September 2006 Archives

Today as I was riding the T I suddenly realized how different the T is from the New York City subway. On the NYC subway I would almost constantly see beggars, performers, or preachers. And people would move freely from car to car. Not so with the T. I have yet to see anyone doing any of those things. Perhaps the MBTA is more strict, but it could also be true that NYC is a much more religious/spiritual/Christian/what-have-you city. A "quiet revival" is going on in Beantown, however. 15 or 20 years ago you could count the number of evangelical churches on one hand, or so I heard. Now they are sprouting up everywhere.

Today I saw a man get robbed on Commonwealth Ave, in front of everyone. He chased the perpetrator down the sidewalk, but said perpetrator was too fast, and, much to my surprise, I did not see anyone try to help the guy. He finally gave up and I saw him get out his cell phone. Meanwhile, some women near me were trying to find a phone so they could call the police. I was way over on the other side of the street, with six lanes of traffic and two railways in between, so there was no way I could help. But I still saw it happen, and I gripped my bags more tightly as I headed to the gym

Today I read this article by Andy Crouch in Books & Culture, and it was written in response to this article by Edward O. Wilson in The New Republic, which I happened to read while working a temp job in August. Very interesting how Crouch responds: while he agrees that the environment is an important issue, he points out that Wilson does not do the best job of portraying the tenets of evangelical Christianity. Both articles are worthwhile for your reading pleasure.

Last night I got a free ticket to see Cassandra Wilson in concert because Laura was working at the show. Her name sounded vaguely familiar to me and I liked her music all right. It was very bluesy/jazzy/folksy/rock-out. Her opening band was too New Age for my taste. I'm not a big fan of a harmonica and synthesizer together. The crowd seemed to love it though, and they loved Cassandra even more. The obviously knew all her music, unlike myself. Afterwards I went backstage with Laura and met the band. Cassandra was smoking in the small downstairs room and they all flipped out when they found out we were triplets. The bass player changed his clothes in front of us. The band manager was a bit uptight and frazzled. I don't think I've ever hung out with a band backstage before, except for Infradig, which is of course always fun.

This article is eerily similar to the famous "Man Grabs Skunk" headline penned by one Max Belz of the Bagpipe two years ago. Unfortunately, I can't link to the article because it is not on the Bagpipe Online; however, I will say that a companion article was published in the Windbag entitled "Skunk Grabs Man," written by someone-who-shall-not-be-named, (but that person DOES contribute to this blog :).

We read Kenneth Burke's "Definition of Man" for Communication Theory class. That class is so philosophical. I don't know how many people out there have actually read Kenneth Burke, but I think there were good reasons that I never read him in college: I was too busy reading Edmund Burke. All jesting aside, I find him an interesting read, but have some issues with him from a biblical standpoint.

Burke argues that humans are "symbol using, creating, and misusing animals." This part I can't dispute, although I would add that God created us to be that way. However, the point he makes that I have problems with is that "man is the inventor of the negative." His argument is that humans created the idea of negative with our use of symbols, and that nothing in nature itself is inherently good or bad. This point brought our class into a discussion about whether it was simply the effects of natural events that were either good or bad. For instance, we talked about the negative effects of Katrina, but also the positive. Talking about effects is not so difficult, but when we start to talk about natural things ontologically, it starts to get hairy for me. I'm not sure how Burke's idea corresponds with the Scripture verse that says all creation is groaning in expectation of Christ's return, or with the doctrine of all creation being tainted by the Fall. Reformed doctrine says that creation is in fact tainted by sin, and creation as well as human souls will be redeemed by Christ's work. So those are some thoughts to bite off and chew for a while.

When it comes to Burke himself, though, it turns out that every idea he espoused was driven by his distaste for developing technologies, and also later in life he declared that people who cannot communicate are not human, i.e. babies and people in vegetative states. However, he did write an article in the 30's about what the consequences of Hitler's ideas in Mein Kampf would be. But it was published in an obscure journal, so no one read it. Burke was a strange fellow.

I wish I could come up with more creative titles for my blog entries, but oh well...

