A Summer Series post.
[T]he Church cannot describe itself as holy and mean that it is separate from the world and the world's agenda. Stating doctrines inside the church will not liberate unless the Church gets out into the streets, heals the sick and confronts the unjust. The Church is in the world that God loved, and has to work for the well-being of the world. Seeing that God's presence cannot be limited to organized Christianity, the Church does well to see where God is at work and to promote those salvific acts.
*************---Mercy Amba Oduyoye
Showing posts with label Summer Series 2007. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Summer Series 2007. Show all posts
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Saturday, September 22, 2007
and how could I forget
... that I also promised posts on rodent ethics.
Really, earning a living takes far too much time and I'd rather be writing. (Which I know some people do for a living, but most of us who have tried and tried and tried and tried and aren't full-time journalists or technical writers or in the .00007% of the happy few who get book tours for their books and NY Times best-sellers cannot keep the rent paid that way.) And helping people to pray and be church. That one at least is a possibility.
I have returned from bringing Benedict to the Quakers, and am quietly at home with Maya Pavlova, and from this brief bit of solitude and silence I shall emerge, late tonight or sometimes tomorrow. Before this it is possible I shall surface with a Summer Series post -- remember them? I've been meaning to share some African women's theology with you all. It's the fall equinox so I'd better hurry up. Ah well, I had to start my "fall" work on August 14, so I get an extra day or two of "Summer" on my blogging and summer thinking.
(I just checked the NASA kiddie calendar, and it turns out we've got another day till this year's Autumn Equinox. NASA's handy educational site, by the way, is here. Go there for detailed help in contemplating the mysteries of the universe.)
Miss Maya Pavlova has had several encounters with a striped lizard in gorgeous hues of electric blue, or perhaps two lizards if the same one is not roaming under two different windows on two sides of the house, and she is resting up from her emotions, because the encounters were of course through a window, she being inside and the lizard out. Her tail was flicking, her nose was pointing, and she was making all manner of predatory little guttural cat sounds.
Really, earning a living takes far too much time and I'd rather be writing. (Which I know some people do for a living, but most of us who have tried and tried and tried and tried and aren't full-time journalists or technical writers or in the .00007% of the happy few who get book tours for their books and NY Times best-sellers cannot keep the rent paid that way.) And helping people to pray and be church. That one at least is a possibility.
I have returned from bringing Benedict to the Quakers, and am quietly at home with Maya Pavlova, and from this brief bit of solitude and silence I shall emerge, late tonight or sometimes tomorrow. Before this it is possible I shall surface with a Summer Series post -- remember them? I've been meaning to share some African women's theology with you all. It's the fall equinox so I'd better hurry up. Ah well, I had to start my "fall" work on August 14, so I get an extra day or two of "Summer" on my blogging and summer thinking.
(I just checked the NASA kiddie calendar, and it turns out we've got another day till this year's Autumn Equinox. NASA's handy educational site, by the way, is here. Go there for detailed help in contemplating the mysteries of the universe.)
Miss Maya Pavlova has had several encounters with a striped lizard in gorgeous hues of electric blue, or perhaps two lizards if the same one is not roaming under two different windows on two sides of the house, and she is resting up from her emotions, because the encounters were of course through a window, she being inside and the lizard out. Her tail was flicking, her nose was pointing, and she was making all manner of predatory little guttural cat sounds.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Summer Disco: rounding out the French weekend with music
This is a double feature, in honor of I'm not sure what. Perhaps my two posts on France?
Both of these songs are sung by Charles Trenet (1913-2001) and both date from the 1940s, though they have been recorded many times since by many artists in many languages, especially the second.
The first is a lovely one called "Que reste-t-il de nos amours?" ("What remains of our love?" The French put the word "amour" in the plural sometimes.) This is major nostalgia for French folks of a certain age. There is a well-known movie by Truffaut, "Baisers Volés" ("stolen kisses") whose title is taken from this song, though the expression way predates the song, of course. The song, in a new version, was the theme music for the movie.
And this one is a really old, old song. You've probably heard several U.S. American versions of it, including Bobby Darin's rendition and a recent obnoxious cruise line commercial, but THIS (says she, drawing herself up in full snob mode) is the original, sung by Charles Trenet. The song was still around when I was a little girl, though we thought of it as "old folks' music." But we knew it.
This is not disco. Or rock 'n roll.
Both of these songs are sung by Charles Trenet (1913-2001) and both date from the 1940s, though they have been recorded many times since by many artists in many languages, especially the second.
