Tuesday, June 3, 2014

The 2 Economies


Vacation Bible School

 
       Liberal Art Going On              Liberal Arts


                Can you TELL the difference?  The Relationship?
                        Which is the dominant pair of dimes?  
                                 Which COUNTS most?
                                            Say.
                           (We can argue. A good thing.) 

120 comments:

  1. The Lord gives it to his own in their sleep. The race is not to the swift. ...

    (Solomon)

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  2. Neither one of them may be bright or swift, though. Seizing it is the trick, tough. We are all given things but will we get it? Like grace.

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  3. Some force and fortitude required in the seizing but not so much the getting. Another paradox.

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  4. The cartoon has always served somewhat to represent the playful and the industrious mode (process, finished product)--and helps suggest the "hostility" and yet complementarity between the two modes. Industry, of course is and always will be the dominant mode.

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  5. And why the Vacation Bible school? You think it is clever? You are trying to irritate everybody? Or you think it is a clever way to irritate everybody? -- 2 Economies? Which dominates?

    In Canada now, you can't advertise a Hawaian day with the picture of a surfing girl, not because she is skimpily clad (she was not), but because it is a usurping of someone's heritage or culture for your purposes (or economies). They can take you to the Human Rights commission for that. Apparently, Christians can't complain to that body because they are the dominant culture or faith, which I doubt is true anymore...

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  6. Walk on Eggs (woe) or Walk on Water (wow)
    Mission Impossible either way. We (faculty) are all on vacation these days. Time to reflect. I remember vacation bible school with nostalgia--walking the half-block early June mornings,flannel board depictions of men in robes, my father making an appearance witha brief bible bromide.."Pistol Packing Mama" no 1 hit on the radio.

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  7. A friend took me to a writer's club meeting last night. Everyone went around the circle and read something they wrote. It was the most god-awful stuff I have ever heard.

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  8. I read my Yoga-class thoughts. They laughed, which is good, and one wants to have it mailed to her. It is a present issue. The Yoga people say that they are losing all the spirituality, but others warn their people not to participate because of the spirituality.

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  9. The leader only ever spoke in this laconic, bored tone. Her romance book excerpt dealt with "disgusting" hospital food and the boyfriend exchanging too many friendly glances with all the nurses. A young man had written something that sounded like he had been gaming too much. I couldn't follow it with all the explosions, thunderstorms, other world's and rain puddles. We shan't mention that he did not know his past participles. One woman was writing about a woman who was to go on Witch trial in England. It was about a baptism and the gift of a silver spoon. She had some skill in her writing and reading. There were some very prosaic poems, and one where one could not understand the man. There was one contribution that made people laugh; it was about the bad service at the fast food restaurant. All in all: issues with food and keeping it down seemed to be the prevailing themes.

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  10. They tried to critique each other but you can't get too far in this setting. Of course, the easiest things are said, like you should not use so many adverbs (said to the young man who had things exploding "fearfully"). About my piece they kindly said they liked how it keeps shifting between my thoughts and the class. Lol. (I thanked them warmly.)

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  11. I began to see the challenge of your work, Professor Scoville.

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  12. Sounds like a good time. It's the process that COUNT counts--not so much the finished product--thought that's what we salute.

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  13. "Thought" or "though". "Thought" is what seemed to be lacking. My preschoolers have some good thoughts.

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  14. But they also go to Vacation Bible School.

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  15. though ( I do that a lot--worsening--mistakes galore. We salute the letters of the law--not the spirit: the finished product , not the mess and guess and margins for error it takes. Good thoughts are eclipsed by the errors we hover over.

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  16. True. I try to encourage others by not fretting over things an editor could fix in a flash. I learned that from you because I was raised a grammarian through the languages we had to learn.

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  17. But this, too, is a doubled edged sword. Many people won't speak because their language is bad. Something didactic can be a great gift. And as Mother Teresa said: who will teach the stupid ones?

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  18. You've probably heard the notion: "suspend the editor, or censor", That's on the side of process, generation,:putting IT in play--mothering invention. "The Playboy and the Puritan"--my mantra in teaching composition. Fool around with any notion that comes to mind. Then reform. Until the lady dean told me she didn't' approve of the image--thought there might be some offense taken by some poor girl who had been fooled around with. Write Yr Ass Off--my alternative slogan. Finished product is the dest
    ination--but the journey is the Destination. I admit, Process is my Master--Product not so much.

