We see develop rather quickly in the Church within the New Testament people, often ‘virgins and widows,’ who are ‘set apart’ for what we might call ‘full time ministry.’ (The terms are anachronistic to be sure, but just roll with me) So we see from a very early point a ‘mixed economy’ of forms of life in the Church. Some work and produce and give, and some ‘mend tents’ while still doing such ‘full time ministry,’ but is has always been deemed necessary to have a group of people dedicated to the life of the Church who are fully dependent on her life, but who alone can give a fuller expression to her life. We would be incomplete without the virgins and widows. The development of monasticism and the incredible importance of the religous throughout our history only testify all the more to this.
Though not quite as prominent as it once was (or so it seems to me anyway), it is not at all uncommon to see a Roman Catholic parish system, including schools and ministry to the poor, supported by small groups of monks and/or nuns (heck we could even include the celibate priesthood here).
Yet, despite this decline, there has been developing since at least the Jesus People Movement, communities of Protestants who in rough ways approximate this mixed economy of life. Anglicanism too has a small but not unimportant religious life – though we might pray for this to grow all the more. Among the developments has been the flowering of “new monasticism” and “intentional communities.”
If, as I have said, the fullness of the Church’s life requires a group of people set apart from “working life,” then I wonder if we ought to be trying to test whether new monastic and intentional communities could serve an analogous function as the religous within our parish structures. Maybe there would be only a few single parishes that could support such a group, but would it not be possible to imagine a relatively close group of parishes contribute together to support such a community for the sake of their own life? I don’t see why not. In fact I think this could be quite life-giving.
There are more than a few logistical questions that arise, but I have some ideas, and I imagine many others have some too. This is a topic I’d love to explore more here. So let’s tentatively consider this an ‘introductory’ post that could flower into more. These also could see some strong overlap with my continuing reflections on seminaries.
On iTunes University (in the MIT Arts section) there is a lecture/moderated discussion given by Joe Haldeman entitled “The Craft of Science Fiction.” In it, Mr. Haldeman briefly discusses Hugo Gernsback, one of the great early Science Fiction (hitherto: SF) pioneers, and founder of the first SF magazine, Amazing Stories. Gernsback saw SF as a tool to popularize and advocate for science and technology. Riffing off of that idea, Haldeman proposes that today SF–and especially hard SF:
“is a tool against religion…a tool for rationalism, and a rational approach to solving life’s problems.”
Ironically, Joe Haldeman’s best known work, The Forever War, could easily be construed as a story about how technology isolates us and makes us less human; hardly a tool for the rational approach to solving life’s problems, but then again we each bring our own biases to the table when we pick up a novel (or any other book).
In any event, it got me thinking: what ideological purposes does/should SF have? Should a SF story be a gospel narrative about the good news of science? Or should it be a prophetic voice calling out in the wilderness of of unbridled, post-industrial science-run-amok?
I realized most of my favorites in the genre do not advocate for faith in science or “rationality” as Haldeman would prefer, nor do they (often) completely discount science or technology. So briefly, I want to mention two books, easily some of the best in the genre, that explore science’s limits and possibilities, and at the same time have things to say about religion and spirituality. Each of these books deserve multi-thousand word reviews, but this is supposed to be a short post so please don’t let brevity undermine your understanding of these book’s quality or import.
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Lem, one of the world’s best and probably Europe’s best practitioner of SF, wrote Solaris in Polish in 1961. It was translated into English from a French translation in 1970, and a direct Polish to English translation was only just published as an audio book a few months ago with an ebook soon to follow. There are also two film adaptations which deviate somewhat from the novel.
Solaris is a planet with one giant, conscious organism. The human characters in the book, all scientists, discover through a certain kind of interaction with this alien organism that science cannot answer all questions, and that the most problematic and disturbing of these unanswered questions are about themselves. This is one of the great philosophical novels of the 20th century.
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
By my estimation, this is the greatest post-apocalyptic story of all time (and the cover, above, is totally sweet). After a nuclear holocaust, a remote Catholic monastery keeps human learning and the cultural memory of the past alive. It is deeply moving novel which–with no lack of irony–simultaneously warns us of the dangers and evils of science without conscience, and commends to us the indomitable curiosity that is one of the noblest and best aspects of humanity and is the basis of all science.