The first is a lovely one called "Que reste-t-il de nos amours?" ("What remains of our love?" The French put the word "amour" in the plural sometimes.) This is major nostalgia for French folks of a certain age. There is a well-known movie by Truffaut, "Baisers Volés" ("stolen kisses") whose title is taken from this song, though the expression way predates the song, of course. The song, in a new version, was the theme music for the movie.
|
And this one is a really old, old song. You've probably heard several U.S. American versions of it, including Bobby Darin's rendition and a recent obnoxious cruise line commercial, but THIS (says she, drawing herself up in full snob mode) is the original, sung by Charles Trenet. The song was still around when I was a little girl, though we thought of it as "old folks' music." But we knew it.
|
This is not disco. Or rock 'n roll.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Summer Disco: a bonus for Grandmère Mimi
Well, Grandmère Mimi, you get a nostalgia bonus for being up late and listening.
The great Sarah Vaughn (does anyone ever refer to her as anything but "the great" Sarah Vaughn?) singing "Lullaby of Birdland." Enjoy.
The great Sarah Vaughn (does anyone ever refer to her as anything but "the great" Sarah Vaughn?) singing "Lullaby of Birdland." Enjoy.
|
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Summer Disco: And now for a little swing!
|
In honor of the beginning of the academic year tomorrow, let's get "in the mood" even if it is still summer. Grab your partner and kick up your heels.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Summer Disco: "Stormy Weather"
I know, it's about lost love, but the weather of the last few days made me think of this, and there's nothing like the Billie Holiday rendition.
Go for the nostalgia, folks.
Go for the nostalgia, folks.
|
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Sunday, July 15, 2007
“The Truth Is Concrete:” God’s presence in the world and the Good Samaritan
A Summer Series post.
I just read a whole book (well, half read and half skimmed, depending on the relevance of the chapters to my current writing projects) by theologian (and poet and peace activist) Dorothee Soelle. (Or Sölle, as it is spelled in German.) It’s a book I had never read, since the Graduate Theological Union library (GTU, in Berkeley) didn't have it during my recent Ph.D. studies and although I had seen its title in Soelle’s very long bibliography, it was "only" a series of talks she gave on the radio, published in book form in the original German in 1967 and in English in the U.K. in 1969. It was never published in the U.S. as far as I know. God love the Harvard Divinity School (HDS, my M.Div. alma mater) library, where I found it last Monday.
Dorothee Sölle, The Truth is Concrete, trans. Dinah Livingstone (London: Burns & Oates, 1969) Original: Die Wahrheit ist konkret (Olten: Walter-Verlag, 1967).
Here are a few excerpts, with the part at the end of particular interest to some of us since it pertains to the Good Samaritan, about whom we hear tomorrow (well, today, I have just burned the midnight oil) in churches using the various major lectionaries.
I have changed the gender-exclusive language to match our contemporary sensibilities (and Sölle’s own later sensibilities) and put the changes in brackets.
Padre Mickey, you will like this first paragraph.
When Brecht was in exile in Denmark he had on his study wall the motto I have taken for the title of this book. It is an old sentence derived from Hegel by the Marxist tradition and now part of its wisdom. In Lenin it reads” This is the foundation of the dialectic: there is no such thing as abstract truth; truth is always concrete.” This principle is in harmony with the Christian notion of truth, or at least that Christian notion which I hold. It dismisses the view that truth is simply there and can be given unchanging expression. It considers the situations in which people live and the needs they feel. It does not forget the oppressed. For these determine our truth. Christianity sees the truth as concrete, historical and partisan. (p. 7)
Religion joins earthly to heavenly life by making the eternal present through liturgy and prayer, but it also shuts it up in a house and separates it from the profane things which lie outside the sanctuary. ... (p. 92)God no longer encounters [human beings] in the house of religion. What did this house mean to him? If prayer originally meant to exercise power, it was an attempt to control an even stronger power. The stronger power is conceived as far away, threatening and elusive. Ritual actions and prayers seek to bring God near. The idea is to make God present through holy vessels, actions, words or person. God’s presence must be conjured up.Now it becomes plain why Jesus no longer needs to keep people in the house of religion. God does not have to be made present, [God] is present. Religion seeks to overcome the gulf between God and [humanity]. But for Jesus this gulf no longer exists. God is out in the open, or, to be more precise, out in the open on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, even though [God] is overlooked by the priest and the Levite and only noticed by the Samaritan. No place can be more sacred than the place where the man who fell among thieves lies helpless and thirsty. No time is more solemn and closer to God than the time when people pass him by in his need. No words could be more pious than the Samaritan’s careful instructions to the innkeeper. “Take care of him and if you spend any more I will repay you when I come back.” If it is true that God is the most important person in this story, even though [God’s] name is not mentioned, it follows that there is no more need for ritual to make [God] present because [God] is already there. Jesus sends [us] out into the open because that is where God is, not in a special place but in the everyday life of every [person]. (p. 93)
Note: Sölle was not anti-ritual or anti-worship. She was more of a both/and person. But she is making a point here about what matters to Jesus and ought to matter to us. Note also when and where she is writing.
