making nonsense

My brother asked me to write something sensical, since i've been using this blog as more of a note pad of late...well, here ya go jess: Sensical is not even a real word (unless you like the urban dictionary - but since you live in pristine, outdoorsy vermont - you kind of can't claim street-cred).

so boo-ya!

nonsensical!

A little more on education, ideology, and history

"How Christian Were the Founders?" in this week's New York Times Magazine

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html

About a month ago, I wrote a little bit on the Texas board of Education's proceedings to update the state's Social Studies curriculum. The above article continues the story - really worth checking into. As stake are such issues as Spanish/Mexican involvement in American history, the presentation of US presidents, the importance of the Right wing Moral Majority, and (*ahem*) the Christian-foundation of America. The article includes the following photo:


What a brilliant image. I am cobbling together many thoughts on the relationship between American government/national origins/founding documents/American self-image/civil religion and Christianity. I am very uncomfortable with the unthoughtful manner in which American insitutions, such as the Texas board of Education, are adopting world views and ideologies of one of the most watered down, warped, and dangerous versions of Christianity. American Christianity is a-historical (i.e., unaware of the lessons of history when it comes to nationalism and religion) and thus provincial in its concerns.

Since this is a running theme of mine - and I in no way claim to be writing brilliance here...I will leave it there...as the most recent installment of fodder for thought on the topic of history, identity, American Christianity, and nationalism.

Nice - Kate as Judas...makes sense.
(although Sawyer as John, the fawning disciple doesn't - so perhaps Lost is just playing with symbols yet again...how they plan to cut through all this and bring about a conclusion that "feels like an ending" will be one tough task...worth it though!)

the iBible

An infomercial about a fully-electronic bible navigation device:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBRjGUg95EY





Nothing short of hilarious. Proves the well-known suspicion that Christians are just Americans, but 2 decades late.

Pat Robertson's comments about the Haiti earthquake

I post this feeling extremely somber in doing so. Never have I been more convinced that I teach the Bible for a reason. [i.e., Pat Robertson's ideas are straight from ancient Canaanite/Israelite ideas about weather - such a very godly place from which to construct your views of truth, Mr. Robertson.]

I literally cried at his comments...so I share them with you...and hold the people of Haiti ever more present in my prayers.

(Thank you to Eric and Heath for finding this clip.)

A very nice response to Pat Robinson by Donald Miller:

http://donmilleris.com/2010/01/13/1513/

Update: Whoa - Keith Olberman's pronouncement of judgment on PR. A must see as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-PEaWUduCM

poetry about winter: an addendum to "The Seasons"

...lovely echoes with Galway Kinnell's (and my modest intertextual) poem posted below. Gorgeous, for those of us born in the Northern country, or those who can appreciate what it means to endure, with any modest wood, a snowy January (preferably year after year).


Robert Wallace Stevens' poem "The Snow Man"

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is

(Thanks to Ian Z. Curran for the poem)