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  19. "stupid," "study," "student," "stunned," "stupor"--all share the same root: I.E steu - to be struck by a stick. . My first year seminar for year was entitled Stupid Club (aka liberal art)

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  20. Probably offensive to the Puritan, too, as if he never played.

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  21. It was offensive to Lady Dean--and then you dip into the metaphor and wonder about puritans--which is beside the point. Conceptually The Puritan Never Plays. other wise the dichotomy is worthless. -

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  22. I know. False dichotomy maybe.

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  23. I'd rather play with a Puritan, if I had to choose. Lady dean has a point.

    I once attended a German teacher conference put on by the Goethe institute. Great stuff in terms of pedagogy. At a dinner I was seated with one of the professors or presenters and also a Hutterite man, large, dressed in black ( like the Amish). Many Hutterites live here in colonies. The professor was fun. We played: where am I from in Germany. He had me pegged right away based on the length of a vowel in a word. Amazing. The Hutterite spoke about more spiritual things and brought up the "Feind". The others did not know what he was saying. The Feind is the foe. You know who the "foe" is. You love to be one. Who can one play with better? I don't like Playboy vs. Puritan either. It sounds demeaning.

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  24. In modern usage, the word "puritan" is often used to describe someone who adheres to strict moral or religious principles. In this usage, Hedonism and puritanism are antonyms.[1] Peter Gay writes of the Puritans' standard reputation for "dour prudery" as a "misreading that went unquestioned in the nineteenth century," commenting how unpuritanical they were in favour of married sexuality, and in opposition to the Catholic view of virginity.

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  25. Point is: we do much better within reasonable boundaries. They are freeing. (Emerson is a fool. Did we say that already?)

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  26. Your attitude and outlook is the one I've spent my whole teaching career as antidote and supplement so has to get beyond the clarity-coherence-consisency bias of Finshed Product and celebrate the whole ()the bad it takes to get good.. Your characterization of Emerson says everything about you and nothing about him. Lady Dean was grim faced and prudish. She may have suffered some sort of molestation while young. And dumped by her husband early one..Every dichotomy is a false one--arbitrary & for convenience sake if not convention. "Our Lord " --thank God--gangs with me and my muddle-crowd seeing as yours (Didn't we discuss the appropriateness of you getting to a nunnery? O holy nite.l)

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  27. hangs with me and my muddle-crowd seeing as you and your are already neat and tidy and Jesus spits it out.

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  28. The man has never lived that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be enshrined in a person who shall set a barrier on any one side to this unbounded, unboundable empire.

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  29. You can keep saying it but it don't change the fact that tt will always cast it's enshrining light on you and your monumental unbounded, unboundable empire. The weight must be unbearable.. (Emerson: yum, yum. --a tasty treat from time to time: gluten free)

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  30. Redundancy: I'm a fool for Emerson, for Christ's sakes. Your attitude and outlook is the one I've spent my whole teaching career as antidote and supplement so has to get beyond the clarity-coherence-consistency bias of Finished Product and celebrate the whole ()the bad it takes to get good.. Your characterization of Emerson says everything about you and nothing about him. Lady Dean was grim faced and prudish. She may have suffered some sort of molestation while young. And dumped by her husband early one..Every dichotomy is a false one--arbitrary & for convenience sake if not convention. "Our Lord " --thank God--hangs with me and my muddle-crowd seeing as yours it neat and tidy. (Didn't we discuss the appropriateness of you getting to a nunnery? O holy night?)

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  31. Rah Rah Emerson--he's our man, if he can't do it , Brigitte can, if Brigitte can't do it: nobody can. . Famous pom pom cheer of the 50's . Team Spirit.

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  32. No, not every dichotomy is such. And when we chose a metaphor, we try to choose a good one. Your and Emerson's and Thoreau's reserving themselves the right to injure and abuse the average person is revolting to me.

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  33. Emerson's motive wasn't to injure. Show me a passage where you see that intent. Thoreau claimed to crow like a rooster and maybe wake his neighbors up and was convinced the mass or men led lives of quiet desperation. Afflict the afflicted:-that's my agenda, not theirs. The comfortable are beyond affliction--sealed in and impermeable. Some promise and future in the afflicted. Every dichotomy is a mental conception: arbitrary and drawn to suit an agenda (convention, convenience.) All "false" in the sense that they are artifice. (What ever good metaphor we try to choose is inadequate, vulnerable, easily pushed over the edge--as it should be. We learn to swith metaphors in mid-stream or else go down with the horse.)