Within a year of the German publication of this book, Sölle and a group of friends, Catholic and Protestant, had begun monthly prayer gatherings now known as "Political Evensong" (Politisches Nachtgebet, more accurately translated "Political Evening Prayer") which blended socio-political reflection on current events and biblical study and prayer. Christians of various affiliations took part in these gatherings, as did religiously unaffiliated people. Most of the gatherings took place in Köln (Cologne). The experiment lasted about two years. Sölle, a Protestant of the Lutheran tradition, later married one of her companions from the group, former Benedictine Catholic monk and philosopher Fulbert Steffensky.
Illustration: Sadao Watanabe, The Good Samaritan.
I just read a whole book (well, half read and half skimmed, depending on the relevance of the chapters to my current writing projects) by theologian (and poet and peace activist) Dorothee Soelle. (Or Sölle, as it is spelled in German.) It’s a book I had never read, since the Graduate Theological Union library (GTU, in Berkeley) didn't have it during my recent Ph.D. studies and although I had seen its title in Soelle’s very long bibliography, it was "only" a series of talks she gave on the radio, published in book form in the original German in 1967 and in English in the U.K. in 1969. It was never published in the U.S. as far as I know. God love the Harvard Divinity School (HDS, my M.Div. alma mater) library, where I found it last Monday.
Dorothee Sölle, The Truth is Concrete, trans. Dinah Livingstone (London: Burns & Oates, 1969) Original: Die Wahrheit ist konkret (Olten: Walter-Verlag, 1967).
Here are a few excerpts, with the part at the end of particular interest to some of us since it pertains to the Good Samaritan, about whom we hear tomorrow (well, today, I have just burned the midnight oil) in churches using the various major lectionaries.
I have changed the gender-exclusive language to match our contemporary sensibilities (and Sölle’s own later sensibilities) and put the changes in brackets.
Padre Mickey, you will like this first paragraph.
When Brecht was in exile in Denmark he had on his study wall the motto I have taken for the title of this book. It is an old sentence derived from Hegel by the Marxist tradition and now part of its wisdom. In Lenin it reads” This is the foundation of the dialectic: there is no such thing as abstract truth; truth is always concrete.” This principle is in harmony with the Christian notion of truth, or at least that Christian notion which I hold. It dismisses the view that truth is simply there and can be given unchanging expression. It considers the situations in which people live and the needs they feel. It does not forget the oppressed. For these determine our truth. Christianity sees the truth as concrete, historical and partisan. (p. 7)
Religion joins earthly to heavenly life by making the eternal present through liturgy and prayer, but it also shuts it up in a house and separates it from the profane things which lie outside the sanctuary. ... (p. 92)God no longer encounters [human beings] in the house of religion. What did this house mean to him? If prayer originally meant to exercise power, it was an attempt to control an even stronger power. The stronger power is conceived as far away, threatening and elusive. Ritual actions and prayers seek to bring God near. The idea is to make God present through holy vessels, actions, words or person. God’s presence must be conjured up.Now it becomes plain why Jesus no longer needs to keep people in the house of religion. God does not have to be made present, [God] is present. Religion seeks to overcome the gulf between God and [humanity]. But for Jesus this gulf no longer exists. God is out in the open, or, to be more precise, out in the open on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, even though [God] is overlooked by the priest and the Levite and only noticed by the Samaritan. No place can be more sacred than the place where the man who fell among thieves lies helpless and thirsty. No time is more solemn and closer to God than the time when people pass him by in his need. No words could be more pious than the Samaritan’s careful instructions to the innkeeper. “Take care of him and if you spend any more I will repay you when I come back.” If it is true that God is the most important person in this story, even though [God’s] name is not mentioned, it follows that there is no more need for ritual to make [God] present because [God] is already there. Jesus sends [us] out into the open because that is where God is, not in a special place but in the everyday life of every [person]. (p. 93) Note: Sölle was not anti-ritual or anti-worship. She was more of a both/and person. But she is making a point here about what matters to Jesus and ought to matter to us. Note also when and where she is writing.
