In addition to the usual job-hunting enterprise I have been revising the prelude and fugue in C minor for solo guitar. Well, revising the prelude but adding additional and critical left hand instructions for the fugue. After playing guitar for nearly twenty years and in the heat of the compositional process I can sit down with my guitar, work out a passage fairly quickly and commit it to the page (Finale is useful here) without necessarily putting down all the instructions for HOW I played that passage that didn't seem too bad. This becomes a big problem when you run it by even an experienced, capable guitarist who doesn't know what you did (and, just as importantly) didn't do in the process of playing through something.
Some people like to claim the guitar is a miniature orchestra. That's bunk if you don't appreciate it for being the analogy (with all the attendent limitations analogies have) that it is. I would say that the guitar is in very practical ways more like a choir. You can hold notes for so long before you run out of breath and that is what has happened with inadequate instructions on how to handle barre chords in the prelude. Unless you have a left hand like a C-clamp you can only play bar chords for so long!
Now that I'm done, more or less, with C minor, I am 9 of 24 down in the set. Igor Rekhin's set is the benchmark for solo guitar fugue-writing and I hope to add to that. Russian music is not necessarily Western music the way we usually understand that term "Western music". If Rekhin is the first composer in the East to compose 24 preludes and fugues for solo guitar then if I happen to be the first composer in the West to tackle such a project that's great, and if not that's still great. As Stephen Colbert put it to Tom Wright on his show, "It's not a race." Of course the bishop jokingly replied, "Oh, really? I thought it was."
Friday, December 11, 2009
Jonathan Edwards as a failed pastor
http://gratefultothedead.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/preacher-in-the-hands-of-an-angry-church-the-fall-of-jonathan-edwards/
By way of Jared Wilson to Grateful To the Dead this is a piece by Chris Armstrong on Jonathan Edwards getting kicked out of his church for advocating a strict position on closed communion. This is not the sort of thing that we could ever imagine happening in a megachurch today. Of course this sort of thing would never happen in churches where there was not any change in the administration of communion. Certainly Catholics and Orthodox would not run into this situation. Catholics have become famous for covering up sexually abusive priests and Orthodox have their own skeletons and all three streams have a virulent history of anti-Semitism that some dispensationalists think their views prevent ... but clearly I digress.
Edwards ran afoul of members in his flock who didn't like the stricter, older standard for participating in communion Puritan churches employed. Eventually the battle led to his being ousted from his church for wanting closed eucharist and he went to do missions work among American Indians. I just find this fascinating and since I have the George Marsden biography on Edwards on my floor (as I don't have enough bookshelves just yet for the books I own) I may have to consult it soon.
Recent history for evangelical Protestants does not suggest that the leader of a prominent church would get the boot from his congregation over something ostensibly as simple and clear-cut as closed communion. A pastor who departs from his leadership position in a Protestant church NOW probably does so because he was discovered to have been taking illegal drugs and hiring a male prostitute (Ted Haggard); or for having an affair with one of his administrative aids (Todd Bentley); or perhaps for being accused of misappropriating the tax identification number of another church (R. C. Sproul Jr). In fact without getting particularly detailed Edwards' ouster was not as simple as the mere issue of closed communion.
People who espouse ideas or oppose ideas attach immense personal emotional weight to those ideas. People who are complementarians really think, more or less (in many cases) that the whole of the Gospel stands or falls on their one pet doctrine. People who think that the whole Gospel of Christ is lost if we lose double imputation are making one aspect of teaching so central that if it is not emphasized enough (never mind disputed) then anyone who doesn't champion the cause as that person does is the enemy.
As I have complained many times elsewhere, there have been more than a few Christians I have known who have championed the absurd foolishness of "courtship" as though it were a doctrine on part with hypostatic union and were actually far more concerned with the former than the latter even when they were not living lives that indicated they were even dating or courting or wished to do any of the above. The teaching, however, became useful in informally declaring anathema on people they already disliked on other grounds. I have grown weary of people who fool themselves into thinking arguing about these sorts of things is a matter of principle and standing up for Christianity when it is being Corinthian in an unusually petty way.
But at the end of things Edwards managed to move into doing something else. Being ousted from his church was not finally a failure. This perhaps more than anything else is what I am talking to myself about, that there come points when you will fail. Edwards failed. He could be considered to have failed at the right time for the right reasons but it does not seem as though we live in a cultural setting where a pastor would be encouraged to look to the life of Jonathan Edwards and say that you, too, should be willing to be a failure in the same way that Edwards was. If you speak up for just behavior and just speech and are hammered for it and you have failed is that a failure? It might not be--that failure (whatever it costs you) may be the greatest victory you have in your life. It is better to lose the right battle for the health of your soul and the cause of Christ than to win the wrong battle for the sake of your success. Reconciling yourself to failure can be the most important step forward possible.
By way of Jared Wilson to Grateful To the Dead this is a piece by Chris Armstrong on Jonathan Edwards getting kicked out of his church for advocating a strict position on closed communion. This is not the sort of thing that we could ever imagine happening in a megachurch today. Of course this sort of thing would never happen in churches where there was not any change in the administration of communion. Certainly Catholics and Orthodox would not run into this situation. Catholics have become famous for covering up sexually abusive priests and Orthodox have their own skeletons and all three streams have a virulent history of anti-Semitism that some dispensationalists think their views prevent ... but clearly I digress.
Edwards ran afoul of members in his flock who didn't like the stricter, older standard for participating in communion Puritan churches employed. Eventually the battle led to his being ousted from his church for wanting closed eucharist and he went to do missions work among American Indians. I just find this fascinating and since I have the George Marsden biography on Edwards on my floor (as I don't have enough bookshelves just yet for the books I own) I may have to consult it soon.
Recent history for evangelical Protestants does not suggest that the leader of a prominent church would get the boot from his congregation over something ostensibly as simple and clear-cut as closed communion. A pastor who departs from his leadership position in a Protestant church NOW probably does so because he was discovered to have been taking illegal drugs and hiring a male prostitute (Ted Haggard); or for having an affair with one of his administrative aids (Todd Bentley); or perhaps for being accused of misappropriating the tax identification number of another church (R. C. Sproul Jr). In fact without getting particularly detailed Edwards' ouster was not as simple as the mere issue of closed communion.
People who espouse ideas or oppose ideas attach immense personal emotional weight to those ideas. People who are complementarians really think, more or less (in many cases) that the whole of the Gospel stands or falls on their one pet doctrine. People who think that the whole Gospel of Christ is lost if we lose double imputation are making one aspect of teaching so central that if it is not emphasized enough (never mind disputed) then anyone who doesn't champion the cause as that person does is the enemy.
As I have complained many times elsewhere, there have been more than a few Christians I have known who have championed the absurd foolishness of "courtship" as though it were a doctrine on part with hypostatic union and were actually far more concerned with the former than the latter even when they were not living lives that indicated they were even dating or courting or wished to do any of the above. The teaching, however, became useful in informally declaring anathema on people they already disliked on other grounds. I have grown weary of people who fool themselves into thinking arguing about these sorts of things is a matter of principle and standing up for Christianity when it is being Corinthian in an unusually petty way.
But at the end of things Edwards managed to move into doing something else. Being ousted from his church was not finally a failure. This perhaps more than anything else is what I am talking to myself about, that there come points when you will fail. Edwards failed. He could be considered to have failed at the right time for the right reasons but it does not seem as though we live in a cultural setting where a pastor would be encouraged to look to the life of Jonathan Edwards and say that you, too, should be willing to be a failure in the same way that Edwards was. If you speak up for just behavior and just speech and are hammered for it and you have failed is that a failure? It might not be--that failure (whatever it costs you) may be the greatest victory you have in your life. It is better to lose the right battle for the health of your soul and the cause of Christ than to win the wrong battle for the sake of your success. Reconciling yourself to failure can be the most important step forward possible.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
From Jared Wilson: Imperfect Love Drives in all fear
http://gospeldrivenchurch.blogspot.com/2009/12/imperfect-love-drives-in-all-fear.html
Sometimes a simple link will suffice.
Sometimes a simple link will suffice.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Our witness is a double edged sword
It seems as though we as Christians are often told more about how our lives our to be a witness for Christ rather than being told to examine our hearts to consider how we are a witness AGAINST Christ. Not everyone who aspires to have a quality witness among "the Gentiles" necessarily has one in the end. It is not without cause that people have come to think of notorious Christians as notorious sinners and hypocrites. We generally are, aren't we? We can dress up our moral superiority in different sorts of theological garb but it is still possible for our witness to be a double edged sword. People can bless the Lord through us or curse the Lord through us Paul warned that on account of Israelites the name of the Lord was blasphemed among the Gentiles.
We may believe our testimony and witness for Jesus should redound to Jesus' glory and for Jesus' fame but we may simply become bywords for our self-righteous self regard. We may thank God we are not like those people who actually read The Stranger, maybe, or believe in The Global Warming or vote Republican or vote Democratic or whatever it is through which we measure others and find them wanting, but when our marriages fail or we abuse each other citing divine right we do not further the cause of the Gospel. We give unbelievers every occasion to blaspheme.
I feel like my "witness" is a frankly terrible one. I used to believe my witness was terrible because I wasn't witnessing to people and attempting to evangelize them. I frequently doubted the credentials of my own profession of faith. I didn't avoid explaining why I was a Christian to those around me but I was not constantly pressing people for "a decision for Christ". In fact I can't say that I remember ever doing that. On the other hand, I sometimes found myself explaining in very passionate terms how it bothered me when the teaching of Christ was abused by those who used it to rationalize their own fears about whomever they didn't want to be their neighbor. I eventually discovered that the person with whom I was sharing this frustration was precisely the sort of person who some conservative American evangelicals would very much not want to consider a neighbor. Well, that person is my neighbor and Christ's teaching tells me so.
Within the fold of faith we are probably not very well situated to see whether or not people who are not Christians are praising or impugning the name of the Lord on our account. Of course what I mean in having said that is that wwe may PERSUADE ourselves we are a credit to the name of the Lord even though we are not. We may consider people speaking against Christ on account of us to be a sign of persecution. Michael Spenser has blogged so much about that topic I see no need to add more commentary on that.
On the other hand, I have seen church conflicts spiral out to the point where a number of people became so bitter about things they left the faith altogether. Now I know that any number of people could say "Well, then, they weren't really Christians." Sure, if those people die tomorrow or today in their agnostic or atheistic state we can say they didn't perservere and therefore didn't count as Christians for having run the race to the end.
What I am pondering now is whether or not Christians would accept that their own sin becomes part of the testimony against Christ that allows people to be persuaded to turn away? Jesus said that temptations will come but woe to the one through whom they come. The great tempter is Satan but the great tempter is also our flesh. Yet Christ warns against those who would place stumbling blocks before the little ones. How many of us have placed stumbling blocks before people who truly (since we cannot presume to know the sincerity of their faith) sought the Lord but were set to stumbling by our own vanity?
I don't mean to suggest we should just go around feeling guilty that our sins caused other people to turn from the faith. Christ has atoned for those failures, too. I do, however, want to suggest that among sins we should confess to the Lord and perhaps to each other is the consideration that my bad witness may have been a witness that led someone to forsake Christ. Pastors may need to consider this most seriously above all. What if the sins you commit through pride or grasping for power or loving comfort or casting aspersions on the poor becomes not only a witness against your character but a witness against the cause of Christ Himself?
I have at least one friend who, years ago, grew so disenchanted with the bitterness and backbiting of Christians he left the Christian faith altogether. God mercifully drew him back and now he is a pastor and a valuable friend but his story sticks with me because while he certainly sinned in various ways when he turned from Christ what about the witness of those Christians whose animosity inspired him to give up? We would LIKE to say that we are not culpable for leading people away from Christ through our bad example but this is not something my conscious allows me to do right now. I have had some friends who turned away from Christ because they were sick of dealing with what they considered the hypocrisy of Christians.
I don't need to belabor that these men had their own spectacular hypocrisies, they were not necessarily wrong to feel as though the selfishness of professing Christians presented problems. They also had some emotional balance issues that I do not think Christians adequately took seriously but Michael Spenser's blogging about mental illness and Steve Hays' critique of the limits of nouthetic counseling are not things I wish to recapitulate by way of anything more than allusion.
I admit that I am not confident that my "witness" for Jesus is very good. I have to trust that the kindness of Christ can spur me to be kind to others. I am not a spiritual titan or a very accomplished man and this does not, in some ironic way, make me a spiritual giant because I am so humble about it. I can't consider myself a humble man. This does not somehow paradoxically make me humble.
I may have done some part in leading people away from the faith or being a bad example. I may have friends who turned from the Lord not simply because they did not perservere but because other Christians failed, utterly, to demonstrate that we are His by our love for one another. The "truth before friendship" espoused by what you might call Machen's Warrior Children (though, really, they exist far beyond Presbyterian circles and are in every other Christian confession) has led to "truth" being spoken over so-called friendships that are now nothing more than the abandonment of people who are considered dead weight or no longer useful.
In my angrier moments I find myself praying that those who use people will find themselves used and so come to a clearer understanding of what they have done to other people. A man who is willing to get emotional satisfaction from a single mom and blames her when the relationship goes south has been hurt, certainly, by being rejected but a single mom has to realistically consider that no matter how much she may want a husband not all men are competent to be husbands to single moms. A man who was happy to enforce social codes he didn't live up to so he could put down another Christian may be bitter when he gets the receiving end of that sort of treatment. The double-edged sword cuts in every direction. I have been accused of painting things in excessively black and white terms but the reality is that I feel overwhelmed by all the shades of gray. I would "like" things to be simpler than they are but I cannot acknowledge them to be simple.
People who a few years ago seemed fiery in their Christian advocacy are now agnostic or refuse todarken the door of a church because they didn't get things going their way. Part of me thinks these people failed to grasp the way of the Cross and the level to which you must endure wrongs. But I don't wish to diminish the wrongs they experienced even as I observe that they actually brought a lot of grief on themselves. I don't want to say their problem is somehow that they didn't repent of their habitual sin because, frankly, the people most likely to tell them that usually have their own habitual sins they never even think to repent of in daily living. The idea that a person who is fallible can't speak about another person's fallibility due to being fallible doesn't make sense to me. In fact that is one of the perennial struggles I have. The whole, "I'm not perfect but I'm better than you and that's why I get to judge you" is probably one of the reasons people leave the faith and for that I wish I could say I could get around that. I can't get around that, it's just something I have to give to the Lord, over and over, because I know that to someone I am that sort of obstacle to faith. I must be.
We may believe our testimony and witness for Jesus should redound to Jesus' glory and for Jesus' fame but we may simply become bywords for our self-righteous self regard. We may thank God we are not like those people who actually read The Stranger, maybe, or believe in The Global Warming or vote Republican or vote Democratic or whatever it is through which we measure others and find them wanting, but when our marriages fail or we abuse each other citing divine right we do not further the cause of the Gospel. We give unbelievers every occasion to blaspheme.