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  34. "And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good? 1 Peter 3:13

    I look forward to Pastor answering. I could be wrong, but I suppose all this begins in the heart before we stand up. We want to be different than the moralist, so we do not begin on the outside, but by "sanctifying the Lord in our hearts and before others", and that is something many struggle to know how to do. We live in a moralistic Church environment. We live in a Church environment that hides out debating minutiae among itself. We are learning there is a righteousness greater than that of the Pharisees, and it is an inside-out righteousness given liberally by Christ. Blessed are they that hunger for this, for they SHALL be filled, but many of us don't understand it is something other than being goodies.

    And then, there is the language of those of us raised in the Christian culture and those of us raised in the Secular, and all the hybrid tongues. It is like the Berlin wall or something. But we are all human beings, and it seems to me that if we speak as humans rather than with "Christian Speak", a foreign tongue, because we actually have a handle on what we are sharing enough to do so, as if we were sharing hope with little children who have yet to read all the theology books from the Stewart Period, perhaps, just perhaps, "with meekness and fear", we could communicate in a meaningful way.

    I believe there is something more meaningful than personal piety and social gospel, although I share various concerns with these people. Perhaps if we begin there, with presuppositions we both hold, like Paul began with the unknown god? We find a point of contact, as humans, as wretches, as you say, and then see from there? I am well-aware that I do appear quaint to people, but I cannot help that. If I wear headcoverings because of personal values, which people recognize as such, which I have tended against, for example, but tended toward sun hats or more common coverings like pretty scarves, I am already appearing quaint to most of evangelical culture. Others are less quaint than myself, but we are all more or less rustics at heart. I can love from my quaintness, without compromising, and let others respond as they will. I have the comfort in the Scriptures that God often uses weak and foolish things.

    What do you think, Pastor Glenn?

    An aside - one gets the impression that to some training to their system is more important than asking for the gifts of the Spirit or the heart gems outlined in the Sermon on the Mount. I suppose that most people in the Church begin as Moralists, but I hope they will not stay there. It is a hard burden, like putting a saddle on a wild horse.
    (from another thread - a feminine perspective in the mist of cantankerous onward xtian soldiers)

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  35. puritan may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle. Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but the appe- tite with which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when that which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but food for the worms that possess us. If the hunter has a taste for mud- turtles, muskrats, and other such savage tidbits, the fine lady in- dulges a taste for jelly made of a calf ’s foot, or for sardines from over the sea, and they are even. He goes to the mill-pond, she to her preserve-pot. The wonder is how they, how you and I, can live this slimy, beastly life, eating and drinking.

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  36. Thoreau. First he perverts a saying of Christ's and then he disparages natural and simple pleasures of people different from himself. Let him drink only water if he so chooses. Let the other guy have his crust or his ale. It is these kinds of distinctions which are the unbearable moralizing. It is that genius from the inside that needs examining. Remember what Christ actually said. He did not disdain the wedding, the feast, the wine or the householder...

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  37. Sounds like Thoreau. He once skinned and ate a muskrate, so if it's Henry--his last sentence might be tongue in cheek. Somewhat of satirist if not ironist. (Abusing and injuring his reader as you might describe it.) I quoted my friend Sarah for you, thinking you might hunger and thirst after some rightness--and appreciate what charisma sounds like when someone get behind the doctrinal and is moved by spirit.

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  38. Gets beyond the doctrinal, rather. Behind is some where else. Plenty of behind-the-doctrinal--galore.

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  39. Conservative Californian Presbyterian. The pastor she refers to is Othodox Presbyterian--and went to Warren Wilson in the 90's. Both Presbyterianisms are quiet removed from what I grew up in.

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  40. I don't know any Presbyterians. We don't have them here. And my church environment is neither quaint nor moralizing.

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  41. Did you ask her if you could post this here?

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  42. You are responding as I predicted. Missing the spirit to be contentious in whatever fringe areas you can use. O that Thoreau! O that Emerson. O that Sarah whose charisma is either lost to you or ignored. Lost and ignored. t

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  43. The post retains anonymity. You can sleep over it.

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  44. All of them may have this in common: the have swallowed the Holy Spirit, feathers and all.

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  45. Also called their genius. I have nothing against geniality, as long as it understands it's bounds. It seems that those who consider themselves possessed, also need to disparage others, which gives away the devil's hoof. I am better. The rest is herd and mass.