Within a year of the German publication of this book, Sölle and a group of friends, Catholic and Protestant, had begun monthly prayer gatherings now known as "Political Evensong" (Politisches Nachtgebet, more accurately translated "Political Evening Prayer") which blended socio-political reflection on current events and biblical study and prayer. Christians of various affiliations took part in these gatherings, as did religiously unaffiliated people. Most of the gatherings took place in Köln (Cologne). The experiment lasted about two years. Sölle, a Protestant of the Lutheran tradition, later married one of her companions from the group, former Benedictine Catholic monk and philosopher Fulbert Steffensky.
Illustration: Sadao Watanabe, The Good Samaritan.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Research in Rockport
Yes, tomorrow!Looking at this photo, you may think I'm kidding,
but this expedition really is partly related to one of my summer projects.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Light summer reading
You think all scholars do in the summer is eat pupusas?
Think again.
And again.
And again.
As you know, there was also this, a week or two ago.
A Summer Series post.
Think again.
And again.
And again.
As you know, there was also this, a week or two ago.
A Summer Series post.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Summer Disco bonus: "Sweet and Low Down"
Actually performed by George Gershwin himself (says the eSnips page), recorded from a piano player roll he cut when he was 19!
It's official: my mother's love of Gershwin's music has rubbed off on me. (Her father used to whistle his tunes when she was growing up, so it runs in the family. Gershwin, of course, was still alive at the time.)
|
It's official: my mother's love of Gershwin's music has rubbed off on me. (Her father used to whistle his tunes when she was growing up, so it runs in the family. Gershwin, of course, was still alive at the time.)
Monday, June 25, 2007
Summer Disco -- and this time it really is disco
|
And the title theme, friends, is for
a) dear ones recovering from various surgeries and illnesses;
b) those of us trying to survive in academe where they don't give you your summer research grant money till the summer is over and you end up scrounging busfare to the library at your research location and booking your travel as you go (hey, I could end up stuck on the West Coast forever -- there's a thought) and working-class academics everywhere;
c) yesterday's San Francisco Pride parade; and
d) some more good vibrations for dear ones recovering from various surgeries and illnesses and all those contending with the U.S. health insurance system(s).
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Summer Disco: love and a trip down memory lane
Well, it's San Francisco, so you have to have politics AND love. Here's the love part, and you 1970s types will go into raptures of romantic memories. (With God and politics thrown in -- or not.) This isn't to everyone's taste, but it's an old favorite I found on eSnips. Hope it fits your day too.
|
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Monday, June 18, 2007
Soelle on exodus and exile
A Summer Series post.
Exodus means a break, setting out, leaving home.... Perhaps it was not so easy at all for Abram --who was not yet called Abraham-- to tell the difference between exodus and exile. One of the difficulties with life transitions is that feelings of home and feelings of homelessness can exist in one and the same heart. We should learn to pay attention to both.
******** Dorothee Soelle, The Mystery of Death, 71-72
Exodus means a break, setting out, leaving home.... Perhaps it was not so easy at all for Abram --who was not yet called Abraham-- to tell the difference between exodus and exile. One of the difficulties with life transitions is that feelings of home and feelings of homelessness can exist in one and the same heart. We should learn to pay attention to both.
******** Dorothee Soelle, The Mystery of Death, 71-72
Summer Disco, Special Edition: Dame Emma Sings the Red Priest (2)
A re-posting of the Vivaldo as promised below, to make up for the fact that the player went kerflooey when I tried to edit the time on the post. (And by the way, it's 11:20 p.m. in California, not 2:20 a.m. as this post will probably say.)
Sunday, June 17, 2007
More from Dorothee Soelle, this time a poem
A Summer Series post.
The poem is from the same book as the long quote below (The Mystery of Death) but it's originally from a book (presumably of poems - Soelle wrote poetry throughout her life, it was part of how she did theology) published in German in 2000 and, as far as I know, never translated. Check out the theology of the communion of saints in this one.
At a peace gathering
We're not only ten thousand I said
there are more of us here
the dead of both wars
are with us
A journalist came and asked
how could I know that
haven't you seen them
i ask the clueless guy
haven't you heard your grandmother
groaning
when they started it up again
do you live all alone
without any dead who drop in
for a drink with you
do you really think
you are only yourself
The poem is from the same book as the long quote below (The Mystery of Death) but it's originally from a book (presumably of poems - Soelle wrote poetry throughout her life, it was part of how she did theology) published in German in 2000 and, as far as I know, never translated. Check out the theology of the communion of saints in this one.
At a peace gathering
We're not only ten thousand I said
there are more of us here
the dead of both wars
are with us
A journalist came and asked
how could I know that
haven't you seen them
i ask the clueless guy
haven't you heard your grandmother
groaning
when they started it up again
do you live all alone
without any dead who drop in
for a drink with you
do you really think
you are only yourself
Dorothee Soelle on the mystery of death
A Summer Series post.Just a little light reading these days.