I feel like my "witness" is a frankly terrible one. I used to believe my witness was terrible because I wasn't witnessing to people and attempting to evangelize them. I frequently doubted the credentials of my own profession of faith. I didn't avoid explaining why I was a Christian to those around me but I was not constantly pressing people for "a decision for Christ". In fact I can't say that I remember ever doing that. On the other hand, I sometimes found myself explaining in very passionate terms how it bothered me when the teaching of Christ was abused by those who used it to rationalize their own fears about whomever they didn't want to be their neighbor. I eventually discovered that the person with whom I was sharing this frustration was precisely the sort of person who some conservative American evangelicals would very much not want to consider a neighbor. Well, that person is my neighbor and Christ's teaching tells me so.
Within the fold of faith we are probably not very well situated to see whether or not people who are not Christians are praising or impugning the name of the Lord on our account. Of course what I mean in having said that is that wwe may PERSUADE ourselves we are a credit to the name of the Lord even though we are not. We may consider people speaking against Christ on account of us to be a sign of persecution. Michael Spenser has blogged so much about that topic I see no need to add more commentary on that.
On the other hand, I have seen church conflicts spiral out to the point where a number of people became so bitter about things they left the faith altogether. Now I know that any number of people could say "Well, then, they weren't really Christians." Sure, if those people die tomorrow or today in their agnostic or atheistic state we can say they didn't perservere and therefore didn't count as Christians for having run the race to the end.
What I am pondering now is whether or not Christians would accept that their own sin becomes part of the testimony against Christ that allows people to be persuaded to turn away? Jesus said that temptations will come but woe to the one through whom they come. The great tempter is Satan but the great tempter is also our flesh. Yet Christ warns against those who would place stumbling blocks before the little ones. How many of us have placed stumbling blocks before people who truly (since we cannot presume to know the sincerity of their faith) sought the Lord but were set to stumbling by our own vanity?
I don't mean to suggest we should just go around feeling guilty that our sins caused other people to turn from the faith. Christ has atoned for those failures, too. I do, however, want to suggest that among sins we should confess to the Lord and perhaps to each other is the consideration that my bad witness may have been a witness that led someone to forsake Christ. Pastors may need to consider this most seriously above all. What if the sins you commit through pride or grasping for power or loving comfort or casting aspersions on the poor becomes not only a witness against your character but a witness against the cause of Christ Himself?
I have at least one friend who, years ago, grew so disenchanted with the bitterness and backbiting of Christians he left the Christian faith altogether. God mercifully drew him back and now he is a pastor and a valuable friend but his story sticks with me because while he certainly sinned in various ways when he turned from Christ what about the witness of those Christians whose animosity inspired him to give up? We would LIKE to say that we are not culpable for leading people away from Christ through our bad example but this is not something my conscious allows me to do right now. I have had some friends who turned away from Christ because they were sick of dealing with what they considered the hypocrisy of Christians.
I don't need to belabor that these men had their own spectacular hypocrisies, they were not necessarily wrong to feel as though the selfishness of professing Christians presented problems. They also had some emotional balance issues that I do not think Christians adequately took seriously but Michael Spenser's blogging about mental illness and Steve Hays' critique of the limits of nouthetic counseling are not things I wish to recapitulate by way of anything more than allusion.
I admit that I am not confident that my "witness" for Jesus is very good. I have to trust that the kindness of Christ can spur me to be kind to others. I am not a spiritual titan or a very accomplished man and this does not, in some ironic way, make me a spiritual giant because I am so humble about it. I can't consider myself a humble man. This does not somehow paradoxically make me humble.
I may have done some part in leading people away from the faith or being a bad example. I may have friends who turned from the Lord not simply because they did not perservere but because other Christians failed, utterly, to demonstrate that we are His by our love for one another. The "truth before friendship" espoused by what you might call Machen's Warrior Children (though, really, they exist far beyond Presbyterian circles and are in every other Christian confession) has led to "truth" being spoken over so-called friendships that are now nothing more than the abandonment of people who are considered dead weight or no longer useful.
In my angrier moments I find myself praying that those who use people will find themselves used and so come to a clearer understanding of what they have done to other people. A man who is willing to get emotional satisfaction from a single mom and blames her when the relationship goes south has been hurt, certainly, by being rejected but a single mom has to realistically consider that no matter how much she may want a husband not all men are competent to be husbands to single moms. A man who was happy to enforce social codes he didn't live up to so he could put down another Christian may be bitter when he gets the receiving end of that sort of treatment. The double-edged sword cuts in every direction. I have been accused of painting things in excessively black and white terms but the reality is that I feel overwhelmed by all the shades of gray. I would "like" things to be simpler than they are but I cannot acknowledge them to be simple.
People who a few years ago seemed fiery in their Christian advocacy are now agnostic or refuse todarken the door of a church because they didn't get things going their way. Part of me thinks these people failed to grasp the way of the Cross and the level to which you must endure wrongs. But I don't wish to diminish the wrongs they experienced even as I observe that they actually brought a lot of grief on themselves. I don't want to say their problem is somehow that they didn't repent of their habitual sin because, frankly, the people most likely to tell them that usually have their own habitual sins they never even think to repent of in daily living. The idea that a person who is fallible can't speak about another person's fallibility due to being fallible doesn't make sense to me. In fact that is one of the perennial struggles I have. The whole, "I'm not perfect but I'm better than you and that's why I get to judge you" is probably one of the reasons people leave the faith and for that I wish I could say I could get around that. I can't get around that, it's just something I have to give to the Lord, over and over, because I know that to someone I am that sort of obstacle to faith. I must be.
Jesus died for you so you can indulge in moral outrage
I have been borrowing House, M.D. on DVD from my sister over the last few months and one of the funniest moments in the show happens somewhere along season 3 where House, realizing he needs a team to bounce ideas off of on a plane turns to a kid with an Australian accent and says, "You, agree with everything I say." He turns to another man and says, "You, disagree with everything I say." The man replies that he doesn't really speak English well. Then finally he turns to a woman and says, "You, be morally outraged with everything I say." She replies, "Is this a joke?" House replies something on the order of, "Perfect."
The joke is awesome because it plays on known tropes in the show. Shows that learn how to make fun of themselves tend to be more enjoyable than the ones that don't. House on a plane as an extended joke wasn't an extended joke as awesome as "Bad Blood" on the X-Files but it was still funny. The essence of the final joke, of course, was that Cameron wouldn't be Cameron if she weren't morally outraged by some serious or jocular statement House made at any point in any episode of the show. However moral outrage can only be sustained for so long before it rings hollow and implausible as Jack Bauer's limitless cell phone minutes and reception so good even Batman would envy his gadgets. Someone may have already written a skit in which Jack Bauer tortures a Muslim terrorist into giving up information using a G. I. Joe trading card in one hand while playing Tetris on his cell phone with the other.
Appropos of an end to moral outrage, Cameron has been written off the show and even though she was one of my favorite characters early on in the series, someone House dismissed as the most naive atheist on the planet, that aspect of moral outrage has made her a tiresome character. Writers may have decided that she decided House plays God too much but couldn't they have just made a nod back to Tritter being right about some things? That would have made more sense (and have been a more stinging rebuke to House if that's what they were insisting on).
Well, like Cameron's moral outrage flagging after about five seasons so goes the moral outrage of a few Christians I have known over the years. In fact I'm afraid that the emotion I am most jaded against is moral outrage in Christians. It is the cheapest of emotions among Christians because we can invoke or evoke the crucifixion for it at any number of levels. Christians can consider their sacrifices as though their small inconveniences here in America, their significant but self-generated travails, and also their personal devestation that really is devastating are all equivalent to the suffering of Christ.
Now at one level that is certainly true. Long-time readers will notice that I did write an essay about how when Christians belittle the suffering of other Christians by saying, "What you're going through is nothing compared to what Jesus went through." they belittle the suffering of Christ in others and essentially employ the cross and Christ's suffering on it as a pretext to say "Quit your bitching and get in line". I still stand by that rebuke.
What I am talking about here is actually the impulse to say, when hearing someone else's tale of woe, to invoke that kind of sentiment. When you use your suffering to belittle the suffering of others, still more if you invoke the suffering of Christ, you are trafficking in the currency of moral outrage. When you say "What I went through is so much worse than what you went through" it isn't from empathy that you speak but judgment and the apostle James warns against judging brothers. When I hear tales of suffering that I honestly don't get I try not to think in terms of "What did that person do in terms of sin to get what is now their proper comeuppance?" I have known Christians who think pretty strongly in these terms and it never seems to dawn on them that they, too, have their own Christianized form of karma. Ignorant Christians would say this is the result of Calvinism or Wesleyanism or whatever theological bugbear in the clothing of an intellectual tradition gets their goat. It all amounts to the application of sympathetic magic or a kind of prosperity teaching in the guise of something more orthodox.
As Romans 2 puts it when you pass judgment on others in this way you condemn yourself because you do the same things. A person with an established career may look down on someone who doesn't have a "real" job as being a failure and having their god as their stomach. Yet that person may be a workaholic who works himself into adrenal problems or digestive problems. He may also still have his stomach as a god in his life. He may spin all this as suffering for the cause of Christ and it may be partly that but our sacrifices are, at best, incomplete. That job isn't necessarily ONLY sharing in the suffering of Christ but may also be revealing his own idol. It is not false to say that there is none of the suffering of Christ in that but we are earthen vessels used for God's glory.
As a recent, good sermon put it, the problem we often have is not that we go around saying that there is grace and works as though works were the whole thing. The problems come about when we start talking about things being done MOSTLY by grace. It is that "mostly" part that brings death and destruction. Our moral outrage can be the last hold-out of a "mostly grace" approach to dealing with people or ourselves.
We are in the midst of the already but not yet. There are disturbing shades of gray that Christ working in us permits when we wish we were all black or white. I mean, sure, Christ shared in human suffering and so can understand what it means to voluntarily take on physical suffering to redeem humanity but our capacity for self-pity as an overflow of moral outrage can be dangerous.
There is a place for moral outrage but I am not here writing to discuss all of those scenarios and settings. I am here considering that Christ on the cross was placed there because of our moral outrage and not simply to vindicate that moral outrage. Religious leaders outraged at Jesus' failure to perform by their rules and uphold their standards killed him by trumping up charges against him. What they did was done in the service of community and as Christ warned the apostles there would come a time where anyone who killed them would be certain he was doing God a favor. Christ died for that moral outrage, too, not just the obvious sins of the "sinners".
Because of the particularlities of my spiritual journey I struggle with moral outrage. I want neither to dismiss it as only motivated by self-righteousness and pride because then I might overlook real indignities and real injustice, nor do I want to give it free rein as though it were only possible for my moral outrage to be justified. As Tim Keller explained emotions in a useful sermon, the scriptures do not enjoin us to either dismiss emotions or to be governed by them but to present them to the Lord in prayer and work through them. This is difficult.
The joke is awesome because it plays on known tropes in the show. Shows that learn how to make fun of themselves tend to be more enjoyable than the ones that don't. House on a plane as an extended joke wasn't an extended joke as awesome as "Bad Blood" on the X-Files but it was still funny. The essence of the final joke, of course, was that Cameron wouldn't be Cameron if she weren't morally outraged by some serious or jocular statement House made at any point in any episode of the show. However moral outrage can only be sustained for so long before it rings hollow and implausible as Jack Bauer's limitless cell phone minutes and reception so good even Batman would envy his gadgets. Someone may have already written a skit in which Jack Bauer tortures a Muslim terrorist into giving up information using a G. I. Joe trading card in one hand while playing Tetris on his cell phone with the other.
Appropos of an end to moral outrage, Cameron has been written off the show and even though she was one of my favorite characters early on in the series, someone House dismissed as the most naive atheist on the planet, that aspect of moral outrage has made her a tiresome character. Writers may have decided that she decided House plays God too much but couldn't they have just made a nod back to Tritter being right about some things? That would have made more sense (and have been a more stinging rebuke to House if that's what they were insisting on).
Well, like Cameron's moral outrage flagging after about five seasons so goes the moral outrage of a few Christians I have known over the years. In fact I'm afraid that the emotion I am most jaded against is moral outrage in Christians. It is the cheapest of emotions among Christians because we can invoke or evoke the crucifixion for it at any number of levels. Christians can consider their sacrifices as though their small inconveniences here in America, their significant but self-generated travails, and also their personal devestation that really is devastating are all equivalent to the suffering of Christ.
Now at one level that is certainly true. Long-time readers will notice that I did write an essay about how when Christians belittle the suffering of other Christians by saying, "What you're going through is nothing compared to what Jesus went through." they belittle the suffering of Christ in others and essentially employ the cross and Christ's suffering on it as a pretext to say "Quit your bitching and get in line". I still stand by that rebuke.
What I am talking about here is actually the impulse to say, when hearing someone else's tale of woe, to invoke that kind of sentiment. When you use your suffering to belittle the suffering of others, still more if you invoke the suffering of Christ, you are trafficking in the currency of moral outrage. When you say "What I went through is so much worse than what you went through" it isn't from empathy that you speak but judgment and the apostle James warns against judging brothers. When I hear tales of suffering that I honestly don't get I try not to think in terms of "What did that person do in terms of sin to get what is now their proper comeuppance?" I have known Christians who think pretty strongly in these terms and it never seems to dawn on them that they, too, have their own Christianized form of karma. Ignorant Christians would say this is the result of Calvinism or Wesleyanism or whatever theological bugbear in the clothing of an intellectual tradition gets their goat. It all amounts to the application of sympathetic magic or a kind of prosperity teaching in the guise of something more orthodox.
As Romans 2 puts it when you pass judgment on others in this way you condemn yourself because you do the same things. A person with an established career may look down on someone who doesn't have a "real" job as being a failure and having their god as their stomach. Yet that person may be a workaholic who works himself into adrenal problems or digestive problems. He may also still have his stomach as a god in his life. He may spin all this as suffering for the cause of Christ and it may be partly that but our sacrifices are, at best, incomplete. That job isn't necessarily ONLY sharing in the suffering of Christ but may also be revealing his own idol. It is not false to say that there is none of the suffering of Christ in that but we are earthen vessels used for God's glory.
As a recent, good sermon put it, the problem we often have is not that we go around saying that there is grace and works as though works were the whole thing. The problems come about when we start talking about things being done MOSTLY by grace. It is that "mostly" part that brings death and destruction. Our moral outrage can be the last hold-out of a "mostly grace" approach to dealing with people or ourselves.
We are in the midst of the already but not yet. There are disturbing shades of gray that Christ working in us permits when we wish we were all black or white. I mean, sure, Christ shared in human suffering and so can understand what it means to voluntarily take on physical suffering to redeem humanity but our capacity for self-pity as an overflow of moral outrage can be dangerous.