++++
Part of a (Long) Series of (Short) Posts about Science and Technology
The Tragic Irony of Technology Coltan, cellphones and being connected
Singularity, Progress, and Darwinian Common Sense Artificial Intelligence and Sciencism
Middleduction A post that would have made a nice introduction
Science Fiction as Prophetic Witness or Scientific Gospel?
Technology and Language u r n 4 a gr8 time, lol (coming soon)
Creating the Problem in Order to Fix It (coming soon)
More on Sciencism (coming soon)
Kierkegaardian Dread (coming soon)
Status Update
June 22, 2011
Greetings Readers,
It’s been a slow summer for me, even though it started out with a bang with that epic beer post. I’ve been spending lots of time with my family and tons on house projects as well. It’s been very rewarding but it’s made for bad blogging. Rather soon I have a book review coming of Mark McIntosh’s intro to theology, which is a spectacular book; and I have a few other posts in the works.
(Here’s a look at the fence I’ve been building from an old deck.)
I’ve been reading +Arthur Michael Ramsey, Sergii Bulgakov and Flannery O’Connor for the most part, and have played around with the Latin of St. Augustine’s Confessions, book X.
In July, I’ll be attending the Ekklesia Gathering and am oh so very excited to meet Joey Aszterbaum, aka “The Charismanglican.”
In the Fall I’ll be beginning my Senior Project at the University of Minnesota examining the political theology of the Apostolic Fathers. Advanced Latin will be in Tacitus and Greek, Book I of Plato’s Republic. Hopefully I’ll be graduating in the Spring and will be applying to the MA at the University of Minnesota in the Fall, hoping to focus on the social thought of St. John Chrysostom.
At Church, I’ve become a Verger and an Acolyte trainer. Perhaps more importantly, in August or September I’ll be officially starting the discernment process for Holy Orders in the Episcopal diocese of Minnesota. Prayers are sought!
It’s a small readership we have, but a loyal and intelligent one. Peace to you this Summer.
Pentecost: End of the Law, Beginning of Judgement
June 12, 2011
Moses and the Israelites received the Law on the fiery mount. Israel was bound to it by covenant and its violation meant judgement upon them. This Law governed all aspects of life from agricultural to sexual policy and marked the people as God’s own. But the Law itself and the prophets too understood that the Law itself would one day be transcended (Rom 3.21).
The Church received the Spirit in the fiery upper room. She was bound together by another covenant; and it was a covenant that has no Law but Judgement. The Feast celebrated the giving of Torah, but in Jerusalem was given no new law, rather unfettered possibility of human and divine reconciliation under the one Lord in one Spirit. John 20.19-23 means the book of Acts. To bind and loose, to forgive and retain, these are not self-grounded proclamations of a new authoritative community – No! There is no authority handed over to the Church to make a new Law; rather Judgement is the necessary way of living beyond the Law, and all judgements are provisional as even the apostolic ‘Council of Jerusalem’ is. The Spirit blows now where She wills and perpetually gives Judgement, which the Church tries to discern. The Spirit can fall before baptism; She can proclaim clean what was formerly unclean.
The Spirit is not bound by any Law whatsoever.
At the Still Point: A Literary Guide to Prayer in Ordinary Time by Sarah Arthur — A Review
June 10, 2011
At the Still Point: A Literary Guide to Prayer in Ordinary Time
by Sarah Arthur
Paraclete Press, 2011
$16.99
++++
According to the infallible internet, Flannery O’Connor once wrote that,
“When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others. I think that for a writer to worry is to take over God’s business.”
She was of course speaking of her own books, but the same could be said about both Sarah Arthur‘s writing, and that of the poets and authors she anthologizes in her new book, At the Still Point: A Literary Guide to Prayer in Ordinary Time, published last month by Paraclete Press (and also available here).
In what might be seen as a devotional for Christian English majors, Arthur has skillfully chosen poems and fragments of fiction that “sneak up” on her readers and cause them to drift (or tumble) into meditation, contemplation and prayer. For each of the 29 weeks of Ordinary Time (the season of the church calendar between Pentecost and Advent), Arthur has provided us with a theme, an opening and closing prayer (usually a snippet of verse), a psalm and Scripture readings, and between 3 and 6 selections of literature, mainly from English and American authors (with a couple of predictable Russians, and a Pole). The Scripture readings seem to show some relation to the Revised Common Lectionary, but Arthur states in her introduction that her 29 weekly sections are not arranged according to any lectionary and can theoretically be read in any order. The lack of concrete connection with the lectionary is one of only two things about this book that annoy me, but I’ve been accused of being a liturgy snob before.