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  46. I just finished Walden, more or less. The quote was from Walden. What do you think I should glean from it?-- some of the themes are common to the time. Industrialization was often soul crushing. We read this in Heinrich Mann and also the Christian English. Tolkien bewails the loss of nature... Chesterton wants the poor to have the right to squat and fish. But no, their betters forbid them and throw them into further distress... We can hear all of that from people who actually project a charitable disposition, even if they can be crusty or quaint. Thoreau seems to me somewhat inexperienced and frustrated. And yet I see every man's desire to free and build how he likes. ( masculine sense).

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  47. You must sleep on the couch every night--winning the battles, losing the war.

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  48. Someone we know in common described you as arrogantly post-modern. The person shall remain anonymous.

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  49. Someone else told his classes I was a nihilist. Thoreau said he wouldn't walk across the street to save the world, and I ask my class: is he being arrogant or humble? The question confuses them somewhat. Walk on Eggs (woe) or Walk on Water (wow). My mission impossible that gets me up early each morning.

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  50. I confess: I posted Sara's thoughts thinking it might inspire you--that it's possible not to be mired in doctrine and as a result express the spirit. She's such a breath of fresh air among the theologically constipated who grimace and grind over catholics and protestants and apostolic succession and saints galore & who's right and who's wrong and whether the peace of God might be among you etc.

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  51. I don't when we have covered such topics. My daughter graduates with her Master's tomorrow. She passed her National board and has been working for six months. I am going to bake a nice fattening cake and put on some incredible and ornate oratorium and probably sing really loudly. I am sure Henry would have some problem with any or all of that.

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  52. "such topics": are all we address and never covered--the topic tokens of our "relationship." I so wanted to hear you say something nice about Sarah's good words--but admit I was pretty sure you could not and would avoid if not derogate--confirming my Brigitte-estimate. Henry would not bother himself to have problems with your fattening cake and and oratorium. You just finished Walden (more or less) so you know better. Congratulate your daughter for me--not that (like Henry) she should care. Is she a good doctrinaire catechism-savvy Lutheran? (We make allowances for those close to home--knowing that's where are enemies are.)

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  53. http://oslcmankato.org/sites/default/files/smallcatechism_0.pdf

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  54. I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won [delivered] me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, in order that I may be [wholly] His own, and live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, even as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.--Are we allowed to talk about that? You have here both economies. Through the redemption received, like in the first picture, you now apply yourself diligently, as in the second picture, but freely, as we are no longer under the threat of the law but free heirs of the promise. I don't know if Sarah was trying to say something like that. Faith in its essence has never been a sticking to a gazillion points or cowering under rulers.

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  55. "For those not in love, there's law--to rule, to regulate, to rectify." (Wm Gass) What ever Sarah is trying to say, it comes across as lovely. Not as legal. There's a difference.

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  56. How things come across is just as much in the mind of the beerholder, remember.

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  57. How could I forget? I've been fielding your foolishness re Emerson--knowing Ralph to be a profundity and magi for me.

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  58. When was the last time you read Walden all the way through?

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  59. Both Emerson and Thoreau have an agenda of supplanting Bible believing. It is obvious. It is not that useful to the purpose of changing the world for the better, getting rid of slavery and such, even though they think it is. Thoreau wants to sit in the forest and read the Ilead, I have nothing against it. I don't know why he has to mock everyone else, and so on... The hero worship comes out somehow. We can only have one master, maybe: Christ or the hero.

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  60. In grad school probably--when I did a close study When was the last time you read the bible all the way through? I dip in and out Now: I'm sure there's a Brigitte POINT behind your question, so I'll just have to wait for it.

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  61. Your beerholder analysis. Emerson was an ordained minister before dropping ouit. (Have you read his "Divinity School Address"? Changing the world. Reconsider Throeau's influence. Emerson is hughly read and re-read by all types. Both are likely to have more influence than either of us--Christ as hero or not. What hero worship are you talking about? Do either of the writers celebrate a hero. Mocking? How shabby and shoddy? "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" Is that mocking. "I have never met a man who is quite awake: how could I have looked him in the eyes?" Mocking? Mock, scorn, scold, ridicule: or bite my tongue. Afflict the afflicted for crying out loud. It's the denial and cover up that's toxic.

