As shocked as I am to find Stanley Fish writing about anything that has immutable meaning, I have to recommend this review he's written on Terry Eagleton's book, Reason, Faith and Revolution.
"'Faith and knowledge,' Eagleton concludes, are not antithetical but 'interwoven.' You can’t have one without the other, despite the Satanic claim that you can go it alone by applying your own independent intellect to an unmediated reality: 'All reasoning is conducted within the ambit of some sort of faith, attraction, inclination, orientation, predisposition, or prior commitment.' Meaning, value and truth are not 'reducible to the facts themselves, in the sense of being ineluctably motivated by a bare account of them.' Which is to say that there is no such thing as a bare account of them. (Here, as many have noted, is where religion and postmodernism meet.)"
Stanley Fish?
HT: Ann Althouse
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
La Swine
Eric Berger from the Houston Chronicle on the good, the bad and the ugly of swine flu reactions. As usual, understated, level-headed news coverage.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
A Lesson Found in a Case of the Wiggles
Back towards the beginning of Lent we started attending an Antiochian Orthodox Church together as a family. It's a Godly experiment on our part; we're not sure yet this is where the Lord wants us to be - although when the four of us stand together and the smell of incense fills the church, I feel more certain each week that this experimental journey may really be taking us home. But for now we're just visitors: Presbyterians in a foreign land, as it were.
Since the service takes place only once on Sunday and there is no Sunday School at that time for the kids, the boys are with us for the two hour service each week. They've never had to do that, not at either church we've attended since they were born, and it's definitely taken some getting used to. A week or two ago I had a conversation with Two about it - in particular about sitting still as much as possible and standing when we stand (at least 1/2 the service is standing - this church building is actually a bit odd in that it has pews at all). The best way I could explain it to him was that he had to accustom himself to worshipping God with his entire body. He could worship with his feet by standing. He could worship with his eyes by watching the service and looking around the church at all the icons. He could even worship with his mouth - not only by learning some of the songs and prayers but by kissing the crucifix and eating the blessed bread at the end of the service. This analogy has helped him to keep still (well, a little bit more still, anyway), but what it really did was help me even more than it helped him.
It has helped me because so far my experience with Orthodoxy has been like drinking water from a fire hose. It is overwhelming in almost every possible aspect. Not just the adjustment to an entirely different worship service (in which every single detail has pages of meaning), but all the standing, the fasting, the 2 and 3 hour services - all of this has me sometimes bewildered and overwhelmed. But when I thought of each of those things that overwhelmed me as a way that a different part of me - even a different part of my body - could worship God, it became easier to understand. It doesn't always make it easier to do - to go without butter on my toast when I really, really want some - but it helps. That and copious repetitions of the Jesus Prayer usually get me away from the butter dish before something bad happens.
I've not made the transition from Protestantism to Orthodoxy - not by a long shot. Some days I am certain I will and others I am not so much. But the journey itself - the prayer, the study, all of it - may after all be a transition into a more faithful, thoughtful follower of Christ. And wherever I worship, that would be a good thing.
Since the service takes place only once on Sunday and there is no Sunday School at that time for the kids, the boys are with us for the two hour service each week. They've never had to do that, not at either church we've attended since they were born, and it's definitely taken some getting used to. A week or two ago I had a conversation with Two about it - in particular about sitting still as much as possible and standing when we stand (at least 1/2 the service is standing - this church building is actually a bit odd in that it has pews at all). The best way I could explain it to him was that he had to accustom himself to worshipping God with his entire body. He could worship with his feet by standing. He could worship with his eyes by watching the service and looking around the church at all the icons. He could even worship with his mouth - not only by learning some of the songs and prayers but by kissing the crucifix and eating the blessed bread at the end of the service. This analogy has helped him to keep still (well, a little bit more still, anyway), but what it really did was help me even more than it helped him.
It has helped me because so far my experience with Orthodoxy has been like drinking water from a fire hose. It is overwhelming in almost every possible aspect. Not just the adjustment to an entirely different worship service (in which every single detail has pages of meaning), but all the standing, the fasting, the 2 and 3 hour services - all of this has me sometimes bewildered and overwhelmed. But when I thought of each of those things that overwhelmed me as a way that a different part of me - even a different part of my body - could worship God, it became easier to understand. It doesn't always make it easier to do - to go without butter on my toast when I really, really want some - but it helps. That and copious repetitions of the Jesus Prayer usually get me away from the butter dish before something bad happens.
I've not made the transition from Protestantism to Orthodoxy - not by a long shot. Some days I am certain I will and others I am not so much. But the journey itself - the prayer, the study, all of it - may after all be a transition into a more faithful, thoughtful follower of Christ. And wherever I worship, that would be a good thing.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
One the Green Belt
The boys passed their lime green belt test on Thursday and are now officially dark green belts (or just plain old green belts, as they are insisting on). Yesterday they were especially eager to get to practice to wear their new belts. As they were getting ready One came into our room in his uniform, with the new belt raised over his head: "Huzzah!" he shouted, and then "wait until don it for you."
Don? Huzzah? I think we need to cut down on 19th century literature, don't you?
Don? Huzzah? I think we need to cut down on 19th century literature, don't you?
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