There is a place for moral outrage but I am not here writing to discuss all of those scenarios and settings. I am here considering that Christ on the cross was placed there because of our moral outrage and not simply to vindicate that moral outrage. Religious leaders outraged at Jesus' failure to perform by their rules and uphold their standards killed him by trumping up charges against him. What they did was done in the service of community and as Christ warned the apostles there would come a time where anyone who killed them would be certain he was doing God a favor. Christ died for that moral outrage, too, not just the obvious sins of the "sinners".
Because of the particularlities of my spiritual journey I struggle with moral outrage. I want neither to dismiss it as only motivated by self-righteousness and pride because then I might overlook real indignities and real injustice, nor do I want to give it free rein as though it were only possible for my moral outrage to be justified. As Tim Keller explained emotions in a useful sermon, the scriptures do not enjoin us to either dismiss emotions or to be governed by them but to present them to the Lord in prayer and work through them. This is difficult.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
From Bill MacKinnon at the BHT: Let, let, let, let
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2009/12/07/let-let-let-let/
That's a good question and I wish had an answer. Well, I don't have an answer that would explain the answer to the question as Bill literally asked it.
I do have a rather too cynical answer about the reason "let" statements get made. It is common for a Christian to be told by another Christian that you should "let God do ______" when what is really being said is something akin to the Christianese parlance of advising something to someone (often in an unsolicited way) and then saying at the first expression of doubt or disagreement, "Well, pray about it." This often comes across as saying nothing more than, "Well, EVENTUALLY I hope you agree with me."
The "let God do" statement I'm sure is often made with complete and unwavering sincerity but it has the risk of being said in times and ways that basically tell the recipient, "Come around to my way of thinking because the way I think is biblical/traditional/holy/righteous/correct/better-than-yours."
So for those who may be inclined to say "let God do _____" how do you SAY that to someone and manage to not actually be a self-righteous tool who tells people they need to let God do something that you in practical reality expect them to do for themselves or maybe even you?
So much Christian teaching is reduced to:
Let God do ___________
You can fill in the blank.
I hear the “let God” advice all the time from every direction. But no one seems to be able to tell me how to “let God” do whatever it is I’m supposed to let Him do.
Of course this presupposes that God wants to “do” something to me, in me, or for me, and is waiting for my permission.
So this is my serious question: How do I do it? How do I “let God” do whatever it is He wants to do with me, in me, for me?
That's a good question and I wish had an answer. Well, I don't have an answer that would explain the answer to the question as Bill literally asked it.
I do have a rather too cynical answer about the reason "let" statements get made. It is common for a Christian to be told by another Christian that you should "let God do ______" when what is really being said is something akin to the Christianese parlance of advising something to someone (often in an unsolicited way) and then saying at the first expression of doubt or disagreement, "Well, pray about it." This often comes across as saying nothing more than, "Well, EVENTUALLY I hope you agree with me."
The "let God do" statement I'm sure is often made with complete and unwavering sincerity but it has the risk of being said in times and ways that basically tell the recipient, "Come around to my way of thinking because the way I think is biblical/traditional/holy/righteous/correct/better-than-yours."
So for those who may be inclined to say "let God do _____" how do you SAY that to someone and manage to not actually be a self-righteous tool who tells people they need to let God do something that you in practical reality expect them to do for themselves or maybe even you?
Monday, December 07, 2009
Plan for changes in plans
In comic book parlance Batman is known as a "prep god". He preps for every eventuality and every possible way things could go wrong. Well, just as Batman prepares for the reality that plan A has to be set aside for plan B I just learned that a piece I wrote has hit a roadblock.
Not too long ago I finished a quartet for clarinet, French horn, guitar, and cello earlier this year for the Delcamper named Sean. He asked me to write a piece for that particular combination of instruments and I set about writing it. Once I had finished the piece (it took several months because a couple of other projects were more pressing) I sent the score to Sean and he updated me and let me know that while the clarinet and cello parts could be spoken for (and the guitar part, of course) there was now no longer a French horn player available to play the required part for the quartet.
Perhaps somewhere along the paths of life you heard that great artists don't compromise their vision. Well, that's a load of crap. Artists who are serious about their art make every compromise possible that furthers the goal of realizing their vision in the real world in a way that also suits the resources at hand. As Stravinsky put it, the greater the number of restrictions on him the greater his freedom.
Legends of uncompromising artists who will not have their art watered down are more mythical than actual. Mozart and Haydn had no problem adjusting what they wrote to who and what they had to work with. In fact when certain musical resources proved too unreliable and ineffective at the time Haydn never availed himself of some resources that were actually available. The clarinets of Haydn's prime were not very good so he just never got around to ever using them. Mozart, by contrast, saw that clarinets were getting better and more reliable and started writing music for them. Bach tested out a few fortepianos and considered them inferior to the harpsichord and the organ. We know, of course, that piano repertoire exploded with vitality within the next fifty years and we now have the piano sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
Even Beethoven compromised and wrote a new ending for his glorious B flat major string quartet. He also wrote a lot of crap or stuff that was good but not his best. Mozart had a lot of editorial help from dear old dad and pointers from Haydn. It has been turning out that many of Mozart the boy-wonder's works had some adjustments made to help them be more impressive.
All this is to say that just as writing is rewriting there is also a great deal of truth that bad artists are inflexible and that good artists compromise, explore, reconsider, and work with what they actually have rather than holding out for what is finally impossible, impractical, and ultimately artistically insigificant.
A few years ago I set my mind to playing a duet for French horn and guitar. I networked amongst my associates and finally met with a woman who played French horn and things seemed promising. She had to drop out of school because of financial difficulties (I think) and didn't have time to rehearse a piece I discovered thanks to Volkmar Zimmerman and I was stuck. I really liked this little horn and guitar duo but how was I going to get a chance to play it?
That was the second year Mars Hill had an official choir and I met a trombonist there who looked at the duo and told me that a lot of the French horn's range overlaps with the tenor trombone. Ergo the part extraction in the tenor clef for the cello that was included as an alternate for the horn part could ALSO be played as a trombone part. Awesome! So the trombonist and I went through a neat little duo in A minor and I got some valuable experience getting some hands on experience playing classical guitar with a very good trombonist, an experience I found so positive I began to work out sketches for a sonata for tenor trombone and guitar I hopeto finish ... maybe in a few years.
So I have of late used my knowledge of various instruments to establish some substitutions for the quartet so that, if possible, Sean can perform the piece with other musicians. If I didn't know how the ranges of three different instruments overlap with one another I wouldn't be in a position to negotiate a new instrumental layout for the quartet I have written. If it turns out the quartet can be played in its original format that's even better because it means I will still have adapted my work into another format that will make it easier to play. Bach had no shame in recycling material. Vivaldi had no shame in recycling material to such a degree that for a while I heard a music professor tell the following joke:
Q: If Vivaldi were alive today what would his favorite compositional device be?
A: The photocopy machine
Villa-Lobos had no problem republishing the same work in up to three different forms. Stravinsky would republish works with minute changes in instrumentation in a score for one of his more famous works. Did he think this was necessary for some grand artistic reason? Not really, it just meant that it became grounds to update and renew his copyright in the works and sue the crap out of anyone who wasn't using the newer version, it seems. Stravinsky really did see music making as his business. That he had this attitude without failing to be a great artist should tell us something, that the dichotomy between "integrity" and "selling out" is often a luxury that can be held by people who have fewer chances of selling out and may not even have what they consider to be their artistic integrity in tact.
It's easy to go for the superhero thing when you think you've got a plan. The low level and mid-tier superheroes can all come up with plans. The big-gun superheroes are the ones who can have their plans blow up in their face and go back to the drawing board to come up with a new plan and the really formidable superheroes (and villains) in comics are the ones who have back up plans for their back up plans. That's why Ra's al Ghul makes a good foil for Batman, his plan B's have plan B's. By analogy, the test of one's maturity as an artist may be measured not by how uncompromising one is about one's artistic principles and one's creations but, perhaps, by how pragmatic one can be about creating something that will be practically valuable to someone in the real world. If so then I am slowly learning how to be a better composer and if that's happening it is something I can be thankful for.
Not too long ago I finished a quartet for clarinet, French horn, guitar, and cello earlier this year for the Delcamper named Sean. He asked me to write a piece for that particular combination of instruments and I set about writing it. Once I had finished the piece (it took several months because a couple of other projects were more pressing) I sent the score to Sean and he updated me and let me know that while the clarinet and cello parts could be spoken for (and the guitar part, of course) there was now no longer a French horn player available to play the required part for the quartet.
Perhaps somewhere along the paths of life you heard that great artists don't compromise their vision. Well, that's a load of crap. Artists who are serious about their art make every compromise possible that furthers the goal of realizing their vision in the real world in a way that also suits the resources at hand. As Stravinsky put it, the greater the number of restrictions on him the greater his freedom.
Legends of uncompromising artists who will not have their art watered down are more mythical than actual. Mozart and Haydn had no problem adjusting what they wrote to who and what they had to work with. In fact when certain musical resources proved too unreliable and ineffective at the time Haydn never availed himself of some resources that were actually available. The clarinets of Haydn's prime were not very good so he just never got around to ever using them. Mozart, by contrast, saw that clarinets were getting better and more reliable and started writing music for them. Bach tested out a few fortepianos and considered them inferior to the harpsichord and the organ. We know, of course, that piano repertoire exploded with vitality within the next fifty years and we now have the piano sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
Even Beethoven compromised and wrote a new ending for his glorious B flat major string quartet. He also wrote a lot of crap or stuff that was good but not his best. Mozart had a lot of editorial help from dear old dad and pointers from Haydn. It has been turning out that many of Mozart the boy-wonder's works had some adjustments made to help them be more impressive.
All this is to say that just as writing is rewriting there is also a great deal of truth that bad artists are inflexible and that good artists compromise, explore, reconsider, and work with what they actually have rather than holding out for what is finally impossible, impractical, and ultimately artistically insigificant.
A few years ago I set my mind to playing a duet for French horn and guitar. I networked amongst my associates and finally met with a woman who played French horn and things seemed promising. She had to drop out of school because of financial difficulties (I think) and didn't have time to rehearse a piece I discovered thanks to Volkmar Zimmerman and I was stuck. I really liked this little horn and guitar duo but how was I going to get a chance to play it?
That was the second year Mars Hill had an official choir and I met a trombonist there who looked at the duo and told me that a lot of the French horn's range overlaps with the tenor trombone. Ergo the part extraction in the tenor clef for the cello that was included as an alternate for the horn part could ALSO be played as a trombone part. Awesome! So the trombonist and I went through a neat little duo in A minor and I got some valuable experience getting some hands on experience playing classical guitar with a very good trombonist, an experience I found so positive I began to work out sketches for a sonata for tenor trombone and guitar I hopeto finish ... maybe in a few years.
So I have of late used my knowledge of various instruments to establish some substitutions for the quartet so that, if possible, Sean can perform the piece with other musicians. If I didn't know how the ranges of three different instruments overlap with one another I wouldn't be in a position to negotiate a new instrumental layout for the quartet I have written. If it turns out the quartet can be played in its original format that's even better because it means I will still have adapted my work into another format that will make it easier to play. Bach had no shame in recycling material. Vivaldi had no shame in recycling material to such a degree that for a while I heard a music professor tell the following joke:
Q: If Vivaldi were alive today what would his favorite compositional device be?
A: The photocopy machine
Villa-Lobos had no problem republishing the same work in up to three different forms. Stravinsky would republish works with minute changes in instrumentation in a score for one of his more famous works. Did he think this was necessary for some grand artistic reason? Not really, it just meant that it became grounds to update and renew his copyright in the works and sue the crap out of anyone who wasn't using the newer version, it seems. Stravinsky really did see music making as his business. That he had this attitude without failing to be a great artist should tell us something, that the dichotomy between "integrity" and "selling out" is often a luxury that can be held by people who have fewer chances of selling out and may not even have what they consider to be their artistic integrity in tact.
It's easy to go for the superhero thing when you think you've got a plan. The low level and mid-tier superheroes can all come up with plans. The big-gun superheroes are the ones who can have their plans blow up in their face and go back to the drawing board to come up with a new plan and the really formidable superheroes (and villains) in comics are the ones who have back up plans for their back up plans. That's why Ra's al Ghul makes a good foil for Batman, his plan B's have plan B's. By analogy, the test of one's maturity as an artist may be measured not by how uncompromising one is about one's artistic principles and one's creations but, perhaps, by how pragmatic one can be about creating something that will be practically valuable to someone in the real world. If so then I am slowly learning how to be a better composer and if that's happening it is something I can be thankful for.
time for a hundred visions and revisions
I have been composing music for about fifteen years, I guess, and playing for guitar for nearly twenty. It is strange to think that I have been playing guitar about as long as some people I know have been alive and certainly for more than twice as long as my older niece has been alive. In that time I have learned the truth o fthe axiom that writing is rewriting. Anyone can write a first draft for a novel or a song or anything that, go with it, and say they followed inspiration.
The more I compose, the more I spend time with the guitar and keyboard the more I am persuaded that inspiration is more of a work ethic than some illumination in which one gets the magic moment and writes the killer song. Moments of feeling inspired to write music are beautiful but those are not the moments that lead a person to FINISH a song.
Even finishing a song is not proof the song is going to ever get performed. I recently finished a prelude and fugue in C minor for solo guitar and I have been busy attending to the more-important-than-having-written act of rewriting. If all you care about is impressing yourself with your artistic prowess or thoughtfulness then by all means write songs, blog, write novels that no one is ever going to read but you during the process that you undertook in writing, paint whatever you want, post photographs on your webpage, record music in your home studio, burn away the hours at your computer writing whatever you feel "inspiration" struck you to create. That's cool, actually. But if you want it to matter to someone else then at some point you submit your work to someone else who has the power to say, "Meh, it's not that good, to be honest." They might even say "You suck, what you made sucks, and you should stop wasting my time."
Artists are not those who choose to ignore those sorts of rebukes so much as they work past them. There will never come a moment when everyone will like what you do but everyone isn't the one for whom you work. I could say something like, "You should work only to satisfy yourself" but there are a lot of frankly imcompetent, stupid, self-impressed people whose work being good enough for them never constitutes their work being good enough for you to spend money on it. We live in a land that is full of Monday morning quarterbacks in the arts. This doesn't mean any of them get to say that the quarterbacks who aren't so good suck because the quarterbacks who suck are, at least, quarterbacks. As Anton Ego puts it on behalf of Brad Bird, more time and care went into an artistic piece of junk than the review designating the art as junk.
Notice, of course, that Ego doesn't say that that work of art ISN'T junk! The bad or mediocre artist is more likely to rise to the level of fairly good or high average by dint of work than by defending whatever mediocrity he or she has already created. As Shostakovich used to put it, you can solve the problems in your first piece by writing your second piece.