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  62. Napoleon the hero, Ulysses, the hero, Plato, the hero, the educated, thinking, man the hero, or superman, they themselves, the hero, each one. Goethe, the hero. But not the average person. They are not heroes. To the contrary. But the hero, he is the lover on the grand scale, as we all want to be (Lewis). Yes, Christ takes the opposite approach and we still adore him.

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  63. In grad school? And you chastise me for my impression of restricting diet, fun and society. The Bible and our confessions we try to keep fresh and I even sent you a daily reader, but you chastise that (in the vein of Emerson). You throw insult after insult at me and the tell me my lucid responses are not lovely. I am off to U of A.

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  64. Your adoration smells like defense--circles of barbed wire around your small compound. Prickly. Unattractive as mockery might be to others. Mouthing cliches and sentiments from other people's thoughts your semi- heroes maybe: your Chestertons and Lewiss and Lutherans of course--t-shirt and bumper sticker adoration. Shabby . Shoddy. Has none of the charisma and genuine spirit of the "true" believer. This my beer-holder estimation, of course--on a par with your Emerson is a fool perception . A waste of time anyone might say--but always for the time being is what we've got.

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  65. Good ri
    ddance. I can barely follow your consternation and caterwaul. (Try as I might.)

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  66. (They are not lovely. Again--a beerholder estimation, nothing to take personally. On a level with your estimation of the heroes of humanism say--inadequate, biased, reflecting and protecting one's own needs and homeland security, say. It's how we roll.

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  67. The stuff you write isn't lovely. Since when has lovely become the criterion?

    Thoreau is the guy in the first picture? Is that it? Does it matter? Should they be a team?

    Does he despise the guy in the second picture?

    I agree with him this far: he is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest. Or else: contentment with godliness is great gain.

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  68. You want to run a sharp dialectic and then you call someone else prickly? My grandfather always said ( sorry, if that is too borrowed) : the way you call into the forest is how it echoes back.

    He was a very nice guy and he got far with that attitude. Big guy in the finance department after advancing through the bank. He bounced me on his knee and taught me "God loves me dearly." It is true; these are the people who shape you for life.

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  69. Not a criterion: just an observation. Thought it might serve as contrast--Varieties of God-talk: for those in love, for those not (law) We agree on the echo: "Emerson the Fool" must call back to the caller. Emerson was Thoreau's mentor --who squatted on Emerson's property and who had a crush on his wife. There was a falling out eventually. I gather neither of these guys have much cache in Canada.

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  70. Have you sent Sarah some of your ugliest cartoons and said some of the nastiest things. Would she still be sweet? Lady Dean venturing a criticism notwithstanding, I am surprised at what you get away with. Sleeping on the couch? Faculty L not happening? The criticizer does not like to be criticized. Not so surgical grenades all over the place. Talking lovely. No beyond the odd souvenir shop item they have no cache here.

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  71. Can't quite make sense of your montage of notions but its spirit is clear. I love to be accused and criticism is my briar patch (Brer Rabbit & Uncle Remus: another American old souvenir item). My cartoons and commentary go out to the faculty daily, plus blog, plus facebook so there's no denial or cover up of my contributions to manunkind. My desire isn't to be sweet. Never the less: thought you'd appreciate the contrast with Sarah -- who does't provoke ugly and nasty as you can tell by her comments.

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  72. How do you put up with it. You hate nice.

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  73. Emerson does not like " nice." Keeps you compliant.

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  74. And as we learn from Peter Pan ( maybe I should not mention the source): don't you smile at a crocodile.

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  75. The Germans say: Gute Mine zu boesem Spiel.

    Making a good face at bad play. A sign of cowardice.

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  76. I make a good face at bad plays. A bad face at good plays. Coward, no doubt. Did I call Sarah's words "nice"? No: Lovely. Nice is a diminutive of ne sciere: no science, not knowing: ignorant. Not lovely at all. Emerson say your goodness must have edge to it, else it is none. Of course having an edge isn't necessarily good. Goodies on the one hand; Good on other. Not even close.

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  77. Bad play vs. good play. There is a notion. A dichotomy. A difference that makes a difference. Mothers supervise play at a distance. Sometimes they have to interfere when play goes bad.

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  78. In preschool I set up and supervise free play. The moment I take on another chore and am distracted the play goes downhill ( they are very little). They love to play but they can only deal with so much. There are the rules: keep your hands to yourself, indoor voices, share resources, be polite.

