Clark Lowell Chapin Sam - I'd like to know more
about your view of yourselfas a Presbyter. I've been
wondering how much your attachment to this descriptor
is a reflection of beliefs regarding hierarchies and
organization along the lines of faith. Do the issues of
predestination and free will play into this handle?
To what extent does revelation from above intrude?
Literally a "presbyter" is an old guy. Elder. I fit that
description and so use it asmoniker from time to time
in my hopelessly ineffective spam to colleagues-across-
the-curriculum: always wistful for the kind of back &
(a faculty that brays together stays together, I insist:
to no avail)
Secondarily: I was raised in a Presbyterian preacher
homeland security system, plus descendant of preachers
up the wazoo, both heretic and famous, and so I've
attempted to make some virtue of the heritage and
its baggage.
(Wrote my dissertation on Hawthorne who enjoyed
a similar patrimony.)
Predestination and free will LIKE thesis and anti-thesis
are for me dialectical ways of talking. Turn up the
opposition. Let no "side" win. Anticipate a revelation—
a synthesis which preserves the opposition and yet
reveals the complementarity of the 2 "enemies"
(so to speak).
That all my ways of speaking & imagining and
representing are inadequate--do severe damage
to the whole-- is a great comfort, knowing I'm
ripping-off from the whole--& holy: damaged
and damaging if I do or don't do, damnit: so
what the hell, yes?
Do what I can.
Called a "Conviction of Sin," Clark
A monstrous notion for the humanist.
Ridiculous to the Savvy and offensive
to the Conscientious.
Got to love it or I'm screwed.
Well, I'm screwed anyway.
That's the beauty part.
xxxooo, Presbyter.
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