Here is what the local weekly, the Dig, has to say about riding the T, echoing my sentiments (albeit somewhat hyperbolically):

"The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority—the T—is the nation’s oldest subway system. It may also be the nation’s worst. The trains never run on time, the stations are decrepit, the escalators are always broken, and the system shuts down around 12:30am—way before any normal person’s night should end. For generations, the state’s political elite have been giving their surly, alcoholic, half-retarded cousins great-paying government jobs with the T; the result is a system that’s wholly inept, and one that resents you for: a) being alive, and b) expecting a mass transit system to, um, work...

Speaking of efficiency, the T is notoriously unreliable and often retardedly slow. Always assume that the T hates you and wants you to die (and make you late). That’s because it does. Red, Orange and Blue Line riders should build an extra 10-15 minutes into their commutes. Green Line riders around BU and BC should allot double the ride time that it should take to get to their destination, and never ever leave home without a newspaper."

While the Dig is notoriously negative, this comes pretty close to my experience so far. Last Friday I was 30 minutes late to class because there was an electrical failure on the Red Line at South Station, so every one had to get off and, um, find their own way to work? Give me the New York subway any day.

So I went to see the Red Sox/White Sox game Monday night. It didn't get exciting until the last few innings, and then I left before the 10th inning when the Red Sox hit a walkoff homerun to win. Grrr. However, probably the most interesting thing that I saw at the game was a person holding a sign that said "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" Not sure if the mistake was intentional or not.

Yesterday was my first day of classes and orientation. The Dean spoke to our department and told us we had chosen "wisely and well." We'll be under the tutelage of seasoned professionals. He encouraged us to use this time to educate ourselves well and not to watch too much TV or spend too much time on the Internet. This was ironic advice for me, since part of my work involves doing just that. He said some things to which I say amen, like the fact that we should all work on being good writers and that we need to focus on good grammar and spelling. But he also said some things that make me glad I went to Covenant, like the idea that we will all be "products" of the BU graduate school and we need to uphold its "reputation" when we leave. I wanted to raise my hand and say "But we're all people too!" I remained silent, however, since I know it's a privilege to be here. But fundamentally I know that education should be about the whole human being and not just the measurable value that person can or will bring to society.

The Dean also lamented the probability of many undergrads not making the most of their education and continuing to "read Maxim and Cosmo instead of the Economist, which is the best news magazine in the world." Of course, he was talking to us grad students, who are more likely to take full advantage of educational opportunities, but I suppose he still felt it necessary to tell us this. All in all, it was a strange speech, but I think I got the gist of it. It's rather hard to reproduce into printed words.

On a side note, I love the transition I make at the end of the day from the land of endless students on Commonwealth Ave to the rich diversity of the working class on Dorchester Ave. It is such a rush to do this every day.

I heard Garrison Keillor read this poem on NPR yesterday and I love it:

To Be of Use
Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

That's just one name that Laura and Rick Downs and I bandied about for the new church plant in Dorchester. Another one we came up with was Resurrection Fellowship. Half-jokingly of course, although Rick was serious about the fact that so many churches in the PCA are named Grace and Faith and none that he knows of are called Repentance.

I'm all for calling it Dorchester Community Church, but at any rate, whatever it might be called, it's an exciting thing of which to be a part. This is a far cry from North Shore Fellowship. There we started out with 200 people from LMPC, and then added on hundreds more right away, and the numbers have hardly diminished since then. Here we have 12-13 people in our small group, and no church planter as of yet, even though this plan has been in the works for some time. Simply because of the number of people, I know I will be heavily involved. Laura and I will most likely get to look around at different potential sites with one of the women in the small group, and we've been recruited to help lead the singing. We're hoping to start Sunday services soon, but that will only be if we decide to go with the multi-site approach, with Rick preaching since we don't have a church planter yet. Boston is not Chattanooga in many ways, but especially in the area of Christianity. The harvest is plenty...

BTW, the latest Christianity Today issue has a cover story called "Young, Restless, Reformed." It's about the "new" resurgence of Reformed theology among young people. They list off just about every institution of the PCA, EXCEPT for Covenant College! Maybe this whole marketing push isn't such a bad idea after all.