Her goal in selecting the readings is not to assault the reader with over-powering thematic overtures that tie neatly into the cut-and-dry, therapeutic Scripture readings. This is no resource for those looking for poems to go along with their tidy, little 3-point sermons. In her introduction she describes her chosen authors as those:
“…who have known the things of God, but speak in metaphor…In not stating out loud what they know, they have left much to our imaginations–which is a way of saying they have trusted the Holy Spirit.”
Arthur has found authors who were willing to give their books up to God to be used in unexpected, and maybe even frightening ways.
Arthur is up-front with the fact that even attentive and astute readers may not always immediately (or ever) understand the relevance that a particular selection has to the Scripture readings, or to the sometimes vague weekly themes. All of this is refreshing for me. If I wanted straight forward and overt, I’d be reading Oswald Chambers. If I wanted pat answers, and black-and-white interpretations, I’d be reading John MacArthur (and subsequently stabbing myself in the eye). I’d take reading Sarah Arthur’s eclectic band of poets and novelists over 99% of what passes for Christian devotional literature these days.
Which leads me to the selections themselves…which then leads me to air the second of my two complaints: Where in the name of peafowl and horn-rimmed glasses is Flannery O’Connor? Hot tar and molasses! Of all the authors to overlook, why did it have to be that foxy Catholic lady from Georgia?
Other than that lacuna, Arthur does a pretty good job. Having a Wheaton background, she can’t resist a healthy dose of C.S. Lewis, but she doesn’t over do it. Perhaps because of her Presbyterian background, she favors George MacDonald. Overall, she seems to be a raging anglophile (the teapot calling the teacup porcelain, I suppose) and consequently George Hebert, John Donne, John Keble, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, and an entire murmuration of English Romantics dominate.
As I alluded to before, she includes some obligatory Tolstoy and Dostoevsky passages, one of which is that beautiful section of The Brothers Karamozov where Aloyosha has a vision of the recently deceased Zossima. My homeboy, Garrison Keillor, makes a populist/Lutheran offering, and on the Roman Catholic side of things we get G.K. Chesterton, Anne Rice, as well as SS. Francis, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross et al.
In a “Further Reading” section she includes some runners-up that I wish had made the cut (but no Ms. O’Connor, even here!) These include Grahame Greene (RCC), Frederick Buechner (Presbyterian), Charles Williams (Anglican), Wendell Berry (Baptist), and Chaim Potok (Jewish). Oh well. I guess it’s always good to keep back some A-listers, just in case there’s a sequel.
Maybe what I have most to thank Arthur for is the introduction to several contemporary poets of whom I had never heard, and who deeply impressed me; Robert Siegel and Elizabeth B. Rooney, especially. Here’s one of the a latter’s:
I saw the world end yesterday!
A flight of angels tore
Its cover off and Heaven lay
Where earth had been before
I walked about the countryside
And saw a cricket pass
Then, bending closer, I espied
An ecstasy of grass.
All in all, At the Still Point is outstanding; a veritable cornucopia of literary spirituality. Arthur’s introduction is helpful, light, and intimate, and despite the afore-mentioned Flannerylessness, she is an expert at choosing passages that delight and surprise. As I re-read this book throughout Ordinary Time, I trust and pray that the Holy Spirit will use some of these passages to save my soul, and to try it; or–to paraphrase old Clive Staples–I hope the God uses these passages to baptize my imagination, immersing it in the surprising vision of His Kingdom. Lord knows all of us who call ourselves followers of Christ could use a little more of that sacrament.
Middleduction (Belated Introduction)
June 7, 2011
“But what about earth and all the people on it?”