Well, I like to revise stuff. An idea that is worth writing is an idea that is worth rewriting. If you can say something in forty words you can say something in four. I don't mean like Hemmingway, Hemmingway was a boring creep. If you're going to say something in forty words there should be a reason for the forty words. I admit that's why I can't really spend more time on Tolkien. If I'm going to read a story that is more than five hundred pages long it basically has to have been written by a Russian (an actual Russian, not necessarily a Russian transplant to the Americas if you get my meaning because not all ideologue novelists are equal amongst Russians, but I digress).
So I'm revising the prelude and fugue in C minor to make them easier to play. They won't be EASY to play but they will be EASIER to play. People may say that music is subjective, emotional, abstract, and things like that. I find music is those things but I find that music is concrete, objective, intellectually challenging. If you have one of these sets of things and not the other then your music probably lacks something or you probably lack the impulse to seriously create music. It may be a 90% to 10% split between one set of things and the other but if it is only one or the other you aren't making stuff, just imagining that you'd make stuff.
Read about Bob Dylan working on his songs and especially listen to out-takes as he works in the studio on things and you'll see how much work he puts into songs, even if that work might seem to you like not a whole lot of work. One of my favorite remarks about the work Gene Kelly did is that when he danced he made it look so effortless you started to think that maybe you could do it, too, at least until you tried to actually do it. In any work of any kind we see we see the ten percent that represents the completed work. We don't see the 90 percent of what led to it. The world is full of people who think that upon seeing the ten percent of someone else "I could do that" and proceed to do the ten percent work.
If things go well I will be able to get my pieces performed, maybe even published, but that's not going to happen unless I learn how to write so as to please others. That's the thing about the arts, you can't "just" please yourself or there's nothing worth doing that is worth sharing with others. You must please yourself, of course, but if people cna't play whatever it is you wrote that pleases yourself, it won't matter. You can play your own music, of course, and maybe get famous for it, and then you could get famous for the same reason Franz Liszt got famous, for (allegedly) writing music that only he could play. No offense meant to Liszt fans out there but I'm mostly glad most people don't get to hear his music. Sorry. I heard one amazing Brazilean pianist who got me to like Liszt but she is easily the exception that proved the rule!
Well, I've got more revisions to make to ensure that what I wrote is accessible enough to play that someone plays it.
The more I compose, the more I spend time with the guitar and keyboard the more I am persuaded that inspiration is more of a work ethic than some illumination in which one gets the magic moment and writes the killer song. Moments of feeling inspired to write music are beautiful but those are not the moments that lead a person to FINISH a song.
Even finishing a song is not proof the song is going to ever get performed. I recently finished a prelude and fugue in C minor for solo guitar and I have been busy attending to the more-important-than-having-written act of rewriting. If all you care about is impressing yourself with your artistic prowess or thoughtfulness then by all means write songs, blog, write novels that no one is ever going to read but you during the process that you undertook in writing, paint whatever you want, post photographs on your webpage, record music in your home studio, burn away the hours at your computer writing whatever you feel "inspiration" struck you to create. That's cool, actually. But if you want it to matter to someone else then at some point you submit your work to someone else who has the power to say, "Meh, it's not that good, to be honest." They might even say "You suck, what you made sucks, and you should stop wasting my time."
Artists are not those who choose to ignore those sorts of rebukes so much as they work past them. There will never come a moment when everyone will like what you do but everyone isn't the one for whom you work. I could say something like, "You should work only to satisfy yourself" but there are a lot of frankly imcompetent, stupid, self-impressed people whose work being good enough for them never constitutes their work being good enough for you to spend money on it. We live in a land that is full of Monday morning quarterbacks in the arts. This doesn't mean any of them get to say that the quarterbacks who aren't so good suck because the quarterbacks who suck are, at least, quarterbacks. As Anton Ego puts it on behalf of Brad Bird, more time and care went into an artistic piece of junk than the review designating the art as junk.
Notice, of course, that Ego doesn't say that that work of art ISN'T junk! The bad or mediocre artist is more likely to rise to the level of fairly good or high average by dint of work than by defending whatever mediocrity he or she has already created. As Shostakovich used to put it, you can solve the problems in your first piece by writing your second piece.
Well, I like to revise stuff. An idea that is worth writing is an idea that is worth rewriting. If you can say something in forty words you can say something in four. I don't mean like Hemmingway, Hemmingway was a boring creep. If you're going to say something in forty words there should be a reason for the forty words. I admit that's why I can't really spend more time on Tolkien. If I'm going to read a story that is more than five hundred pages long it basically has to have been written by a Russian (an actual Russian, not necessarily a Russian transplant to the Americas if you get my meaning because not all ideologue novelists are equal amongst Russians, but I digress).
So I'm revising the prelude and fugue in C minor to make them easier to play. They won't be EASY to play but they will be EASIER to play. People may say that music is subjective, emotional, abstract, and things like that. I find music is those things but I find that music is concrete, objective, intellectually challenging. If you have one of these sets of things and not the other then your music probably lacks something or you probably lack the impulse to seriously create music. It may be a 90% to 10% split between one set of things and the other but if it is only one or the other you aren't making stuff, just imagining that you'd make stuff.
Read about Bob Dylan working on his songs and especially listen to out-takes as he works in the studio on things and you'll see how much work he puts into songs, even if that work might seem to you like not a whole lot of work. One of my favorite remarks about the work Gene Kelly did is that when he danced he made it look so effortless you started to think that maybe you could do it, too, at least until you tried to actually do it. In any work of any kind we see we see the ten percent that represents the completed work. We don't see the 90 percent of what led to it. The world is full of people who think that upon seeing the ten percent of someone else "I could do that" and proceed to do the ten percent work.
If things go well I will be able to get my pieces performed, maybe even published, but that's not going to happen unless I learn how to write so as to please others. That's the thing about the arts, you can't "just" please yourself or there's nothing worth doing that is worth sharing with others. You must please yourself, of course, but if people cna't play whatever it is you wrote that pleases yourself, it won't matter. You can play your own music, of course, and maybe get famous for it, and then you could get famous for the same reason Franz Liszt got famous, for (allegedly) writing music that only he could play. No offense meant to Liszt fans out there but I'm mostly glad most people don't get to hear his music. Sorry. I heard one amazing Brazilean pianist who got me to like Liszt but she is easily the exception that proved the rule!
Well, I've got more revisions to make to ensure that what I wrote is accessible enough to play that someone plays it.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Practical Theology for Women and Impractical Theology for Men
http://theologyforwomen.blogspot.com/2009/12/pink-fluffy-bunny-womens-bible-studies.html
When I read theological blogs (and I read a few) I often get the sense that in contrast to Wendy's "Practical Theology for Women" a lot of theology blogs could be very easily described as "Impractical Theology for Men". If theology as written about by women can be dismissed as Pink Fluffy Bunny theology for women then the other extreme is almost a sort of Strongbad reductionist beat down on theology because so-and-so denies federal headship and doesn't advocate double imputation and that means the whole clarity of the evangel has been compromised and we need to have a mixed martial arts battle NOW because without federal headship and double imputation the whole of the doctrines of grace have been compromised and semi-Pelagianism will vitiate the power of the evangel proclamation in American church culture and ... .
This is what I mean by talking about impractical theology for men. For those who saw my little satirical songs "Rejoice Ye Homeschooled Children" and "The Lord Hath Bought Me But Not Thee" elsewhere on this blog, that's the sort of impractical theology for men I have often thought of lately. These are the sorts of deal-breaking, with-me-or-against-me proclamations about what is or isn't acceptable. This is the kind of thing where the theology for men is considered practical because guys think it is practical.
Well, I think it is practical to consider the biblical and rational case for the generationist position on the origin of the soul (also known as traducianism). I was mulling this subject over ten years ago before certain of my friends and family had the slightest idea what the theological position even was. The reason I didn't get into it in much detail with them is I realized that to them it wouldn't MATTER. So, no, it doesn' t matter. If the soul originates as an organic derivation of the soul and spirit of the father and mother then given that we know in biology it is impossible to impart via heredity acquired characterists your spirituality has nothing to do with the spiritual state of your children. It's just not going to mean anything.
On the other hand, the proposal that you and your spouse will sire children who will die because you will die because ages ago Adam was punished with physical death as a consequence for his sins then that doesn't matter either because in evolutionary terms death and sin are not logically correlated in a cause-and-effect matter ... unless you're NOT an evolutionist in which case it still doesn't matter because if your child's soul is the product of both your soul and your spouse's soul then that means there is a hereditary element to the consequences of sin means that your children are going to die because you are a sinner, period. At this point unbelievers will say that is just stupid and crazy and wrong. The generationist explanation of the origin of the soul is actually a pretty compelling argument for the hereditary capacity to sin. If Adam's soul was damaged through disobedience before he and Eve ever sired offspring that means that the physical punishment for sin became not only the natural means but the representative means of judgment on humanity for having turned against the Lord. In other words, to use the technical jargon, natural headship tends to imply as a matter of sequential consequence a form of federal headship.
And by now I trust you are seeing by example what you may be asking, "Why does this matter?" Here I could say that if you deny the traducianist view of the origin of the soul you deny the necessity of the atoning work of Christ on the Cross because a creationist explanation of the origin of the soul makes God the creator of souls that are corrupted by the stain of death through the sin committed by the first man and ... you get where I can go with that, right?
I saw a lot of this and I exemplified a lot of this when I was connected to Mars Hill. They're not all like that, obviously, but I and some of my family were like that. I knew people who spent their spare time assessing whether or not, in their opinion, other people were even really Christians or not, Christians who were covenanted as members of the same church as they were. Now, sure, it's possible to sign a membership contract and have it not mean anything. It is possible for a Pelagian to sign a membership contract to be a member of Mars Hill and it's possible for the elders to totally not notice that until it is way too late.
Having said that, an ethic of constant suspicion that other people are not as good as you are as a Christian or don't have their theological ducks in a row is now better. Feel free to start praying, "Thank you, God, that I am not a semi-Pelagian credobaptist/paedobaptist apostate who lacks keen insight into the truth of the pending postmillenial reign/secret rapture foretold in Daniel after the 70 weeks" This is the part where impractical theology for men rears its ugly head. I gave up on being a dispensationalist about fifteen years ago because I realize it served no purpose and was not the only way to interpret the scriptures. I have an Assemblies of God youth pastor to thank for introducing me to a variation of the preterist position (i.e. partial preterism) and I have staked out what I hope has been an unobtrusive amillenial partial preterist position ever since.
To theological watchbloggers and doctrine police the idea that there is something besides dispensationalism or covenantl postmillenialism means there's "pessimillenialism". Dude, Gary North should get over himself and admit he was a dumbass. Post-millenialists bitch about the demise of Western civilization and Christendom more than premillenialist dispensationalist Baptists! I care to know about these sorts of theological discussions but there comes a point where I like Stan Marsh end up saying, "Don't care, don't care, don't care, don't care."
When the stuff I say doesn' t make sense `tis a mystery that must be affirmed to be a true advocate of the good news. When what you say doesn't make sense let us consider the words "Watchoo talkin' `bout Willis!?" I know people who think substitutionary atonement makes no sense and can't be in the Bible even though it is. I know people who don't think Jesus could have possibly paid a ransom even though Jesus said He paid a ransom. That I don't get precisely how that ransom worked or to whom it was paid doesn't mean I don't take seriously that Christ Himself said He laid down His life as a ransom for many.
I have heard people going on about how human reason can't be used to explain the ways of God and the nature of God who flat out deny the Trinity when they hear it actually explained in scriptural terms. I have found to my dismay that in many, many cases the people who think they are the most stringent and responsible theologians aren't thinking things through about what they actually advocate or claim they advocate on behalf of correct Church teaching. Perhaps worst of all, I struggle to see how these people are advocating things that have the practical applicatiosn they claim their claims have.
So when I hear Mark Driscoll interviewing R. C. Sproul and he asks what the big theological fight coming up is I can't help but think that old-school unmoderated Midrash hasn't gone anywhere. it may translate into soundbites with famous evangelical theologians. When Sproul says that if we lose double imputation we lose the Gospel, really, I feel frustrated and bored. Yes, of course we have to defend double imputation because if we don't we lose a doctrine that is solace to rape victims the world over is how Driscoll seems to present the case. Notice I'm not even saying I disagree about the pastoral counsel that can be provided on the basis of knowing that Christ took upon Himself the consequences of the sins you commited and the sins committed against you.
Look, you can tell a rape victim, maybe a relative or friend of yours, that the important thing he or she needs to know is that the double imputationary nature of Christ's death on the cross means your sins have been credited to Christ and His righteousness has been credited to you and that that means it is also true for the rape victim. Therefore there is now no condemnation because though getting raped is far better than what you REALLY deserve (because your sins, freely chosen, separate you from the love of God), nevertheless Jesus' atoning work on the Cross ensures that you are reconciled to God. Sure, say that.
Now denying any or all of that doesn't make the wrong any better. Denying that people are born with a sin nature doesn't make the rapist less a rapist and it doesn't make the rape victim less apt to sin by disposition, either. All we like sheep have gone astray is true across confessional differences within Christianity. Furthermore, Christians are stuck no matter what in accounting for the existence of a holy and loving God and evil, but at the same time, when Driscoll says double imputation is needed so that rape victims can be told about it ... I don't think they will be spoken to as powerfully by THAT as they will be people prompted by the compassion of Christ for them. I can tell you on a blog what the greate benefits of double imputation are theologically but the practical application of it will be lost on you.
It doesn't matter if you're a Calvinist or an Arminian nothing will ever change whether or not you got raped by someone close to you or by a stranger. To say that double imputation and propitiation are needed in order to have a doctrinal basis for giving solace to rape victims seems specious. Expiation, now I agree with that, but the absurdity of the rhetoric disappoints me. If God permits everyone to freely exercise their free will and someone freely rapes you then God still is culpable for that by virtue of creating all things and knowing all things. Only the open theists have the get-out-of-jail free card of syaing God really, literally did NOT know that was going to happen to you and for some reason couldn't have really stopped it.
If you're a Calvinist then, as the other canard has it, God predestined you to get raped but God is still culpable for creating a world in which He simply permits that to happen. You see? The practical distinction isn't there. Either way you still got raped and whether you were a Calvinist or an Arminian or whatever variation on "determinism" and "free will" you settle on that can't change what was done to you. If you're not a Calvinist and get raped by a Calvinist do you blame the rapist's ethics on Calvinism? No, you blame the rapist for being a rapist, just as you would if the rapist were Arminian.
Now Paul without fail corrects errant theology before he addresses errant behavior but Paul did this in a way that nevertheless spawned what are now broadly Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox ways of interpreting Paul, all differing in various ways and claiming primacy and antiquity as their benefactors. To tie things back to Scotteriology's harsh words about Carrie Prejean, it can often seem as though in impractical theology for men (and women, too) that so long as you affirm the right dogmas how you actually treated people is something that can be glossed over. I knew Christians who believed, sincerely, that the highest demonstration of Christian love was to tell "you" to pull your head out of your ass and agree with them or else disagree at the expense of whatever it was they thought you deprived yourself of without having to explain it.