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  79. They asked me back for next year. The program has not collapsed even though I am a High School teacher. Mostly, what I have tried to bring to it is the idea of community building and mutual sensitivity.

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  80. Good work.Helps a lot if you love what you do. "For those not in love, there's law -- to rule, to regulate, to rectify." (Wm Gass) A favorite quote. Almost Lutheran.

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  81. But exists at the same time, in the same person. Free play and rules At The Same Time. Simul.

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  82. As does good and evil, nice and nasty, lewd and lovely: oh what a wonderful world --all good say Snoop and Alexander Pope, We are all one, Kumbaya.

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  83. Simul Justus et Peccator--is the genial insight of the Lutheran Reformation.

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  84. Crucial for sure. Excruciating. Stick in my thumb, pull our a plumb: o what a good boy am I.

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  85. Einstein, who gets cited at nauseam it seems, was playful within the rules of mathematics. For some reason, in physics mathematics rules. It is the matrix which must not be broken. Adam and Eve had one rule even in Paradise and it bugged them when tempted. Their play had almost no rules. But it did have a nominal rule.

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  86. So to speak . We are not longer talking about the lovely and the unlovely,it seems--but about the role of play and rule--and how they just get along--or not. My version: playboy and puritan as a way to characterize this relationship in writing. (Do you talk Adam and Eve as history or myth? You can dodge this issue if you feel more comfortable--but its crucial--the difference (history/myth) and I'm curious.)

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  87. It works on a number of levels. Biologically speaking for example, all women share mitochondrial RNA from one female ancestor. Mostly I cannot see how anything carbon based "evolved". I keep throwing these kinds of questions out but cannot get a straight answer. That is kind of telling. Mostly, there just is ridicule and " bad play".

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  88. There’s a line of Emerson’s from ‘Self-Reliance,’ ” Hyde told me one day in his office, “where he says of Benjamin Franklin: ‘Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin? Every great man is a unique.’ Well, it’s crazy! There’s a long list of masters who taught Franklin! And yet the Emersonian song is the one that sticks in everyone’s head.”

    Suffice it to say that Hyde goes to heroic lengths to unstick it — and with a striking directness. A full 60 pages of his new manuscript are devoted to debunking the Emersonian view of Franklin as “America’s first self-made man” and replacing it with a portrait of Franklin as a “commoner,” a man whose defining talent was for absorbing, repurposing and synthesizing the culture around him, like some colonial M.C. The law of conservation of charge, the eponymous stove, the precise path of the Gulf Stream: Hyde shoves aside each of Franklin’s “discoveries” to uncover thick foundations of pre-existing knowledge and scientific collaboration. The point of all this is not to prove that Franklin wasn’t a genius but to show that his genius didn’t burst out of thin air. “It takes a capacious mind to play host to … others and to find new ways to combine what they have to offer,” Hyde writes, “but not a mind for whom there are no masters, not a ‘unique.’ Quite the opposite — this is a mind willing to be taught, willing to be inhabited, willing to labor in the cultural commons.”

    Emerson is wrong.

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  89. No, you avoid the myth/history issue: did God lean over (historically), grab a handful of earth (humus, clay) and make Adam, and then out of Adam's rib--make Eve--mitochondria not with standing? History? Myth? Of course Emerson's wrong. Who can be Right? Partial as we are. Can you speak out of 3 sides of your mouth--simul, as you like to say. We're none of us self-made, Master's galore. I wonder what E's agenda was in Self Reliance then--so smart and so wrong, and yet lovely as far as I'm concerned. Many are inspired to know that despite and addition to the "many masters" --we might listen (obey) to our own genius--difficult as that is, all the voices and clamor, static and noise. Obey.

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  90. Emerson has a preoccupation with big men. He will live like them wholly from inside, do as he pleases, the devil may care. Might turn him into Mother Teresa or into Napoleon. Or Hitler, don't matter. Maybe he inadvertently spawned Hitler via Nietzsche et al. Big men all of them. Supermen. It matters completely, the nature of your play. Did Emerson lean over and fashion a Hitler out of clay or did he promote the kind of thinking that could give rise to the hero religion.

