Pop Culture Prophecy
Since 9/11 I have always been bothered by Busta Rhymes' 1998 album cover for Extinction Level. I finally did a little snooping around and found an interesting web-site. Check it out.

http://septterror.tripod.com/coincidence.html

Church and State
I have really tried to become more 'political' over the past few years. By this I assumed that I needed to know how to align myself along partisan lines. This process reminds me of my general ambivalence towards church denominations. In both church and government I have not been able to tow any party line. Not that I haven't tried. Am I product of a self-centered society? Is there a need for serious reflection on how to change institutional identification? Brian McLaren seems to be heading up some 'emerging' church movement. I seem to have a unfounded prejudice against that. Maybe someone can convince me to check it out. In terms of government they certainly need our prayers, I just don't put my faith in what I feel the church is called to offered.
This ambivalence is becoming more acute for me as I would eventually like to move towards ordination in addition to the upcoming election. I don't think I am holding out for a perfect church or a perfect political party I just haven't been able to use institutional identification as a means of embracing a denomination or party.
We all need to live and work from somewhere . I don't think I should marginalize myself as some sort of wanderer or exile. How do we nurture belonging and that great idealistic catchword, community?
My only response at this point is an appreciation for Anglican and Catholic churches which focus on the Eucharist. This is a tangible act of community which, at the best of times, helps us to position ourselves appropriately in the giving and receiving of worship.
This being said I am meeting with a conference pastor for the General Conference Mennonite Church to talk a possible place for me pastorally.
Any thoughts on politics or ecclesiology would be welcomed.

Public Sex, Private Religion
Topic: General Theology
It is not an uncommon observation to say that our society has emphasized the privatization of religion. Religion can serve the needs of the individual, but should be monitored as to its social or political influence. It is perhaps even more common to observe the sexualized nature of popular culture. Sex is utilized as a tool for attention based primarily on consumerist goals. Sex then is not only a tool but a type of energy that fuses our desires with a particular product, or object of consumption. To make love to the product.

These observations deserve reflection and response in their own right. However, can the two be related in any significant way? Can these two movements may be seen as a type of inversion? Was the driving of religion into the bedroom the forcing of sex into the public square? Sex and religion of course have a long history. My surface knowledge of Hinduism and ancient Greek religion certainly do not deny this relationship. In the Jewish-Christian tradition the Song of Songs is saturated with mixed images of holy communion and sexual consummation. This leads me to ask whether there is analogy between dynamics of personal sexual intimacy and social sexual intimacy. I am sure this also is not a unique question (if anyone knows of any literature let me know). If this is the case it should transform knee jerk religious responses of repression? Has this repression contributed to our excessive sexual\consumeristic context? Is there something to a fully public expression of religion (and I am thinking particularly of Christianity) which can development a context for the fulfillment our personal and social desires? How does this affect our notions of church and community?


To add a further comment. The obverse of the above depiction of urban ‘secular’ society may be the conservative religious rural community which thrusts religion into every nook of the public sphere and attempts to drive sexuality into its most private expression. The standing joke of my Mennonite community is whether a woman has shamefully shown ‘a little ankle’. As stories of incest and abuse emerge, this attempted privatization of sex can have disastrous consequences.

Those who know better
Topic: Art and Aesthetics
I came across what I thought to be signficant comments art and aesthetics.

“We may say that the independent aesthetic value of an artistic artefact is higher and more enduring to the extent that the work does not lend itself to literal interpretation from the standpoint of a generally accepted system of values of some period and some milieu.”
- Jan Mukarovsky

Art is as good as it is both engaging and elusive.

On music,
“After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had not committed, and mourning over tragedies there were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears. I can fancy a man who has led a perfectly commonplace life, hearing by chance some curious piece of music, and suddenly discovering that his soul, without his being conscious of it, had passed through terrible experiences, and known fearful joys, or wild romantic loves, or great renunciations.”
- Oscar Wilde

But before I find someone to wax too eloquently on music I also offer the following,

“Where we try to speak of music, to speak music, language has us, resentfully, by the throat”
- George Steiner

Anonymity
Just so you know anonymity in comments is fine by me. However, as I sign of respect I personally would appreciate some form of consistency so that people can know 'who' they are responding to (it appears that more than one nameless figure has emerged). Whatever that looks like for you is fine. This looks like the fodder for a good future post. Virtual identity.