I care about theology a lot. I voluntarily read John Murray's The Imputatin of Adam's Sin. I own a dozen books by N. T. Wright. I respect the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I like John Stott's book on the spiritual gifts and Spirit baptism. I heartily endorse Klyne Snodgrass's Stories with Intent. I spent the last year reading throuh 1 & 2 Kings for fun. Yet a lot of American spirituality seems to boil down in some bad ways to "I am at the right church, therefore I'm on the right team, therefore I am okay. I may not be perfect but at least I'm not you, you heretic." Same thing goes for political stuff. I may be a porn-using, drug-snorting, racist, crony-capitalist but at least I'm not a Republican (or a Democrat). Useless theological fights that are applied as having life and death significance can be the impractical theology for men that separates the men from the boys. To the degree that women don't want a part of this there is, I'm afraid, a sense inw hich I can understand a propensity for Pink Fluffy Bunny theology.
When I read theological blogs (and I read a few) I often get the sense that in contrast to Wendy's "Practical Theology for Women" a lot of theology blogs could be very easily described as "Impractical Theology for Men". If theology as written about by women can be dismissed as Pink Fluffy Bunny theology for women then the other extreme is almost a sort of Strongbad reductionist beat down on theology because so-and-so denies federal headship and doesn't advocate double imputation and that means the whole clarity of the evangel has been compromised and we need to have a mixed martial arts battle NOW because without federal headship and double imputation the whole of the doctrines of grace have been compromised and semi-Pelagianism will vitiate the power of the evangel proclamation in American church culture and ... .
This is what I mean by talking about impractical theology for men. For those who saw my little satirical songs "Rejoice Ye Homeschooled Children" and "The Lord Hath Bought Me But Not Thee" elsewhere on this blog, that's the sort of impractical theology for men I have often thought of lately. These are the sorts of deal-breaking, with-me-or-against-me proclamations about what is or isn't acceptable. This is the kind of thing where the theology for men is considered practical because guys think it is practical.
Well, I think it is practical to consider the biblical and rational case for the generationist position on the origin of the soul (also known as traducianism). I was mulling this subject over ten years ago before certain of my friends and family had the slightest idea what the theological position even was. The reason I didn't get into it in much detail with them is I realized that to them it wouldn't MATTER. So, no, it doesn' t matter. If the soul originates as an organic derivation of the soul and spirit of the father and mother then given that we know in biology it is impossible to impart via heredity acquired characterists your spirituality has nothing to do with the spiritual state of your children. It's just not going to mean anything.
On the other hand, the proposal that you and your spouse will sire children who will die because you will die because ages ago Adam was punished with physical death as a consequence for his sins then that doesn't matter either because in evolutionary terms death and sin are not logically correlated in a cause-and-effect matter ... unless you're NOT an evolutionist in which case it still doesn't matter because if your child's soul is the product of both your soul and your spouse's soul then that means there is a hereditary element to the consequences of sin means that your children are going to die because you are a sinner, period. At this point unbelievers will say that is just stupid and crazy and wrong. The generationist explanation of the origin of the soul is actually a pretty compelling argument for the hereditary capacity to sin. If Adam's soul was damaged through disobedience before he and Eve ever sired offspring that means that the physical punishment for sin became not only the natural means but the representative means of judgment on humanity for having turned against the Lord. In other words, to use the technical jargon, natural headship tends to imply as a matter of sequential consequence a form of federal headship.
And by now I trust you are seeing by example what you may be asking, "Why does this matter?" Here I could say that if you deny the traducianist view of the origin of the soul you deny the necessity of the atoning work of Christ on the Cross because a creationist explanation of the origin of the soul makes God the creator of souls that are corrupted by the stain of death through the sin committed by the first man and ... you get where I can go with that, right?
I saw a lot of this and I exemplified a lot of this when I was connected to Mars Hill. They're not all like that, obviously, but I and some of my family were like that. I knew people who spent their spare time assessing whether or not, in their opinion, other people were even really Christians or not, Christians who were covenanted as members of the same church as they were. Now, sure, it's possible to sign a membership contract and have it not mean anything. It is possible for a Pelagian to sign a membership contract to be a member of Mars Hill and it's possible for the elders to totally not notice that until it is way too late.
Having said that, an ethic of constant suspicion that other people are not as good as you are as a Christian or don't have their theological ducks in a row is now better. Feel free to start praying, "Thank you, God, that I am not a semi-Pelagian credobaptist/paedobaptist apostate who lacks keen insight into the truth of the pending postmillenial reign/secret rapture foretold in Daniel after the 70 weeks" This is the part where impractical theology for men rears its ugly head. I gave up on being a dispensationalist about fifteen years ago because I realize it served no purpose and was not the only way to interpret the scriptures. I have an Assemblies of God youth pastor to thank for introducing me to a variation of the preterist position (i.e. partial preterism) and I have staked out what I hope has been an unobtrusive amillenial partial preterist position ever since.
To theological watchbloggers and doctrine police the idea that there is something besides dispensationalism or covenantl postmillenialism means there's "pessimillenialism". Dude, Gary North should get over himself and admit he was a dumbass. Post-millenialists bitch about the demise of Western civilization and Christendom more than premillenialist dispensationalist Baptists! I care to know about these sorts of theological discussions but there comes a point where I like Stan Marsh end up saying, "Don't care, don't care, don't care, don't care."
When the stuff I say doesn' t make sense `tis a mystery that must be affirmed to be a true advocate of the good news. When what you say doesn't make sense let us consider the words "Watchoo talkin' `bout Willis!?" I know people who think substitutionary atonement makes no sense and can't be in the Bible even though it is. I know people who don't think Jesus could have possibly paid a ransom even though Jesus said He paid a ransom. That I don't get precisely how that ransom worked or to whom it was paid doesn't mean I don't take seriously that Christ Himself said He laid down His life as a ransom for many.
I have heard people going on about how human reason can't be used to explain the ways of God and the nature of God who flat out deny the Trinity when they hear it actually explained in scriptural terms. I have found to my dismay that in many, many cases the people who think they are the most stringent and responsible theologians aren't thinking things through about what they actually advocate or claim they advocate on behalf of correct Church teaching. Perhaps worst of all, I struggle to see how these people are advocating things that have the practical applicatiosn they claim their claims have.
So when I hear Mark Driscoll interviewing R. C. Sproul and he asks what the big theological fight coming up is I can't help but think that old-school unmoderated Midrash hasn't gone anywhere. it may translate into soundbites with famous evangelical theologians. When Sproul says that if we lose double imputation we lose the Gospel, really, I feel frustrated and bored. Yes, of course we have to defend double imputation because if we don't we lose a doctrine that is solace to rape victims the world over is how Driscoll seems to present the case. Notice I'm not even saying I disagree about the pastoral counsel that can be provided on the basis of knowing that Christ took upon Himself the consequences of the sins you commited and the sins committed against you.
Look, you can tell a rape victim, maybe a relative or friend of yours, that the important thing he or she needs to know is that the double imputationary nature of Christ's death on the cross means your sins have been credited to Christ and His righteousness has been credited to you and that that means it is also true for the rape victim. Therefore there is now no condemnation because though getting raped is far better than what you REALLY deserve (because your sins, freely chosen, separate you from the love of God), nevertheless Jesus' atoning work on the Cross ensures that you are reconciled to God. Sure, say that.
Now denying any or all of that doesn't make the wrong any better. Denying that people are born with a sin nature doesn't make the rapist less a rapist and it doesn't make the rape victim less apt to sin by disposition, either. All we like sheep have gone astray is true across confessional differences within Christianity. Furthermore, Christians are stuck no matter what in accounting for the existence of a holy and loving God and evil, but at the same time, when Driscoll says double imputation is needed so that rape victims can be told about it ... I don't think they will be spoken to as powerfully by THAT as they will be people prompted by the compassion of Christ for them. I can tell you on a blog what the greate benefits of double imputation are theologically but the practical application of it will be lost on you.
It doesn't matter if you're a Calvinist or an Arminian nothing will ever change whether or not you got raped by someone close to you or by a stranger. To say that double imputation and propitiation are needed in order to have a doctrinal basis for giving solace to rape victims seems specious. Expiation, now I agree with that, but the absurdity of the rhetoric disappoints me. If God permits everyone to freely exercise their free will and someone freely rapes you then God still is culpable for that by virtue of creating all things and knowing all things. Only the open theists have the get-out-of-jail free card of syaing God really, literally did NOT know that was going to happen to you and for some reason couldn't have really stopped it.
If you're a Calvinist then, as the other canard has it, God predestined you to get raped but God is still culpable for creating a world in which He simply permits that to happen. You see? The practical distinction isn't there. Either way you still got raped and whether you were a Calvinist or an Arminian or whatever variation on "determinism" and "free will" you settle on that can't change what was done to you. If you're not a Calvinist and get raped by a Calvinist do you blame the rapist's ethics on Calvinism? No, you blame the rapist for being a rapist, just as you would if the rapist were Arminian.
Now Paul without fail corrects errant theology before he addresses errant behavior but Paul did this in a way that nevertheless spawned what are now broadly Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox ways of interpreting Paul, all differing in various ways and claiming primacy and antiquity as their benefactors. To tie things back to Scotteriology's harsh words about Carrie Prejean, it can often seem as though in impractical theology for men (and women, too) that so long as you affirm the right dogmas how you actually treated people is something that can be glossed over. I knew Christians who believed, sincerely, that the highest demonstration of Christian love was to tell "you" to pull your head out of your ass and agree with them or else disagree at the expense of whatever it was they thought you deprived yourself of without having to explain it.
I care about theology a lot. I voluntarily read John Murray's The Imputatin of Adam's Sin. I own a dozen books by N. T. Wright. I respect the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I like John Stott's book on the spiritual gifts and Spirit baptism. I heartily endorse Klyne Snodgrass's Stories with Intent. I spent the last year reading throuh 1 & 2 Kings for fun. Yet a lot of American spirituality seems to boil down in some bad ways to "I am at the right church, therefore I'm on the right team, therefore I am okay. I may not be perfect but at least I'm not you, you heretic." Same thing goes for political stuff. I may be a porn-using, drug-snorting, racist, crony-capitalist but at least I'm not a Republican (or a Democrat). Useless theological fights that are applied as having life and death significance can be the impractical theology for men that separates the men from the boys. To the degree that women don't want a part of this there is, I'm afraid, a sense inw hich I can understand a propensity for Pink Fluffy Bunny theology.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Link: photographs, children, and the arts
http://thisbfmess.blogspot.com/2009/11/through-her-eyes-home.html
http://thisbfmess.blogspot.com/2009/10/harvest.html
This links to photos taken by the daughter of a couple I know and haven't seen in a long time. Malia's photos look really, really cool. As in cooler than most photos people post on their Facebook pages in terms of composition.
I feel I have to admit my biases up front. When I was into the visual arts (before a catastrophic macular detachment in my right eye forced me to reassess what artistic pursuits were important to me leading me toward music) I was into drawing, painting, and to a much lesser degree sculpture. I preferred pencil and acrylic. They afforded both speed and control (as opposed to watercolor, which I stunk at because it was TOO fast and charcoal, which was too messy). All that is to say that over time I have dabbled in a variety of visual arts and studied the history of photography as part of my undergraduate work. It became a small hobby of mine.
What sets photographers apart is vision, an eye for how a moment is composed or how a composition can be created. This can either be staged or observed but neither is less indicative of one's art than the other, or more. A bias I have regarding photography is that it can, in a sense, be the path of least resistance, a path toward visual art creation that is like a musical instrument that is initially easy to take up but immensely difficult to master (perhaps like the guitar?). The world is full of photographs that did not need to be taken beyond the whims, often self-regarding, of the person who took the photograph. A photograph can redound to reflect on the one who sees more than on the thing or person or place that is seen. We litter the world with postcards to ourselves. You may surmise from all this that I do not tend to take photographs! And yet I admire the work of photographers, and admit to liking the work of Margaret Bourke-White and Richard Avedon. Bourke-White worked in fashion and commercial advertising photography before switching over to photo-journalism but now is not the time for me to digress on that!
I like the photos I have linked to enough to actually link to them. I don't know how old Malia is (to my embarrassment) but she is developing a keen eye for something I rarely see in most photos I have seen taken by any but professional photographers, a wonderful sense of balance in the elements of a composition. Color, shape, texture, space, lighting all come together to form a cohesive whole. A good photograph is fun because it presents multiple strains of melody that come together the way a good fugue does. There is never simply one thing at work in a composition or one sense of spatial arrangement. You can take a photo of a rock bridge from twenty different perspectives but maybe four of them will turn out and maybe just one of those will have everything balanced. A mind able to observe things in balance is something I used to think was simple enough to acquire in the arts but the older I get the more rare I realize it is, which is why I get excited when I see examples of art made by children that show a dawning awareness of things that, honestly, most adults don't know squat about.
Permit me to digress regarding my niece. My niece showed me a drawing a year ago of a bee attending to flowers. I don't know whether or not she copied an existing photograph or not but the composition was nicely done. This was not photorealistic, of course, but I admired how she used a monochromatic color scheme to evoke three different levels of presence and space in the composition, a clearly delineated foreground, mid-ground, and background. As I have said earlier, this is the sort of thing I don't often see even in the work adults do, at least not those who have not had the advantage of some formal training in thinking about the arts. There are, of course, people who, as it were, instinctively grasp how to assemble a composition or see it when it presents itself in life.
That's a long ramble when I could have just written a link.
http://thisbfmess.blogspot.com/2009/10/harvest.html
This links to photos taken by the daughter of a couple I know and haven't seen in a long time. Malia's photos look really, really cool. As in cooler than most photos people post on their Facebook pages in terms of composition.
I feel I have to admit my biases up front. When I was into the visual arts (before a catastrophic macular detachment in my right eye forced me to reassess what artistic pursuits were important to me leading me toward music) I was into drawing, painting, and to a much lesser degree sculpture. I preferred pencil and acrylic. They afforded both speed and control (as opposed to watercolor, which I stunk at because it was TOO fast and charcoal, which was too messy). All that is to say that over time I have dabbled in a variety of visual arts and studied the history of photography as part of my undergraduate work. It became a small hobby of mine.
