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May 4

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On Kierkegaard’s 200th Birthday

Hans Ulrich has been very kind about my work.  He suggested to me once in conversation that, while my first book (Kierkegaard and the Treachery of Love) is about Kierkegaard, my second book (Conceiving Parenthood:  American Protestantism and the Spirit of Reproduction) is my attempt to inhabit Kierkegaard.  And so is my third.  Teaching Kierkegaard’s texts is a joy, but I am not terribly invested in creating more Kierkegaard scholars per se.  I am happiest when one of his texts surprises a young, pious student into the realization that Christianity is often more amenable to delicate fairy tales than to managerial plans, logical proofs, or other sorts of ecclesial body-armor. Read more

Apr 21

Guns and Roses: A May Day Wish

I'm putting this cartoon early, so people don’t think “Oh, a gardening blog, BORING.”

I’m putting this cartoon early, so people don’t think “Oh, a gardening blog, BORING.”

Someone gave me a persnickety clematis years ago, and it is supposed to curl around my beautiful moon gate.  My effort to embrace gardening has been going better than my turn to yoga, but only just.  I have a hard time with the whole patience part.  But this particular little (reputedly flowering) vine seems determined not to give up.  She makes her way up just a few centimeters, for a few months each year.  I just checked this morning, and there are two new shoots coming out of the dry twigs near the dirt.  Maybe this summer we will actually have a clematis bloom.

Truthful solidarity seems to me to be that fragile but tenacious.  Candid, neighbor to neighbor conversation about the streets, schools and shops that we share are hard-won.  With streamlined check-out queues, stamps.com, mega-church anonymity, and segregated private and chartered schooling, I don’t have to make even trivial chitchat with the check-out guy at Kroger, or visit with a woman holding a weirdly shaped package in line at the Post Office, exchange more than a passing peace during worship, or awkwardly discuss bilingual education with a Latina mother.  If I am not intentionally courageous – if I don’t risk wary looks and profound disagreement – I can stay happily within my own, myopic, specialized little perspective on our lives “together.” Read more

Apr 10

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London Calling

the_clash

There will (probably) be no guitar-smashing in “War and the Christian Tradition,” but I encourage DDS students to sign up for it anyway.

The English talking heads are dignifiedly divided on the legacy of Lady Iron.  I skipped the big movie about her, choosing instead to replay favorite scenes from other movies (Billy Elliot, Brassed Off, The Full Monty) and to hula hoop to The Clash’s “London Calling.”  I recommend this intricate scene from Billy Elliot, set to “London Calling,” which draws me like a bee to blackstrap molasses to listen always again to “Clampdown.”  (A writer for Mother Jones posted this related gem.) Steve Nallon, a Thatcher impersonator from the popular English show  “Spitting Image” said on this morning’s BBC that she was fun to mimic because she was so straight forward .  She was brutally direct about the destruction going on under her name. Read more

Mar 26

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The World Is About to Turn

Here’s a video for Holy Week and Easter 2013, from the team at ProfligateGrace.com – including Stan Goff, Kara Slade, and Amy Laura Hall. The music, Canticle of the Turning, is a paraphrase of the Magnificat. This version is from the Emmaus Way album Rite 7.


YouTube Direct link:

Mar 21

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Bitch?

Emily started this blog, and she gave me permission to tell the story.  She was hustling out the porch door for a sleepover with Samantha, and I caught hold of her backpack to slip in her toothbrush.  “No!  Mom, I will put it in!” she insisted, and while she did, I noticed a copy of Bitch Magazine  in there with her footie pajamas.  She looked at me, worried about my reaction.  (Worried, mostly, that I would tell her she couldn’t take it.)  Hmmmm . . . I asked her to sit down and give me a minute to think.  Inhale.  Exhale.  (There are mommy moments when I use my Lamaze breathing well past the due date.)  I looked over the Smitten Kitten advertisements and decided they were too subtle for her to understand.  (That is a topic for another blog.)  Then, I read quickly again through a few articles, to make sure they were not more explicit than I had remembered.  Then, while staring into space, trying to decide what her friend’s mom would think, my eyes focused on several copies of Vogue that she and Rachel had been cutting up for collaging.  Vogue has anorexic, bored, zombie-looking girl-women, often sprawled on the floor in clothes that are impractical for walking across the room.  (Why do I allow such trash in my house?)  Bitch offers bold, lively essays on ways that we are snipped and clipped in pop-culture.  Maybe Em and Samantha could use a bit of “Bitch”?  I permitted Em her contraband, and texted Samantha’s mom a heads-up. Read more

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