Or so I will posit… to see what you think. (It ought to further our discussion of precursors to sophiology among the Renaissance humanists, at any rate.)

This poem was written by an acquaintance of Giordano Bruno and a fellow renegade, John Donne, although Donne chose to go under cover so as not to die as Bruno did. Or to die as Donne’s own brother had died during the Elizabethan anti-Catholic purges of the 1590s.

In 1611, Donne was asked to commemorate the untimely death of his patron’s adolescent daughter, and Donne seized upon the occasion to write not only about Elizabeth Drury, but also about what he called “the Idea of a Woman.” And while he was eulogizing the young woman who had died (and also eulogizing the passing of more than she), Donne performed an “anatomy” upon the “corpse” of the desolate world that “Shee” had left behind her at her passing. The poem is called “The First Anniversary: An Anatomy of World,” and it turns out to be, among other things, a prescient lament for the “death” of Sophia in the coming mechanistic age. Continue reading ‘Bulgakov Blog Conference, Day 12′

“We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”- T.S. Eliot

I have admired the greatness of Eliot as a poet, but never expected to use a bit of his work for a meditation of education such as this. However, it seems to me that this quote from Eliot is filled with profundity and enormous implications for our practice as educators and continuing students. I must say from the outset that my reflection on this quote is not an exegesis of Eliot’s poetry (though certainly such an venture is a worthy endeavor and has been embarked upon by interpreters much more able than I), but rather a contemplation of these words as they stand on their own, detached from the context of his work in which it is originally embedded.

I will begin with a memory. Continue reading ‘The Wisdom of Eliot’s Turn of Phrase’

new tune now available.

Come By My Side . mp3 (right click to download)

A burgeoning catalog of our tunes can be found on our Audiography page.

I realized today that I don’t care about trying to define what is and is not a work of art…. not that it doesn’t matter as a project. It just doesn’t matter to me. I’ve never been very excited about this project of aesthetics, anyway. What exactly are we trying to accomplish in so doing? David is a work of art, and fountain isn’t. The Isenheim altarpiece is a work of art (albeit religious art, so some might not agree), and the Easter Island Moai aren’t, unless of course one of them happens to be in an art museum, in which case it could be, although… blah blah blah. Don’t take my cheek as irreverence toward the fields of contemporary aesthetics or art criticism. Quite the contrary. I’m more interested in talking about the above mentioned pieces themselves, rather than stipulating whether and how aestheticians may talk about them. After all, it is, or should be, a bit of a common place that works like the above weren’t necessarily created with the kind of museum culture that we often presuppose (with the exception, possibly, of Fountain). Nor where they necessary created to be works of “art” as we understand that word. Rather, these works each demonstrate an elasticity and plurivocity in their ability to function within and without that museum culture. We might say that they function in a milieu that is significantly more robust than the one provided by the western art world.

Contrary to my position, Jerome Stolnitz maintains that the iconic status of these works depends on the disinterestedness that the museum culture preserves ((“On the Apparent Demise of Really High Art,” JAAC 43 (1985): 356)). This assertion or judgment, it seems, relies on two judgments of which I remain unconvinced. First, regarding this iconic status, he presupposes that the reasons for which these works are valued is and ought to be grounded in their being works of the museum culture, or works that we value in a disinterested way. Is this in fact why many or most people do value these works? Is this the only reason why they can value these works? For instance, the Isenheim altarpiece might facilitate a new way of experiencing Mary’s role in the passion of Christ, or, in it’s original context, it can change the way in which the space is experienced, niether of which seem to be especially reliant on ways of viewing that are explicitly dependent on the contemporary museum. And thus, second, Stolnitz asserts that the museum culture fosters the right way of viewing or experiencing works of art. Why? Who decides which aspect of the artistic milieu is the one that ought to be emphasized? What does this say about the revival of urban murals? Are these murals to be viewed the way that one would view visual art in a museum? Is one detrimentally impaired in viewing an urban mural if one hasn’t been formed by the museum culture? Or, is it possible that developing an awareness of the way in which murals shape urban space, and are contextualized by urban space, can actually improve viewers’ sensitivity to museum pieces by thinking about the ways in which context and space change the our perception of works and the way in which works change our perception of space and context? In this case, the intention of the artist and the intentions of the viewers are not unimportant. Nor are they the focal point of a work because works are plurivocal, they function in ways that neither the artist or nor viewers anticipate when working from the perspective of the museum culture. They exist in a milieu of activity, intentions, contexts. Similarly, in Art in Action, Nick Wolterstorff says the only thing that works of art have in common is their varied activities, their ability to do many different things.

Thinking about aesthetics this way, how much does the status of the piece as a work of art or non-art make a difference? I don’t really have a defensible answer at this point… just a hunch that it doesn’t make much of a difference at all.

Needless to say, she’s beautiful and totally kills in concert. However, I’ll let Aron explain this song…

A Song for Melody Gardot – recorded 8/18/08, mixed 8/24/08