What sets photographers apart is vision, an eye for how a moment is composed or how a composition can be created. This can either be staged or observed but neither is less indicative of one's art than the other, or more. A bias I have regarding photography is that it can, in a sense, be the path of least resistance, a path toward visual art creation that is like a musical instrument that is initially easy to take up but immensely difficult to master (perhaps like the guitar?). The world is full of photographs that did not need to be taken beyond the whims, often self-regarding, of the person who took the photograph. A photograph can redound to reflect on the one who sees more than on the thing or person or place that is seen. We litter the world with postcards to ourselves. You may surmise from all this that I do not tend to take photographs! And yet I admire the work of photographers, and admit to liking the work of Margaret Bourke-White and Richard Avedon. Bourke-White worked in fashion and commercial advertising photography before switching over to photo-journalism but now is not the time for me to digress on that!
I like the photos I have linked to enough to actually link to them. I don't know how old Malia is (to my embarrassment) but she is developing a keen eye for something I rarely see in most photos I have seen taken by any but professional photographers, a wonderful sense of balance in the elements of a composition. Color, shape, texture, space, lighting all come together to form a cohesive whole. A good photograph is fun because it presents multiple strains of melody that come together the way a good fugue does. There is never simply one thing at work in a composition or one sense of spatial arrangement. You can take a photo of a rock bridge from twenty different perspectives but maybe four of them will turn out and maybe just one of those will have everything balanced. A mind able to observe things in balance is something I used to think was simple enough to acquire in the arts but the older I get the more rare I realize it is, which is why I get excited when I see examples of art made by children that show a dawning awareness of things that, honestly, most adults don't know squat about.
Permit me to digress regarding my niece. My niece showed me a drawing a year ago of a bee attending to flowers. I don't know whether or not she copied an existing photograph or not but the composition was nicely done. This was not photorealistic, of course, but I admired how she used a monochromatic color scheme to evoke three different levels of presence and space in the composition, a clearly delineated foreground, mid-ground, and background. As I have said earlier, this is the sort of thing I don't often see even in the work adults do, at least not those who have not had the advantage of some formal training in thinking about the arts. There are, of course, people who, as it were, instinctively grasp how to assemble a composition or see it when it presents itself in life.
That's a long ramble when I could have just written a link.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
can't sleep, obviously
The internet provides so many varied and useless ways to kill time. When I was younger and couldn't sleep I just stayed in bed for hours waiting to fall asleep. I once wrote a poem about sleep and how I envied those who can fall asleep within minutes. They found sleep fell upon them like some morning mist while I had to hunt it down as though I were a Red Baron tracking an Allied reconnaissance plane through that mist. I don't remember where I put the poem anymore but I remember feeling that I had at least done the work of translating a life of insomnia into some kind of artistic medium.
a great little resource for classical guitarists who love chamber music
http://www.sheerpluck.de/
The search engine doesn't include titles, which is too bad, but if you're looking for an on-line searchable database of chamber music that includes guitar as well as a surprisingly large set of records for solo guitar repertoire this is a wonderful on-line resource.
It's too bad that I can't help a project like this. I am not exactly super tech-savvy and even though I've done database administrative work I'm not exactly "there" to help implement things. This website is, despite a few limitations, an amazing resource that I would urge every classical guitarist interested in studying, composing, or performing chamber music to go visit at least two or three times, preferably more!
The search engine doesn't include titles, which is too bad, but if you're looking for an on-line searchable database of chamber music that includes guitar as well as a surprisingly large set of records for solo guitar repertoire this is a wonderful on-line resource.
It's too bad that I can't help a project like this. I am not exactly super tech-savvy and even though I've done database administrative work I'm not exactly "there" to help implement things. This website is, despite a few limitations, an amazing resource that I would urge every classical guitarist interested in studying, composing, or performing chamber music to go visit at least two or three times, preferably more!
Ouch! Scotteriology rips into Carrie Prejean
http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/fake-bombs-and-gay-marriage/
http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/fake-bombs-and-gay-marriage-ii/
http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/fake-bombs-and-gay-marriage-iii/
http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/fake-bombs-and-gay-marriage-iv/
I don't really have anything meaningful to add to this.
http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/fake-bombs-and-gay-marriage-ii/
http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/fake-bombs-and-gay-marriage-iii/
http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/fake-bombs-and-gay-marriage-iv/
I don't really have anything meaningful to add to this.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
http://www.inhabitatiodei.com/2009/11/27/trinitarian-asymmetry/
http://www.leithart.com/2009/11/27/asymmetry/
They are doing something that has a long and wildly checkered history in Christianity across every theological spectrum, namely articulating a dogma specifically to solve a current social or political problem. I know, of course, that these things get done but I sometimes believe this thing is done too quickly and lightly by those who would claim they are the most serious-minded about what they are doing.
http://www.leithart.com/2009/11/27/asymmetry/
Third, the response to Trinity-as-democracy should not be the implicit subordinationism that has infected some traditional Trinitarianism; we don’t need to resort to a unilateral hierarchical Trinity, paternal monarchianism or paternal causality, to avoid the problems of social Trinitarianism. An asymmetrical account of Triune life takes the pleas of social Trinitarianism seriously, and can get at all the dynamism and personal interactivity that social Trinitarianism wants, without threatening to collapse into tritheism.This perhaps more than other quote articulates for me why I am not convinced the subordinationist explanation of the Trinity to establish why women should not be pastors is not even close to being a viable theological solution. American Protestants who want to ensure that women don't get ordained and invoke a subordinated set of relationships in the Trinity need to reckon that they are insisting on building gendered hierarchy from a the9logical proposition regarding persons that must be called Father and Son and Spirit whose pronouns via translation are all "he".
Finally, this perhaps leads to another axiom: Don’t smooth the rough edges
They are doing something that has a long and wildly checkered history in Christianity across every theological spectrum, namely articulating a dogma specifically to solve a current social or political problem. I know, of course, that these things get done but I sometimes believe this thing is done too quickly and lightly by those who would claim they are the most serious-minded about what they are doing.
happiness is not as valuable as contentment
But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
Whoever loves money never has money enough;
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.
This too is meaningless.
As goods increase, so do those who consume them.
And what benefit are they to the owner
except to feast his eyes on them?
The sleep of a laborer is sweet,
whether he eats little or much,
but the abundance of a rich man
permits him no sleep.
I have seen a grievous evil under the sun:
wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner,
wealth lost through some misfortune,
so that when he has a son
there is nothing left for him.
Naked a man comes from his mother's womb,
and as he comes, so he departs.
He takes nothing from his labor
that he can carry in his hand.
This too is a grievous evil:
As a man comes, so he departs,
and what does he gain,
since he toils for the wind?
All his days he eats in darkness,
with great frustration, affliction and anger.
Whoever loves money never has money enough;
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.
This too is meaningless.
As goods increase, so do those who consume them.
And what benefit are they to the owner
except to feast his eyes on them?
The sleep of a laborer is sweet,
whether he eats little or much,
but the abundance of a rich man
permits him no sleep.
I have seen a grievous evil under the sun:
wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner,
wealth lost through some misfortune,
so that when he has a son
there is nothing left for him.
Naked a man comes from his mother's womb,
and as he comes, so he departs.
He takes nothing from his labor
that he can carry in his hand.
This too is a grievous evil:
As a man comes, so he departs,
and what does he gain,
since he toils for the wind?
All his days he eats in darkness,
with great frustration, affliction and anger.
***
Those who love happiness never have happiness enough. Those who seek fulfillment in friendship never have friendship enough. Those things that we most crave are the things that undo us.
The children we want sap us of life in their neediness and their simply being children. It is not their fault that what we obtain from them for both our happiness and theirs can literally suck life from us. Were we to blame them it would be unjust to them since they could not ask to require so much sacrifice from us simply to live. Christian parents who look to their children as their legacy may be heartbroken to discover their children don't even believe in Christ or embrace sexual immorality or define themselves by sexual immorality or betraying their highest political values. Children may grow up and seem to have no sense of gratitude for the sacrifices their parents made that the Christian parents expect should be understood. Yet if those children were the idols of the parent's heart how can these children grasp the significance of sacrifices made to them because their parents made them into gods? Ironically parents may find themselves having created, literally, the idols whose service crushes them.
The career we want has no life of its own and that it costs us time with our families is not its fault but our own. It is we who love the career to the point that no sacrifice is too great or small for it. The financial stability a career seems to promise makes it seem worth it, or the prestige of knowing you are a mover and shaker in your field, in the top ten or twenty or fifty in the nation for whatever it is you do. It is something you can publicly dismiss with a shake of the head and saying that it is the work itself that is the reward or that you're doing it for Jesus or to be a team player but in your heart of hearts that idol is still there.
For many Christians in the United States love of country is its own idol. Even though Christ said His kingdom was not of this world and the apostles predicted a time when Christ would come to judge the nations we can fool ourselves into thinking that because we live in a country founded by Christians who feared the Lord and wanted to create a just society that somehow Psalm 2 will never apply to OUR country. Jesus is coming to judge the nations but that doesn't mean America will be found wanting and idolatrous and worthy of destruction like any other nation?
Surely, AMERICA, which has done so much for world missions and fought so valiantly for freedom across the world will not be ripe for judgment from the Lord when He returns, will it? In our hearts we secretly imagine that whatever heaven will be like when it will descend to earth to be with humanity forever in the age to come that it will somehow be an improved version of America, an America without Democrats (or an America without Republicans), a land of liberty and love where all the dreams that fail in this life will succeed in the next. We may imagine that in a millenial reign our nation will get to judge the other nations and find them wanting, perhaps.
The things that would ostensibly bring us the most happiness are the things that bring us the most regret, anger, and shame when either they fail us or we fail them. Yet often we are unaware of those things we take refuge in, that we make idols of because we are teeming with the desire to rebuke other people for their own idols because we figure we have everything set.
We live in the same sort of times as the times of those who came before us. There are families where the legacy in finances is basically debt. The scriptures are full of tales of people who inherit the less than sparkling legacy of parents who erred in their walk with the Lord and the children inevitably err in their own ways, often precisely in the same way as their parents but with new twists. Rehoboam was eager to be even more stern than his father Solomon. Solomon carried on David's legacy of marriages that were political conveniences.
Koholeth withheld from himself nothing that he desired and in the end it was miserable to him, a vapor, a grasping for the wind. None of the things that he built and established for himself as his legacy survived him. Solomon collected proverbs and composed them but as we can see "collect" can indicate that he collected that which was not even really his. Not everyone agrees that Solomon actually wrote the song that bears his name but that it was archived in his library. Some interpretations of the Song of Songs have Solomon as the villain rather than the hero of the narrative, such as it is. The attribution of Ecclesiastes to Solomon is traditional and not even all conservative scholars agree that he wrote it. All that is to say that we cannot go to modern day Israel and point to any of the things and say with certainty that any of those riches and buildings Solomon built survived the assault of Babylon, the assault of Greece, the assault of Rome. That there was a second temple more or less attests that.
We are encouraged to build legacies in many ways. It's not wrong to want to have something to pass down from one generation to the next. Nevertheless a legacy can be the thing for which parents are willing to sacrifice who their children actually are so as to attain within their own lifetimes what they feel they deserve. A legacy can be the reason a person fires his friends to preserve his own vision for what should come about. A legacy can be the reason people don't come forth with the truth about the frailties and poor decisions of people they admire or about their own lives. Thanks to American civic religion and different forms of the prosperity gospel it presents us we can see a legacy as proof of prosperity and the prosperity of that legacy as a proof of our godliness. Who knows but that in many cases it may be?
But then again whoever loves legacy never has legacy enough and no sacrifices of friends or family or other things are considered too great or small for the sake of it. Especially since I have had to get back to job hunting in the last few months I have come to realize that there are many ways in which we sanctify our ambition or are told, point blank, we have to sell ourselves because no one else will. This is tough for me because for me the quality of work should speak for itself and that is delusional since no one knows what work I do unless I draw attention to it but then am I not bragging about my accomplishments. It ends up being a sort of false humility, doesn't it? An overspiritualized perspective from an overspiritualized man. Whoever loves being spiritual can't be spiritual enough, I guess, but I am not really very good at being spiritual in the end.
transitions
My brother-in-law is finally back from his tour in Afghanistan. Stop loss stops being in effect for him in March and though he's been asked to re-enlist he is happy to not do so. He has four children with my sister (all quite cute) and wants to get back to being a husband and father again. He, my brother and I have a long-dormant custom of watching really, really bad movies like Doom or The Dead Hate the Living (Full Moon Harvest productions ensures you will get terrible movies in which a thunderstorm yields no running water on the windows in the background and a guy decides to go "take a shower" when there's no running liquids in the whole film except the beer spilling out of his bottle).
That is to say it's good to have my brother-in-law back home. :)
That is to say it's good to have my brother-in-law back home. :)
Friday, November 27, 2009
Dear Hilary Hahn
Please, please record all the Charles Ives violin sonatas! You did an amazing job with them in Seattle this year and if you record them at least one person will rush to pre-order that CD. I thought you were awesome before this year's recital but after your Ysaye, Brahms, Bartok, Ives program you are the most wonderful violinist on the planet.
[not that I assume Hahn or her agents will ever necessarily read this, I just had to get that off my chest and blogging seems like the place to do that]
[not that I assume Hahn or her agents will ever necessarily read this, I just had to get that off my chest and blogging seems like the place to do that]
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
a non-random observation about job-hunting
There are non-profits that, I kid you not, still require you to mail in your resume and cover letter by traditional snail mail. I hear things here and there about how "different" job hunting is these days and how "different' resume composition is but it seems at the end of the day everything is about content and not style. Either your resume gets more than three seconds of attention or it doesn't. If it gets three to fifteen seconds of attention that doesn't mean you'll even get called up for an interview. That doesn't mean you shouldn't make the effort, it just means that in hunting for any job there is always a sense in which the odds look like they are stacked against you.
There's a saying that the more things change the more they stay the same. I remember when I was a journalism student my professor taught us how to use the Missouri head count method to assess the size of a headline. Trust me I don't remember how to use that system anymore but she said the reason she taught the old ways was because, believe it or not, despite the age of computers and information technology there would inevitably be groups that had to do things the really old-fashioned way. Perhaps she could have put it in Presbyterian terms by saying that it is good to hold on to one without letting go of the other! As an aside I once asked her what it was like being a Calvinist at a predominantly Wesleyan university and she said mostly it wasn't too bad but that she did notice biases against the theological tradition once in a while. Well, all that is to say that learning things the old way can have unexpected benefits.
For instance, looking back on all the classes I had to take in high school and all the elective classes I took the single set of classes I am most grateful to have taken was a year of typing. I am grateful I studied painting, drawing, and sculpture. I am grateful I took a public speaking class and met one of my most valuable mentors through that. I am also grateful I sang in choir in high school but for the sake of my career, such as it has been, I am glad that I took a typing class for a year. It seemed tedious and lame at times at the time but the benefits of having a keystroke speed of about 120 per minute and a typing speed of 80 words per minute is not something I regard lightly. It may be one of the things most easily translated into finding work, I hope.