Dorothee Soelle, who died four years ago, was finishing a book on death days before she died. Her widower, Fulbert Steffensky, agreed to have it published and wrote the Foreword in the U.S. edition, which came out recently from Fortress Press.
Steffensky writes:
***The book is a fragment, as any human life is a fragment. Should one publish a fragment? Our family thought about this for a long time, and one of our arguments for publishing it is that she intended to do so. ...
***There was another reason we opted to publish the text as it is. After Dorothee Soelle's death we received hundred of letters in which people wrote that it was through her influence that they had found their way to the church, remained in the church, studied theology, or found courage for a pastoral vocation. We believe these people deserve to experience the intimacy of an incommplete text and its unprotected thoughts. ...
***Whoever reads this book will sense that her hands became tired. What never became tired is her wonderful, enraged passion for life.
From Dorothee Soelle's The Mystery of Death:
***[After a passage about her mother's last days and her mother's fear of having her life extended too long through technological means.] *These are new fears that have grown out of, and are still growing along with, advances in the medical field. The terror of death has in many instances been replaced by the terror of technocracy. The old fears--of starvation, death in childbirth, premature death-- are now distant memories. But does this mean we are living free of fear? The Swedish writing Henning Mankel spends most of his life in Mozambique, Africa, and his experience with old age and death there is completely different than in Sweden. He is fifty-five, and there that means he is among the aged population. The average life expectancy in Mozambique is forty-seven. Mankell writes of a "strange European revolution in the mid-1950s that removed old age from our life experience and deleted death from our agenda. ...Instead youth, energy, health are the dominant theme. Death has been transferred to the seniors' quarters. ... When death disappeared we became poorer. European culture has been ravaged by the forces of the free market just as a forest is ravaged by clear-cutting."
.......
***.... We have become doers and have learned to see through the laws that govern processes: to intervene, banish illness, extend life, and to be makers of our own lives and our fate.
***In this process the human capacity for pathos, our ability to experience suffering, atrophies. Accepting life, admitting our limits, considering life meaningful even in its fragmentariness and brokenness, are skills we are no longer learning. The person who has learned to live only in the action mode, who finds self-justification only by doing, cannot cope with situations in which there is nothing he or she can do anymore, when limits impose themselves on us as doers. Can a doer stand to be powerless sometimes? Can doers preserve their humanity even in life's defeats, if the meaning of their very being is defined exclusively by activity and the reproduction of life? Can they be sick or die? Or are sickness and death now only to be considered sites of dramatic absurdity, best never thought of at all, to be overlooked or denied? ...
*** Death has no place in the lansdscape of life for those who are pure doers and winners. Our cemeteries are located outside the urban centers. We live in a landscape where everyone is young and strong, rich, intelligent, and good-looking --or must appear so. The weak, the old, the dying do not count. Thus life in its waning stages has no name. It is difficult to die in this landscape of winners who manage without memory.
**********
[In a longer passage on the early days of November when Christians remember the dead. I will come back to this next November, I am sure.] *These days in November... make me remember. They send me to the cemetery, at least inwardly. They make me aware that I am not the giver of my own life. Into the cloak of my life is woven all the affection and tenderness of the people who are no longer here and whom I remember. I do not need to reinvent life or to be the first to do everything. I also do not need to finish everything I would like to have done with my life. I can live life as a fragment, just as the lives of my dead loved ones were fragmentary. ...
***...Perhaps the coldness in our country is increasing precisely because the dead have no place anymore and we ban them from memory out of fear of our own dying. Part of being human is remembering; equally important is looking ahead to those who will come after us.... There is an unscrupulous obsession with today, with now-ness, that is connected with forgetting the dead and that creates merciless consequences for all who are yet to be born. To be without memory is to have no need of a future.
***We are no longer needed --that is the real difficulty with growing old. But this not-being-needed does not need to turn into bitterness or despair. It can also lead to a kind of freedom in which I become freer, in which I have less fear and a greater sense of humor. I do not have to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. It will not come to an end when I do. I am learning to let go of power and influence. If death really is more than an avoidable breakdown, if it is our sister, as Francis of Assisi thought, born with us and accompanying us like our shadow, then accepting it creates a kind of nonviolence in our dealings with others and with creation. It is not we who guarantee our life, this wonderful, self-renewing, indomitable life that is lent to us. This is not merely a philosophical insight: it is part and parcel of the belief in another guarantor of life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)