February 2012
17 posts
“Nor is it anything but sophistry to claim that, since all speech acts are...”
– Nobody is quite so good at popping bubbles of academic pretension as Terry Eagleton. He’s a poison pen worthy of the greatest moments of rhetorical disdain in the Reformation or the eighteenth century. (via giftsoutright)
Pilgrims Trial Preface and Chapter 1
Preface
He carried a strained silence around with him that deepened the industrious furrows carved on his face by time into a somber icon-like visage. Fellow travelers beheld him as a diminutive man passively trudging besides a mean looking mule. Not a few joked that they were unsure who was leading whom. His garb was the plain rough habit of a pilgrim though as far as medals went he seemed only...
Watchjonwithabullet:
Ricky Gervais and Jon Stewart talk about pandas, panda sex, panda porn, panda lifestyle and pandas in general.
this is just hysterical.
Pilgrims Trial
Preface- an ode to twitter
The real reason you need to be on twitter just so happens to have nothing to do with the content you provide. As exciting as your lunch, your beer, or your game may be the most interesting and useful part of twitter is the people you follow. They will inspire, critique, and teach you in a real time environment most educators would kill for. The people you follow...
Screw Up
I will fail all day today. I claim that and own up to it. Its my fault. I’m a human being and thats kinda our gig. God, on the other hand, will succeed all day today. God will work in strange and mysterious ways his wonders to perform. I must walk humbly in awe that God will work everything for good. I can’t screw that up and I can’t make it happen. And that, quite simply is...
“But what do you do when you are part of a system that is diabolical? Boycott it?...”
– Eugene Peterson, quoted at Diary of an Arts Pastor, on the PhD process.
Pondering these sorts of questions a lot right now as I draw near to the end of my MA.
(via giftsoutright)
Not my thing
We visited a friends church this morning. All I will say about the worship was that I never appreciated my own church’s ” worship style” so much before. However the sermon was a mess. Here’s a little window into said mess that I scribbled ( inbetween doodleing) into my notebook in response to the point, ” the gospel is an historical event”.
” The...
Cicero sounds like Paul
When I decided to write about old age, You occurred to me as the one person worthy to receive a gift that I intended for our mutual benefit. For my own part, the joy I have derived from the writing of this essay has been so great that it has not only obliterated all the troubles of old age, but made it a source of comfort and delight.
Cicero. DS; 2, Coply. As quoted...
Sometimes Poetry happens in the Stillness
I am stone, I am at once strong
As death and brittle as pyrite. You
Can not mold me. But my lover
Can. His rough hewn hands can
Take me down from my place
Of display. They can drown me.
Drown me so I might live, might
Be reborn, might die to rigidity and
Awaken to plasticity. Taken from
That place of death I arrive at that
Place of life. Here I am scraped, I am
Folded in upon myself...
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly...”
– http://bchesaidso.blogspot.com/2012/02/tidbits.html
Poor Premise followed up with a faulty conclusion
So I just read an article about why certain forms of sex are wrong ( here-http://bit.ly/xeIIG1 ). If there is one thing that frustrates me about popular conservative reasoning ( coming from someone who wishes to both be conservative and reasonable) is the classic fallacy of if you permit Z naturally L follows. To which the I reply well if you permit Z why not M? or K? or for a change of pace why...
Religious Theatre
Preface- Religious Theatre must necessarily be subsumed by the Gospel. That is in as much as we expect every other aspect of the worship service to be absorbed by the Gospel theatre should serve the same purpose. To often Religious Theater is a pandering condescension to the younger members of the congregation that leaves all the listeners feeling slightly insulted rather then encouraged in the...
“I become slightly nervous every now and again that we are using 18’th and...”
– Me being insecure, marginally disconcerted, and constantly Restoring.
“Theology is the art of walking humbly with our God until justice blossoms in our...”
– Me on Theology- Whilst skipping class because timpany isn’t feeling good
Two Reviews
Cowboys and Aliens- First unapologetic american western I’ve seen in just about forever. Sure its violent and it follows Clint Eastwoods asian notion that the western must display large amounts of things that blow up, but its doesn’t lose its soul to the explosions. I was surprised to find such complex characters as a moneyed war vet “capital-imperialist” who is a racists...
January 2012
17 posts
“It is becoming clearer to me that leadership is not merely earning the trust of...”