And I am grateful for my public education. I have to remind myself how slowly most people type. As Dwayne over at The Sound of Forehands Clapping knows all too well about me my typing speed can deluge you with paragraphs by the time you ge two or three sentences in edgewise in IM chat. In an age where anyone may have ever heard of who Paris Hilton is that's the sort of "TMI" that seems better than what may ever be known about her.
There's a saying that the more things change the more they stay the same. I remember when I was a journalism student my professor taught us how to use the Missouri head count method to assess the size of a headline. Trust me I don't remember how to use that system anymore but she said the reason she taught the old ways was because, believe it or not, despite the age of computers and information technology there would inevitably be groups that had to do things the really old-fashioned way. Perhaps she could have put it in Presbyterian terms by saying that it is good to hold on to one without letting go of the other! As an aside I once asked her what it was like being a Calvinist at a predominantly Wesleyan university and she said mostly it wasn't too bad but that she did notice biases against the theological tradition once in a while. Well, all that is to say that learning things the old way can have unexpected benefits.
For instance, looking back on all the classes I had to take in high school and all the elective classes I took the single set of classes I am most grateful to have taken was a year of typing. I am grateful I studied painting, drawing, and sculpture. I am grateful I took a public speaking class and met one of my most valuable mentors through that. I am also grateful I sang in choir in high school but for the sake of my career, such as it has been, I am glad that I took a typing class for a year. It seemed tedious and lame at times at the time but the benefits of having a keystroke speed of about 120 per minute and a typing speed of 80 words per minute is not something I regard lightly. It may be one of the things most easily translated into finding work, I hope.
And I am grateful for my public education. I have to remind myself how slowly most people type. As Dwayne over at The Sound of Forehands Clapping knows all too well about me my typing speed can deluge you with paragraphs by the time you ge two or three sentences in edgewise in IM chat. In an age where anyone may have ever heard of who Paris Hilton is that's the sort of "TMI" that seems better than what may ever be known about her.
link: Naked Pastor's "A treadmill is a treadmill"
http://www.nakedpastor.com/archives/4152
My favorite touch are the rats in mid-air within the wheel.
Sometimes I am tempted to think that the difference between a graceless church and a graceful church is that though either church will devour you the graceful church at least ensures you are well-cooked before they eat you, whereas the graceless church is content to eat your flesh when it is raw. Perhaps there is a preference for an unmediated "real presence" so that when you are eaten you're being "real" and not "fake".
My favorite touch are the rats in mid-air within the wheel.
Sometimes I am tempted to think that the difference between a graceless church and a graceful church is that though either church will devour you the graceful church at least ensures you are well-cooked before they eat you, whereas the graceless church is content to eat your flesh when it is raw. Perhaps there is a preference for an unmediated "real presence" so that when you are eaten you're being "real" and not "fake".
And, again, from Scotteriology about Christian didactic songs
http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/worst-christian-song-ever/
Now the "awkward side hug" rap video I saw was pretty funny. I'm going to suppose that whatever the "Christian Side Hug" thing is it could be a satire. I do, frankly, actually have some better things to do than listen to Christian rap music of any kind. I'm not against rap or hip hop or R&B as such. My brother played me some Cee-Lo Green I really enjoyed.
But the notion that Christians need to build a hedge around avoiding things sinful even though the prohibited things are not sinful in themselves seems emblematic of what I have heard taught over the years. Okay, there was an Assemblies of God youth pastor who said that certain things aren't really forbidden in the Bible at all but they're also not smart if you're going to avoid fornicating. He was simply pointing out that you should avoid constantly doing things that you know put you at risk for temptation.
Other Christians, however, appeal to "avoid even the appearance of evil" and that is where, spoof or not, things like the "Christian side hug" come into play. A pastor once said that if you're asking the question "How much can I get away with?" your heart is in the wrong place. That is not usually what happens in lengthier stays in Christian life. It is just as common, sometimes more, to discuss at length what things are best avoided so as to avoid the actually forbidden things. People who look down on gambling think nothing of investing in the stock market. People who look down on smokers may eat too much. People who eat too much may look down on drinkers. Drinkers may look down on people who don't dance or drink. We obsess about the codes that are used to define us either through cooperation or rebellion yet those codes remain defining. And it is late and I don't feel like rambling further on this post.
Now the "awkward side hug" rap video I saw was pretty funny. I'm going to suppose that whatever the "Christian Side Hug" thing is it could be a satire. I do, frankly, actually have some better things to do than listen to Christian rap music of any kind. I'm not against rap or hip hop or R&B as such. My brother played me some Cee-Lo Green I really enjoyed.
But the notion that Christians need to build a hedge around avoiding things sinful even though the prohibited things are not sinful in themselves seems emblematic of what I have heard taught over the years. Okay, there was an Assemblies of God youth pastor who said that certain things aren't really forbidden in the Bible at all but they're also not smart if you're going to avoid fornicating. He was simply pointing out that you should avoid constantly doing things that you know put you at risk for temptation.
Other Christians, however, appeal to "avoid even the appearance of evil" and that is where, spoof or not, things like the "Christian side hug" come into play. A pastor once said that if you're asking the question "How much can I get away with?" your heart is in the wrong place. That is not usually what happens in lengthier stays in Christian life. It is just as common, sometimes more, to discuss at length what things are best avoided so as to avoid the actually forbidden things. People who look down on gambling think nothing of investing in the stock market. People who look down on smokers may eat too much. People who eat too much may look down on drinkers. Drinkers may look down on people who don't dance or drink. We obsess about the codes that are used to define us either through cooperation or rebellion yet those codes remain defining. And it is late and I don't feel like rambling further on this post.
from Scotteriology: Worst Creation Story Ever
http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/worst-creation-story-ever/
I suppose atheists and free-thinkers would say the auto-erotic impulse in the narrative is a perfect illustration of the foolishness of religious belief.
I suppose atheists and free-thinkers would say the auto-erotic impulse in the narrative is a perfect illustration of the foolishness of religious belief.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The best kind of preaching isn't telling people to dance but playing the music
http://gospeldrivenchurch.blogspot.com/2009/11/what-gospel-centered-preaching-does.html
I think we meet this challenge, though, not by telling them to dance, but by playing the music. That's what gospel-centered preaching is.
Earlier this year I attended a wedding (Ry and Mi, for those who obsessively follow what blogs I know about and read, which I expect no one to do). I have been acquainted with Ry and Mi for a few years now and was honored to attend their wedding. I have been to solemn weddings and moving weddings. I have been to serious weddings and I have been to low-key weddings. This was a wedding unlike other weddings I have been to, such few weddings as I think I have been to.
This was a beautiful wedding and by this I hasten to add that it was not beautiful in the spiritualized or metaphorical sense (though it was that but I'll get to that later). I mean it was literally the most beautiful wedding I have ever been to in my life. The groom was beautiful, the bride was remarkably beautiful, the groomsmen were beautiful, the bridesmaids are all beautiful ... actually I dare say exceptionally beautiful and not just in the sense of being gorgeous but being beautiful people in terms of character. If I were to cast about for an earthly wedding that could be even the dimmest approximation of the joy and peace of the wedding supper of the Lamb this would be it.
The wedding itself was beautiful but it was the party that stuck with me. Nearly everyone was dancing. Even the brides probably fourteen year old dog got up and ambled across the portable dance floor. I have written in the past about how I don't really dance and I don't really dance but I made an exception, an important exception. I had been praying for the bride and groom for at least two years and was present at their wedding day. The joy and beauty of the day was so pervasive and, honestly, overwhelming that I realized that if I wasn't going to dance at this event I was never going to dance at all. No one told me to be happy, I was happy. No one told me to dance, the music and the joy of the event inspired me to dance. The good news is an invitation, not a command.
When the bride said that she was surprised and full of joy by the love of her husband she said that she was ultimately surprised and full of joy by the love of God. I have been to weddings that were sermons about the love of God and I don't mind those but this wedding was different. This wedding was itself a story of self-giving love just to get the two lovers to the point of being engaged. I know that generally that's always how people get married in this culture but this was different. The couple did not tell people to dance, they danced. They didn't just play the music that day, they were the music.
I think we meet this challenge, though, not by telling them to dance, but by playing the music. That's what gospel-centered preaching is.
Earlier this year I attended a wedding (Ry and Mi, for those who obsessively follow what blogs I know about and read, which I expect no one to do). I have been acquainted with Ry and Mi for a few years now and was honored to attend their wedding. I have been to solemn weddings and moving weddings. I have been to serious weddings and I have been to low-key weddings. This was a wedding unlike other weddings I have been to, such few weddings as I think I have been to.
This was a beautiful wedding and by this I hasten to add that it was not beautiful in the spiritualized or metaphorical sense (though it was that but I'll get to that later). I mean it was literally the most beautiful wedding I have ever been to in my life. The groom was beautiful, the bride was remarkably beautiful, the groomsmen were beautiful, the bridesmaids are all beautiful ... actually I dare say exceptionally beautiful and not just in the sense of being gorgeous but being beautiful people in terms of character. If I were to cast about for an earthly wedding that could be even the dimmest approximation of the joy and peace of the wedding supper of the Lamb this would be it.
The wedding itself was beautiful but it was the party that stuck with me. Nearly everyone was dancing. Even the brides probably fourteen year old dog got up and ambled across the portable dance floor. I have written in the past about how I don't really dance and I don't really dance but I made an exception, an important exception. I had been praying for the bride and groom for at least two years and was present at their wedding day. The joy and beauty of the day was so pervasive and, honestly, overwhelming that I realized that if I wasn't going to dance at this event I was never going to dance at all. No one told me to be happy, I was happy. No one told me to dance, the music and the joy of the event inspired me to dance. The good news is an invitation, not a command.
When the bride said that she was surprised and full of joy by the love of her husband she said that she was ultimately surprised and full of joy by the love of God. I have been to weddings that were sermons about the love of God and I don't mind those but this wedding was different. This wedding was itself a story of self-giving love just to get the two lovers to the point of being engaged. I know that generally that's always how people get married in this culture but this was different. The couple did not tell people to dance, they danced. They didn't just play the music that day, they were the music.
YOU CAN LOOK LIKE WOLVERINE IN JUST FIVE EASY STEPS
Go buy the health product being advertised in the side bar of whatever advertising subsidized email account you have.
Take the stuff religiously
Work out
Go find yourself some chest hair or whatever hairpieces non-swarthy white people who aren't Greeks or Italians need to go get
Grit your teeth, maybe smiling a bit, and mug for your photo op while the chicks fall over themselves to get you.
Or something like that.
I wanted to write something more thought-provoking and fun but discovering there's hiring fraud scams that are just phishing scams has me irritable. I do plan to write about Atanas Ourkouzounov's fun new album Movement but I am starting to think this will have to wait another week. I have a holiday to spend with family coming up and my brother-in-law is returning from his time in other lands serving with the armed forces. I don't just want to provide a review of Movement but to also provide an overview of Ourkouzounov's recorded work and, yes, write to you about what you missed if you didn't get the recordings he did on KLE, Gendai, and with Shin-ichi Fukuda on Denon. So, you see, a four CD overview is going to take some time and some careful consideration. I have to revive the dormant journalism student for that and with job hunting and insomnia I am not in the greatest state of mind or body to be all thoughtful. Maybe I need to go get ripped like those Wolverine knock-offs in the health ads.
Take the stuff religiously
Work out
Go find yourself some chest hair or whatever hairpieces non-swarthy white people who aren't Greeks or Italians need to go get
Grit your teeth, maybe smiling a bit, and mug for your photo op while the chicks fall over themselves to get you.
Or something like that.
I wanted to write something more thought-provoking and fun but discovering there's hiring fraud scams that are just phishing scams has me irritable. I do plan to write about Atanas Ourkouzounov's fun new album Movement but I am starting to think this will have to wait another week. I have a holiday to spend with family coming up and my brother-in-law is returning from his time in other lands serving with the armed forces. I don't just want to provide a review of Movement but to also provide an overview of Ourkouzounov's recorded work and, yes, write to you about what you missed if you didn't get the recordings he did on KLE, Gendai, and with Shin-ichi Fukuda on Denon. So, you see, a four CD overview is going to take some time and some careful consideration. I have to revive the dormant journalism student for that and with job hunting and insomnia I am not in the greatest state of mind or body to be all thoughtful. Maybe I need to go get ripped like those Wolverine knock-offs in the health ads.
HT iMonk--Required Behavior Modification and the Gospel
http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/riffs-112309-required-behavior-modification-and-the-gospel
Appropos of Michael Spenser's post I have been reminded of a fellow I met in my freshman year of college. He was a curious little man with a history being into boxing. He was also a charismatic Christian in the theological sense of that term rather than the personal sense. I remember him now mainly for rather daring proclamations of the sort a guy in his mid-twenties could seriously propose having had certain kinds of Christian education. Let me give an example.
"I don't think Augustine was really ever a Christian."
"Really?" I replied, "I thought he was one of the most famous Christians there ever were."
"Then why didn't he have a transformed life? Why did he have so many problems with women? That doesn't sound like a real Christian to me. If he really had the Holy Spirit he should have changed."
I said at that point (since I was about 19 years old and, you'll understand, I am paraphrasing here) that maybe some things take time in the Christian life. I wasn't in a situation to say Augustine wasn't a Christian just because some things in his life didn't change quickly. How many Christian men have ever found themselves able, at any level, to relate to the curiously Augustinian prayer, "Lord, make me chaste ... but not yet"? the way some of the super-evangelicals talk it would seem as though Augustine would have been better off being married and that people subsequent to him ought to be praying they lose their chastity in the bonds of marriage so as to really further the real work of the kingdom, but I digress. I just found it amazing that this fellow could so confidently ... even cavalierly declare that Augustine was never really a Christian.
Now plenty of Christians would hear about this fellow's statement and say he was wrong but in a way this "Augustine wasn't really a Christian" Christian represents a temptation we can all struggle with. I realize that we can often take with the right what we give with the left. We can say that there's no "varsity and junior varsity" on the team and then immediately turn around and create precisely that dichotomy while also adding the supplemental category of people who just didn't make the football team because their lives are not sufficiently transformed by Jesus. There are few things quite like the life of David to demonstrate that the hope in the faithfulness and goodness of God is not the same thing as hoping that you are good enough to merit God's kindness.
Appropos of Michael Spenser's post I have been reminded of a fellow I met in my freshman year of college. He was a curious little man with a history being into boxing. He was also a charismatic Christian in the theological sense of that term rather than the personal sense. I remember him now mainly for rather daring proclamations of the sort a guy in his mid-twenties could seriously propose having had certain kinds of Christian education. Let me give an example.
"I don't think Augustine was really ever a Christian."
"Really?" I replied, "I thought he was one of the most famous Christians there ever were."
"Then why didn't he have a transformed life? Why did he have so many problems with women? That doesn't sound like a real Christian to me. If he really had the Holy Spirit he should have changed."