Violating violation?
I am not looking to start another discussion on what is art or what is beautiful? However, it may be worth reflecting that art in history appears only to have progressed in the violation (at least to some extent) of prior norms. Can we can run out of norms? Are we inherently conservative in that we will always construct 'norms'? Does this come some way in clarifying the popular notion of postmodern relativism. Postemodernism rather as an anti-conservative conservatism (echoing Gadamer's prejudice against predjudice)? I don't want to reduce this to mildly clever sayings. However, if art's intention is to evoke then what is the next significant norm to be violated?
Joel, if you are reading this I am sure you can think of some 'shocking' musical forms. Is there any currency left in travelling that road short of commiting ritual human sacrifice on stage?
Is there space for violating violation and offering explicitly conservative contributions (that are in no way associated with the popular notions of 'right wing')?

As I am reflecting on it I wonder if my comments relate only to the modern period. Did antiquity embrace conservative aesthetics? Or were their conflicts more tied up in the prophets and the myths?

Aesthetics
It has come to my attention that my conceptual analysis in the 'formal' was down. It's back in the game now. Remember this is just a draft, so any feedback would be great.

https://www.angelfire.com/indie/faith/academic.html

Scarred Reading
Topic: Reflections
Life cannot be read apart from its scars.

It tends to take very little for me to be annoyed with people and riding the bus to school everyday, as I have been recently, only aggravates the condition. In any event, I remember a person years ago who simply annoyed me. It is long enough ago and insignificant enough of an experience for me to not remember many details. However, I certainly remember being annoyed. I probably perceived him to be arrogant and impatient or perhaps rude in some way.
At one point in watching him I remember noticing a scar on the back of his head. Now this may well have come from his attempts show-off in front of people, but it made me pause. This is an important moment in reading, or in interpretation in general. A scar demands that we pause, that we withdraw our imposed judgment (interpretation) and remember that whosever voice we are trying to hear has already been imposed upon. A scar rages against our stereotypes and abstractions. This person, this text, is singular not manufactured. Recognizing our distance and our difference may remove those insulating readings which only fortify our beliefs.

Christ’s resurrection was complete with scars. His scars rage against any attempts to smooth or simplify his message. Sensitivity to scars allows our reading to respect the voice of our texts. It testifies to that elusive “third” discourse which allows boundaries to be crossed and understanding to occur.

Cyber-History?
Topic: Reflections
Following on the previous entry. What are the historical implications of our progressively deeper investment in cyberspace? Does the internet have history? Does that little button on the top of your browser represent what history is?
The sun never sets on the internet. The internet bears no scars. The internet allows access to no one who does conform to its code, though it in turn offers a vision of freedom (a western liberal notion again). You may click here one day to find nothing. The digital dissolves fully. Memory will remain only for you and not for the internet. What does this tell us about our priorities? Cyber-space will only challenge me to the extent that I let it.
This medium is not substantially different than most modern forms of communication. However, in its greater extension it appears to offer an alternative space (cyber) and an alternative home (page). I am sure that thoughtful geeks have been wrestling with this for years, sorry for getting in on it so late.

A small fish in a big sea
Topic: Reflections
This is a quote on the inside cover of Hans Urs von Balthasar's The Glory of the LORD vol.4.

Whoever cannot give account
Of three thousand years,
Let him remain in darkness, unlearned,
And live from day to day
- Goethe

Christians, in particular, are invested in the project of history. Our generation has witnessed the near 'collapse of history' given the exposed prejudices of those who write it. My own dip into the pool has proved overwhelming as the sources and the sources of sources prove unmanageably large and often conflicting. We remain situated within history and so cannot evaluate it objectively. However, we also cannot abandon giving accounts, 'lest we forget'. And perhaps this is part of the issue. Is 'history' an modernist invention? Do we really only have 'memory'? Is there a difference?