– Brent, On my parents growing angry birds addiction
Its winter here so people
Are walking around with
An icicle in their works.
Its always the wrong time,
The wrong place. Always.
All this time for me without
You penciled in anywhere. Are
We to proud? Or are we just loudly
Ticking hearts in a panic to
Insure our mechanisms
Don’t miss a beat? Bright faces like
Tins of imported butter cookies
No one will open because
They...
“On December 10, 1810, in a muddy field around 25 miles from London, a fight took...”
– Brian Phillips on the boxing career of freed American slave Tom Molineaux - Grantland. A powerful story, beautifully told. Brian is so, so good. (via ayjay)
Odd Man Out: Homophobia & Hamartaphobia, part 3 →
omoblog:
(Part 3 of 3. See part 1 and part 2.)
For part three, I simply want to synthesize a few articles worth your time and then close with a personal anecdote. When actor Johnny Galecki recently made an appearance on The View, the hosts asked him about rumors that have circulated about his…
Love supreme and Love sublime.
The prophet says we fear the light
Because we live in the darkness. We
Do not understand this love anymore
Then a deer understands the import
Of two startling bright headlights. We
Must fear what we can not understand
So love unmerited and unrequited must
Remain ungrasped. But this is love not that
We reached out to God but that he reached
Out his arms...
There was no king in the land in those days...
One example of the Bible as ” inspired in English” is presented to us in Judge’s king statements. Pertinent questions that aught to arise might be- What sort of king are we talking about? Very clearly from Samuel and Kings/Chronicles we see that not only is a King a rejection of God’s lordship but also a recipe for disaster so why does the author of Judges suppose a...
Down with SOPA!
1. Wikipedia is not a business. Wikipedia is free information. Thats it.
2. A threat to free information is essentially a threat to Wikipedia’s only source of content, Free Information.
3. Depriving the internet of a vast amount of important Free Information is a meaningful protest given that depriving the internet of free information is what SOPA intends to do. This protest is an object...
They. them. All translates to
Not my people. I know mine.
Because you are not mine
I can proclaim you raka. You
Simply do not exist if
You kiss your lover instead of
Your tv screen. Your courageous if
Your a teen mother working two
Jobs but your bound for hell if
You’ve ever walked through the door
Of a clinic. Your ours if your hip and/or
Brown and Black but saints above
...
Drop inna Buckit
Written by Brent Merrill after discussing a letter.
Look into my
Grandfathers eyes. See were we
Have come from. Do you really
Think He picked us because we
Were oh, so all that? The reasons
He could not live without us was
Because no one else could live with us.
Its a family trait.
Just a poor family from the sticks who
Had more kids then pennies and
Less sense then knuckles....
Reflections on Gen.1
So I was surprised this morning. I was reading Genesis perhaps my most familiar starting point whenever I feel guilty about not reading “The Word” enough. This summer I had the discussion, at least twice, with a friend about how the Gen 1 is poetic. God as sculptor and potter were my main points as I fled the bad juju of mediocre christian apologetics for a firmer grasp of the...
“The commentators excoriating today’s students for studying the wrong subjects...”
– Virginia Postrel (via ayjay)
“…The truth is not simply that words originally innocent tend to acquire a...”
– Lewis, C.S. ” The Death of Words”. http://bit.ly/y9VN7L
Full of Importunity
So much room. Like grassy plains
Fettered up inside of everyone you meet.
So much cold, so much dry. So much
Need for fire. Just so much room. Its
Just there. Ever present permeating need in
Every structure of downtown. It is a way
Prepared. Its a cry that rebounds of of
Empty church steeples over the bridge into the Gut.
There is room here. Can you see it?
Can you hear it? Can you...
So, a PROOF-
1. Cars are a method of locomotion.
2. Gasoline is the power to this locomotion.
3. Therefore the car’s engine is superfluous.
2nd Completely diferent PROOF-
1. Marriage is an important institution of God.
2. But there is nothing magic in the ceremony because marriage is something that happens in the heart.
3. Therefore Christians aught to be married but the ceremony is...
December 2011
12 posts
“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making...”
– http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/12/my-new-year-wish.html (via neil-gaiman)
“…Many Victorians were too nice for the Bible. It is well known that upper-class Victorian England became so well-mannered and polite that it found itself rather embarrassed about the Bible’s morality. For some of the genteel souls of the period, the most prurient literature they would admit into their homes were the stories of the Old Testament. All that nudity, reproductive...