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  91. Some Lutheranism might have been a stain of causation in generating Hitler-out-of-Clay & his impact. Hard to account for all the becauses. If it hadn't been for a bad boy thief in the night back in the late 19thc. you wouldn't have been in this captivating sustained over the years conversation. Did God's enormous balls drag in the dirt as he leaned over, which surely must have been the case if we're talking history rather than myth--mitochondria not with standing. And out of Adam: Eve -"life, living." Got to love fundamentalism: they leave so many of the devilish details out of the history. How to do justice to the whole and holy. Emerson doing as he pleases. Imagine: doing as one dis-pleases. That would be a life of quiet desperation. Obey. (Hark, listen, hear: them who have ears to hear)

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  92. Pleasing and displeasing, two sides of the same mouth.

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  93. I am guessing your cryptic pleasing/displeasing comment refers to Emerson doing as he pleases (as opposed to someone doing as he displeases) I myself displease in pleasing, damaged and damaging as I do and as I don't do (damned) No getting around it. I do this (as I please) and don't do all the rest (a displeasure to the whole. ) Wretch like me. Displeaser whether I please or not. Salvation makes all the difference. I'm still interested in your understanding of God's Balls so to speak--and whether they drag in the dust as he fashions Adam, or whether they are tucked and tidy in his white gown. Trying to nail down the history/myth crucial concern in matters of belief and faith. My pleasure.

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  94. Crucial: the crux of the matter. Essence of Xtianity for some is the centrality of the CROSS. (Cross Roads, a variant--where the devil is said to hang out, and the birth of the blues is born and born again) Torn between 2 loves. Excruciating. My good old man described his monumental EGO as crucified--making that otherwise morbid fetal image seems lovely, beautifully descriptive. Transformative. Suffers in translation. To die for. Alchemical. Lead to gold. A miracle.

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  95. I have no idea what you are asking about balls and gowns. I took a wafer today and some wine and God was in it. No balls, no gowns. Crucially his blood was shed for me and I am supposed to know it and remember it. All the sudden all my other concerns receded and his blood was the highest good, as the hymn declares. My self pities were gone. Crucified ego you could say.

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  96. Pleasing/ displeasing--I mean within the same person. You may have passion and inspiration for your work which propels you and makes it easy (my burden is light), but you may still have fatigue, anxiety, discipline issues. Or think of it as being attracted to a woman; at first love is very easy, but later there is more work and a formal commitment keeps you on track. As, excuse me, Lewis and the ancients have pointed out, there are a number of different kinds of love.

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  97. S'Balls! Yes: doubt, no doubt (diminutive of double): I am bi-polar. Playboy and Puritan: fast and loose, disciplined and committed. Ancients and Moderns and Post modersns even know there are a number of different kinds of what we call love and lovely. Washed in the blood and not so much. Obey (listen, hear): the meta-commandment. . .

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  98. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

    Looking here, there is even a Ychromosome Adam. I have never heard of him. Surprisingly, no one has enlarged on this in my ear-shot. Male and female he made them. Two in one Homo sapiens. Nice. She lazes around the house and produces new people, he goes off and is industrious. Hahaha. Two economies. Do you like my play? -- in honesty, who has got a more decent origins story? Even Dawkins calls in Deus ex machina aliens who may have seeded life here? How do you get a chromosome from mud? Quite literally. Because mud we have and chromosomes we have, and they are made from regular stuff. And without any of it, you would not be, but here you are, even with just words. You are not just words, or else there would be no words. But how does it begin? Words plus stuff and it was good, and order came into chaos. The difference with evolution is that it leaves out words. Somehow you get information from nothing.

    With the sacrament we have the same. It is nothing without the word, and nothing without the stuff. Together you get the higher. I.e. Grace and love and to die for passion, and crucified egos, your favoured expression. Even in paradise, the ego was to be in submission to something, hence the nominal restriction, as we have mentioned.

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  99. Dawkins Schmawkins--I don't give a hang about Dawkins and have no interest in evolution except as a word for evolving. Origins: History (physical, materialistic) or Mythologic (metaphorical, spiritual)? - both "story"--accounting for origins. History - temporal, physical --and so issues of god's balls and dust and sequence and whether Jesus takes a leak emerging from the tomb is perfectly appropriate if not reverent. God's fashioning the 2nd economy out of Adam's rib: can you imagine a physical video of the procedure? Did you go see Noah? The sacrament--the same: God in the wine and bread by way of the WORD (in other words, so to speak, in manners of speaking) or, as some insist: No, God's there, by god and you are an infidel if you don't believe it or at least claim to believe it. The fundamental distinction is Materialism vs Spiritualism--literal physical account vs metaphorical and mythological Knowing better but honest in my description: my ego is not in submission--that's why I characterize myself as a wretch-like-me I wrestle with Thy Will Be Done every day--and get no pleasure from the Walk on Water Submitted Egos I obey (listen). Word.