“Tut, tut. We can’t let mere sentiment intrude. This is Science.” K.W. Jeter Infernal Devices
I do not hate science or technology. I am not a Luddite (hell, the Luddites weren’t even Luddites according to the contemporary usage of the word). While I am attracted to the “no-shiny-object” policy of some members of the anabaptist tradition, I utterly fail at that discipline. Despite what some of my friends and family may say (e.g. “You’re the youngest 87 year old I know” ”Why don’t you join the 21st century” ,etc.), I am a product of my generation. The point of the preceding and proceeding posts is not, then, to utterly denounce science and technology, but rather to show in various circuitous ways that science and technological advancement have lost their anchoring in the seafloor of wisdom–that is culture, history, literature, and religion–and are floating about looking for some place to safely moor. Some of these posts will be more serious than others, but none are meant to be exhaustive. They are more like little flash-rants; too short to be called essays, too long to be written on a cardboard sign for a doomsday prophet to hold while standing on the street-corner.
It should be noted that during the course of the history of western civilization guardians of certain areas of wisdom have acted rather unseemly both toward science and to their own fields of study. Burning or even threatening to burn scientists at the stake is not usually the way to win friends or influence people. And, getting lost in the cobweb-filled labyrinth of 20th century literary theory, has not exactly given the study of literature the credibility and stature it needs in order to properly temper the more lucrative practical sciences.
So we find ourselves in a world where the academic study of humanities is all but dead. Art, music and literature programs are the first to be cut from public schools. Scientific and technological progress have either become ends to themselves, or they are the means of much more insidious and destructive forces, which seek to harness these advances for the purposes of greed and power-lust. And yet science and technology already do much to decrease suffering, and make the lives of all humans better. The potential to advance in this capacity is great, but science and technology cannot and will not do it alone.
++++
Part of a (Long) Series of (Short) Posts about Science and Technology
The Tragic Irony of Technology Coltan, cellphones and being connected
Singularity, Progress, and Darwinian Common Sense Artificial Intelligence and Sciencism
Middleduction A post that would have made a nice introduction
Science Fiction as Prophetic Witness or Scientific Gospel? (coming soon)
Technology and Language u r n 4 a gr8 time, lol (coming soon)
Creating the Problem in order to Fix It (coming soon)
More on Sciencism (coming soon)
Kierkegaardian Dread (coming soon)
Singularity, Progress, and Darwinian Common Sense
June 5, 2011
A TIME magazine article a few months back explores the idea of technological Singularity. The jist of it is that technology is advancing at a faster and faster rate and will eventual reach a point of near infinite growth, the point of Singularity. At this point, machines will become conscious, and “the human age will be over.” Now of course the article cites several science fiction authors, but it mainly quotes and profiles legitimate scientists. There are a lot of people who take this seriously. Many believe that it is inevitable. Some have put a date on it (2045 CE, to be exact). There is a significant group of scientists and inventors who are working toward it. They have their own Singularity convention that is described in the article as something between ComiCon and an academic symposia.
The article quotes the Singularity Movement’s detractors as accusing it of being a Silicon valley version of the Evangelical rapture; a bunch of sad, dissolusioned geeks looking to technology for salvation. This places the Singularity movement firmly within a growing trend of scientists and technologists whose faith in Science (with a capital S) to solve all our problems is absolute. One such person mentioned in the article is Cambridge trained biologist Aubrey de Grey, who believes that death is simply an illness and he’s looking for the cure, and seems to believe that merging human and (inevitable future) machine consciousness may be the key: the scientific version of everlasting life.
In my opinion the biggest problem with the Singularity movement is they stopped reading science fiction back in the early fifties when it was still optimistic and have neglected to read the science fiction of the past 5 decades. Maybe they’ve never seen a minor, underground, cult classic, indie film from the 80s–I’m sure you’ve never heard of it–it’s called, Terminator. Science fiction has been grappling with artificial intelligence and Singularity for a long damn time, which leads me to my favorite quote from the article, one that could have come directly out of a science fiction story (Lev Grossman, the author of the article is also a science fiction/fantasy author). It expresses my skepticism with clarity and wit:
“You don’t have to be a super-intelligent cyborg to understand that introducing a superior life-form into your own biosphere is a basic Darwinian error.”
++++
Part of a (Long) Series of (Short) Posts about Science and Technology
The Tragic Irony of Technology Coltan, cellphones and being connected
Singularity, Progress, and Darwinian Common Sense Artificial Intelligence and Sciencism
Middleduction A post that would have made a nice introduction (coming soon)
Science Fiction as Prophetic Witness or Scientific Gospel? (coming soon)
Creating the Problem in order to Fix It (coming soon)
More on Sciencism (coming soon)
Kierkegaardian Dread (coming soon)
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