Gospel pt. 3
The traditional use of the word gospel implies the death of a king. The good news of a heir is also the bad news of the necessity of an heir. A king needs a heir so he can extend his reign past his own mortal span. Implied within the gospel then is death.
As was mentioned in the last post the application of the word Gospel to the birth of the Christ child has distinct revolutionary aspects....
Gospel pt.2
In examining the Gospel story’s beginning a person will inescapably come in contact with the darker notes of the Gospel song ( excellent piece on this here http://bit.ly/t1Rwz8 ). The tradition of a season full of happiness and gift giving might leave one a bit confused. How could such a happy childlike holiday founded upon the redeemer of the world being born be benighted with...
Gospel pt. 1
Gospel literally means Good News. As any student of language would observe ( and they do, at the most awkward of times) literal meaning rarely turns out to be contextual meaning. Put more plainly the word you find in a dictionary rarely coincides with how most people use a word. For example if you were to step into most church’s auditoriums on a Sunday you would in all probablity come away...
“The meaning of marriage begins in the giving of words. We cannot join ourselves...”
– Wendell Berry, from the essay “Poetry and Marriage” (via ayjay)
pr worship: Do It Again, God →
prworship:
Like many churches, there’s a lot of planning and praying going on at PR this time of year. The new year looming ahead makes a team of ministers wonder what God has planned, whether our plans are aligned with His. Jeff Walling, our senior minister, brought a verse out of Habakkuk to one of our…
Hot Tubbing on a cold rainy night
My soreness luxuriates under
The gentle hands of the
Bubble masseuse, but
I am to hot. I drift from the water
With the steam, off into a cold
Blank night sky. Its better up here
In the cold, feeling the once warm
Water turn into a tickle of ice down my
face, slip from my chin and race
Down my chest. The Algonquin would
Dash from their steam lodges
Into a river, or if there was ice...
Have you ever touched a mirror,
Confused by what you see? Hopping
It will somehow, that person in the mirror,
Break out into your hectic, spastic,
Reality? Probably not. Your reconize
Him. Or Her. Or whatever. I don’t.
And I’m curios to meet him. Who is he?
What does he like? Is he nice? Can
He finish things? Wouldn’t that
Be ever so wonderful.
PHENOMENAUT AEROSPACE: Could Netflix Bring Firefly... →
bernardin:
Ever since Joss Whedon’s space western was canceled back in 2003, its fans — at first, a relatively small contingent, but as time and DVD sales grew, so did the ranks swell — have wondered what could possibly rescue it from the tightly clenched jaws of death. And until now, nothing could….
November 2011
7 posts
From cofffee pot to styrofoam cup
To coffee pot I went, reading because
Then I didn’t have to think, and parrying because
I didn’t want to feel. But we’re not wired to
Float above it, not designed to be empty.
So every once and a while, it comes
Back. Tinted with regretful smiles,
It wasn’t so bad. Was it? Was it…
So Bad? No. It was actually kinda great,
...
Words, Words, Words
Like the jocose flames of a yule fire that has
Roasted a boar, well sauced over,
M’lord’s fire breathed over a hall
Inundated with Mead and good tidings words ought
To boast and toast and wrestle in
The mind. Words should barnstorm
Vast vaulted firmaments of the plains,
Undergird by a sweeping floor fashioned
Of burnished aureate, buff coffee burnt copper,
With sparse...
Say No! To patience
I have decided that most
If not all, of the worlds pressing
Problems stem from one
Central problem. No, its
Not greedy politicians, or
The odd poor person who
So terroristically attempts
To have enough food to
Eat. Its patience. Really,
Honestly I will never advise
Anyone to be patient
Ever again. Its really just
An excuse, ya know?
Under the rug of patience
We can sweep so many
...
Brentminister Catechism
To whom do we pray but to God the Father who alone has the sovereign power to grant our suite. We are aided in seeking our boons by the Holy Spirit our helper and intercessor. Our confidence in the sacrifice of Jesus allows us our firm hope that the things we ask for will come to pass.
P.S. A brief thought on the Trinitarian nature of prayer I had. A proper view of the Trinity undergirds...