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  100. It is an ancient story. It can say things only in certain ways. I can't sort out all the material from the metaphysical. The important part of the sacrament is what it brings to you. What is it you are getting?

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  101. Thats' true--what counts is what IT brings to you and as Emerson says: the integrity of your own mind. Physicalist or Spiritualist, Literalist or Metaphorical: spirit or the letter of the law. What's important is what it brings to you. What I'm getting is less and less I like the idea of a crucified ego (though mine is not) and that to be stands for the whole tradition, history, story, myth. I confess: in the mind of this beer holder is increasing disdain for the xtians and xtian-talkers I see--I love the heritage and hate the spinners. Not the lovely one's of course. A difference that makes a difference.

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  102. Ugly Christian, like the ugly Jew. Nitzsche all over again. Let's get rid of people and save the environment. Then we can all sit in the forest and read the Illead. Good riddance. No need to help anyone. The hero makes it happen. Down with the slave mentality. Disdain to your heart's content. More Lebensraum for you.

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  103. Wretch like me, Uplifted by the loveliness of a spirit that lights a candle and doesn't curse the darkness. Disdain: no doubt. No denying. No cover up. It's the pretense of virtue that raises my bozone layer.

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  104. I don't have an ounce of feeling of disdain for you. I have tried to serve you with the truth the best I can discern it and say it, prosaic and unlovely and far too lucid you might find it.

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  105. Carl spent 18 months trying to "serve me with the truth" and you recall his final judgement--a treasure I've kept and post from time to time as a sample specimen of certain kinds of truth-serving and lucidity (from Lucifer: his bright light) Yes--you are far too lucid & unlovely: but that's just description, not a judgment. I am called to serve, best I can. Obedient and joyful. Mostly I work each day without hope and without despair. But with love (as Carl also claim--and I'm sure you do to. The best we can discern. How could it be other wise--with such devoted disciples.?)

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  106. PS- I wasn't accusing you of disdain. I was acknowledging my own. For sure. I hate
    pretense and would prefer to acknowledge
    my wretch-like-me status that pretend to walk on water.

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  107. I will take it then that you distain me. Says more about you than about me. As you would know, my acquaintance with Carl is less than passing. We are supposed to take something from the snippet you like to plaster everywhere. From what I can tell, you involved him in conversation, setting him up, the way you set me up, only a little differently, told him about mental illness, hearing voices, being Satanic yourself, having imaginary friends, and then quoted something he said in reply (to Help You, he thinks) and throw that into a conversation whether it fits or not. You know very well, that orthodox Christianity takes the devil very seriously. That there is a place prepared for him and his hordes is a thought clearly expressed. That this is no fun place, is also understood. Personally, I don't find it my job to determine who goes there, and I would not speak that way to someone. However, I find your ways abusive and unfair, and it does not seem to matter to you to have someone complain about it. There is something wrong with that. I am over and out. Peace to you. But that peace tends to be in Christ, and you know that that's the message. My summer is short and precious. If you ever do want to be actual friends and have things "lovely", let me know. You will find a way.

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  108. Anything I say, says about me. It says nothing about what I claim to be saying about unless the listener focuses on the object said, rather than the sayer. You have always used the word "supposed" as if someone was forcing you. I didn't set Carl or you up because --why would I? I write back and forth with hundreds including former and present students. Carl picked up on some fb thread and you picked up on the Naked Pastor threads. The devil is me. I don't project it out in some personified external force as Carl does and I guess you do. Wasn't raised that way--my church upbringing. A satan is an accuser, adversary: characterizes us all. I don't believe in the ways you and Carl do--not even close: so we have been in contention and accusatory since the beginning. You are both water walking "goodies." As opposed to a wretch like me. Peace passes understanding. If you want a sample of lovely, re read Sarah's words. Charisma. (Read Emerson's Divinity School Address and see if you can maintain your foolish estimate of him.)

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  109. Voices? Carl kept telling me he was ordered by God to instruct me, under orders he said. Samuel heard the voice of God repeatedly while a young boy in the temple where his mother had consecrated him. "Samuel, Samuel!"he heard/ "Speak, Lord: for thy servant hearest." Obedience. But that's just a lovely Bible story.

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