I said at that point (since I was about 19 years old and, you'll understand, I am paraphrasing here) that maybe some things take time in the Christian life. I wasn't in a situation to say Augustine wasn't a Christian just because some things in his life didn't change quickly. How many Christian men have ever found themselves able, at any level, to relate to the curiously Augustinian prayer, "Lord, make me chaste ... but not yet"? the way some of the super-evangelicals talk it would seem as though Augustine would have been better off being married and that people subsequent to him ought to be praying they lose their chastity in the bonds of marriage so as to really further the real work of the kingdom, but I digress. I just found it amazing that this fellow could so confidently ... even cavalierly declare that Augustine was never really a Christian.
Now plenty of Christians would hear about this fellow's statement and say he was wrong but in a way this "Augustine wasn't really a Christian" Christian represents a temptation we can all struggle with. I realize that we can often take with the right what we give with the left. We can say that there's no "varsity and junior varsity" on the team and then immediately turn around and create precisely that dichotomy while also adding the supplemental category of people who just didn't make the football team because their lives are not sufficiently transformed by Jesus. There are few things quite like the life of David to demonstrate that the hope in the faithfulness and goodness of God is not the same thing as hoping that you are good enough to merit God's kindness.
internetmonk.com expired
Aw! One of my favorite websites to read on the planet has expired. Best wishes to Michael Spenser on getting things back up and running.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Jared Wilson's "Give Us A King"
http://gospeldrivenchurch.blogspot.com/2009/11/give-us-king.html
In what way is evangelicalism's prevailing pastoral emphasis -- from church job postings for pastoral positions to the Leadership cottage industry -- like Israel's asking for a king? And in what way is Saul, the king they got, like the pastoral type we most champion?
Is it possible evangelicalism is asking for a king (and getting what it asks for) all the while we should be cultivating within each other a desire for Saul's successor? Namely, a shepherd.
Just thinking aloud here.
As with God's people in the old covenant so with God's people in the new covenant. They wanted a king like other nations had and the Corinthians were impressed with super-apostles. The Corinthians considered Paul's letters weighty but his physical presence to be weak and his speech contemptible. Paul was, it seems, not a physically imposing or necessarily magnetic presence. He was not the rock star church planter versed in all the latest fads that Corinth wanted. He was well-educated and worked to support himself rather than take advantage of those he preached to for the sake of material gain, even though he granted it was within his rights as an apostle to do so. He noted how the super-apostles were better speakers than he but not better in knowledge.
Patorpreneurial kings are not actually shepherds even if they persuade themselves that they are. Pastorpreneurial kings make good bishops in episcopates, perhaps, but that's not the same thing as being a shepherd. The first pastorpreneurial king of Israel was not a shepherd and he eventually broke down into madness and self-aggrandizing even though God had given him many gifts. The temptation to have the most photogenic and gifted pastor is an easy one to understand. In the convention of single combat warriors vicariously fight the battles we want to fight for ourselves but do not feel strong enough to. The warrior goes in to fight for us so that his victory becomes our victory. We see this playing out constantly in politics even when we imagine ourselves to be more enlightened or thoughtful than our forbears. As the South Park episode after the 2008 election demonstrated, there are certain sorts of people who think that because one person won an election that the world will be set right or that the world is going to end when neither is the case. The world is what it is as God directs it and has designed it.
Yet God's people did not trust that God would really deliver them from Phillistines. They wanted a king to do it. They wanted to see a human agency to what they should have trusted God for, and not just any human agency. The king was someone they could point to and say, "This is our king, who will deliver us in battle." Yet it was sinful for them to ask for this sort of king and the sort of king they NEEDED was the king who chose to be a servant to the people, not just the one who won battles for his own glory and renown.
Israel asked for the sort of king who reflected, ultimately, who Israel was, and they got Saul. We cannot overstate the significance of this issue because if we don't see that Israel's first king was the one they wanted, the one like other kings, then we do not see the contrast clearly where the scriptures say that David was a man after God's own heart. David was a warrior with blood-stained hands, a shepherd, a man who took many wives and killed innocent men ... and yet he was a man after God's own heart. I do not think that we could exhaust exploring the significance of this by looking at David's failures, which are arguably more numerous and heinous than those of Saul, but that is another topic for another time, for the time being.
Perhaps the simplest way to articulate the core of Saul's failure throughout his life would be to observe that he did not really love the Lord. Yet it would also be useful to note how this looked in the way he related to other people. One's love for God can, in part, be measured by how one loves one's neighbor. Saul took credit for the victories of others while shirking his own responsibilities. He was initially successful in his military ventures but ultimately he prized the power and privilege of royalty over its responsibilities. He even built a monument to himself. Saul was walking the path of the super-apostle, pastorpreneurial king and contemplating the greatness of his own legacy. This is a bad sign if you come across a spiritual leader among God's people whose concern is his legacy.
To continue the reflection on Jared's comparison, David left no monument of himself yet both Saul and Absalom built monuments to themselves. When David lost the throne to the scheming of Absalom he recognized that the God who gave the throne could easily take it. When confronted with the consequences of his legacy of failure David recognized it for what it was while Saul entrenched himself and became more resistent. The shepherd recognizes his own failures and that his kingdom is a gift from God that God can take away. The pastorpreneurial king in Saul continued to say "mine" and to cling to what God had already taken from him.
I suppose that's enough reflecting on what Jared brought up about kings and shepherds for now.
In what way is evangelicalism's prevailing pastoral emphasis -- from church job postings for pastoral positions to the Leadership cottage industry -- like Israel's asking for a king? And in what way is Saul, the king they got, like the pastoral type we most champion?
Is it possible evangelicalism is asking for a king (and getting what it asks for) all the while we should be cultivating within each other a desire for Saul's successor? Namely, a shepherd.
Just thinking aloud here.
As with God's people in the old covenant so with God's people in the new covenant. They wanted a king like other nations had and the Corinthians were impressed with super-apostles. The Corinthians considered Paul's letters weighty but his physical presence to be weak and his speech contemptible. Paul was, it seems, not a physically imposing or necessarily magnetic presence. He was not the rock star church planter versed in all the latest fads that Corinth wanted. He was well-educated and worked to support himself rather than take advantage of those he preached to for the sake of material gain, even though he granted it was within his rights as an apostle to do so. He noted how the super-apostles were better speakers than he but not better in knowledge.
Patorpreneurial kings are not actually shepherds even if they persuade themselves that they are. Pastorpreneurial kings make good bishops in episcopates, perhaps, but that's not the same thing as being a shepherd. The first pastorpreneurial king of Israel was not a shepherd and he eventually broke down into madness and self-aggrandizing even though God had given him many gifts. The temptation to have the most photogenic and gifted pastor is an easy one to understand. In the convention of single combat warriors vicariously fight the battles we want to fight for ourselves but do not feel strong enough to. The warrior goes in to fight for us so that his victory becomes our victory. We see this playing out constantly in politics even when we imagine ourselves to be more enlightened or thoughtful than our forbears. As the South Park episode after the 2008 election demonstrated, there are certain sorts of people who think that because one person won an election that the world will be set right or that the world is going to end when neither is the case. The world is what it is as God directs it and has designed it.
Yet God's people did not trust that God would really deliver them from Phillistines. They wanted a king to do it. They wanted to see a human agency to what they should have trusted God for, and not just any human agency. The king was someone they could point to and say, "This is our king, who will deliver us in battle." Yet it was sinful for them to ask for this sort of king and the sort of king they NEEDED was the king who chose to be a servant to the people, not just the one who won battles for his own glory and renown.
Israel asked for the sort of king who reflected, ultimately, who Israel was, and they got Saul. We cannot overstate the significance of this issue because if we don't see that Israel's first king was the one they wanted, the one like other kings, then we do not see the contrast clearly where the scriptures say that David was a man after God's own heart. David was a warrior with blood-stained hands, a shepherd, a man who took many wives and killed innocent men ... and yet he was a man after God's own heart. I do not think that we could exhaust exploring the significance of this by looking at David's failures, which are arguably more numerous and heinous than those of Saul, but that is another topic for another time, for the time being.
Perhaps the simplest way to articulate the core of Saul's failure throughout his life would be to observe that he did not really love the Lord. Yet it would also be useful to note how this looked in the way he related to other people. One's love for God can, in part, be measured by how one loves one's neighbor. Saul took credit for the victories of others while shirking his own responsibilities. He was initially successful in his military ventures but ultimately he prized the power and privilege of royalty over its responsibilities. He even built a monument to himself. Saul was walking the path of the super-apostle, pastorpreneurial king and contemplating the greatness of his own legacy. This is a bad sign if you come across a spiritual leader among God's people whose concern is his legacy.
To continue the reflection on Jared's comparison, David left no monument of himself yet both Saul and Absalom built monuments to themselves. When David lost the throne to the scheming of Absalom he recognized that the God who gave the throne could easily take it. When confronted with the consequences of his legacy of failure David recognized it for what it was while Saul entrenched himself and became more resistent. The shepherd recognizes his own failures and that his kingdom is a gift from God that God can take away. The pastorpreneurial king in Saul continued to say "mine" and to cling to what God had already taken from him.
I suppose that's enough reflecting on what Jared brought up about kings and shepherds for now.
Job hunting and hiring fraud--creativity in the midst of not having a job yet
It seems as though with the economy the way it has been that there are new-fangled ways to do old-fashioned swindling. I was not aware of hiring fraud until this month. It turns out that what appear to be job offers are just bait and switches for marketing and spam. I applied for a couple positions only to discover that there needed to be yet more confirmation of stuff I had already (so I thought) established. The volley of spam I got was suspicious in itself.
See, when you apply for real jobs at real organizations you get a few formal missives that are couched in pretty impersonal terms. You don't get something particularly personalized via email unless you're dealing with a hiring or temp agency. Hiring fraud capitalizes on this (i've learned through wasting time on what turned out to be non-existent posts) by promising well-pyaing jobs nearby but then doesn't provide any substantive information. There can be small tell-tale things that, in hindsight, I wish I had seen as spectacularly suspicious. For instance, if when prompted to give references you are not allowed to go back and edit content that's a red flag. No professional site for a legitimate organization is likely to let you verify information without asking you two to five times. Jobs I applied for with the government include all sorts of caveats and warnings about how you better not be commiting fraud or lying ot them or you're in mountain ranges of trouble.
A rather sad start to a holiday week this has been for me, though not really on any other grounds. Creatively I am doing well. I have been able to finish projects I started as far back as seven years ago. I finished a little divertimento for guitar and cello in G sharp minor. It's a trifle but it's a trifle I am happy to say is finished. I also finished composing a quartet for clarinet, French horn, guitar, and cello for a Delcamper called Sean, which I feel certain I must have mentioned already somewhere! Throw on top of all this that I finished a fugue in A major for solo guitar and a prelude in B flat minor in the last few weeks and this last month has been artistically very productive for the first time in maybe three months. I may even have enough creative momentum and time to get back to my string quartets.
Of course I also wrote two hymns. I suppose I sould include a big sarcasm warning about those two hymns just in case anyone actually thought I was being serious. When I wrote the poem that starts with the line, "O Word of God who formed the Sun" I was being totally serious writing that text. Genunine adoration of Christ does not require phrases like supralapsarian, semi-Pelagian, or post-millenial. As if all that weren't brazen enough there are reasons I decided to evoke the melody of Dixie in Rejoice Ye Homeschooled children. A number of home-school advocates who are uber-Reformed take quite seriously the notion that the Unionist North were a bunch of heretical power-grabbers and that the righteous Confederacy was fighting for states' rights and to oppose the extending of federal power beyond what as constitutionally warranted.
Well, I don't as a general rule like to divulge tons of personal information but let's say I have some American Indian relatives and I heard a somewhat jaundiced take on the Civil War, which was that the northern racists beat the southern racists and about a century later things actually got better for black people when folks like Martin Luther King Jr started pointing out that things weren't right. American Indians, on the other hand, were still getting the shaft from Uncle Sam regardless of what was or wasn't supposed to have been settled by the Civil War or the "War of Northern Aggression".
I have already gone about a week having trouble getting a decent night's sleep so I'm probably going to, as it were, reset the clock.
See, when you apply for real jobs at real organizations you get a few formal missives that are couched in pretty impersonal terms. You don't get something particularly personalized via email unless you're dealing with a hiring or temp agency. Hiring fraud capitalizes on this (i've learned through wasting time on what turned out to be non-existent posts) by promising well-pyaing jobs nearby but then doesn't provide any substantive information. There can be small tell-tale things that, in hindsight, I wish I had seen as spectacularly suspicious. For instance, if when prompted to give references you are not allowed to go back and edit content that's a red flag. No professional site for a legitimate organization is likely to let you verify information without asking you two to five times. Jobs I applied for with the government include all sorts of caveats and warnings about how you better not be commiting fraud or lying ot them or you're in mountain ranges of trouble.
A rather sad start to a holiday week this has been for me, though not really on any other grounds. Creatively I am doing well. I have been able to finish projects I started as far back as seven years ago. I finished a little divertimento for guitar and cello in G sharp minor. It's a trifle but it's a trifle I am happy to say is finished. I also finished composing a quartet for clarinet, French horn, guitar, and cello for a Delcamper called Sean, which I feel certain I must have mentioned already somewhere! Throw on top of all this that I finished a fugue in A major for solo guitar and a prelude in B flat minor in the last few weeks and this last month has been artistically very productive for the first time in maybe three months. I may even have enough creative momentum and time to get back to my string quartets.
Of course I also wrote two hymns. I suppose I sould include a big sarcasm warning about those two hymns just in case anyone actually thought I was being serious. When I wrote the poem that starts with the line, "O Word of God who formed the Sun" I was being totally serious writing that text. Genunine adoration of Christ does not require phrases like supralapsarian, semi-Pelagian, or post-millenial. As if all that weren't brazen enough there are reasons I decided to evoke the melody of Dixie in Rejoice Ye Homeschooled children. A number of home-school advocates who are uber-Reformed take quite seriously the notion that the Unionist North were a bunch of heretical power-grabbers and that the righteous Confederacy was fighting for states' rights and to oppose the extending of federal power beyond what as constitutionally warranted.
Well, I don't as a general rule like to divulge tons of personal information but let's say I have some American Indian relatives and I heard a somewhat jaundiced take on the Civil War, which was that the northern racists beat the southern racists and about a century later things actually got better for black people when folks like Martin Luther King Jr started pointing out that things weren't right. American Indians, on the other hand, were still getting the shaft from Uncle Sam regardless of what was or wasn't supposed to have been settled by the Civil War or the "War of Northern Aggression".
I have already gone about a week having trouble getting a decent night's sleep so I'm probably going to, as it were, reset the clock.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
more ruminations on fugues
I have been going through Bach's 48 and have been reminded how rarely Bach employs what we would normally identify as stretto. This is surprising for me to rediscover even though for more than a decade I had been aware of this. In my own fugues I have been unable to resist the temptation to pull off stretto in each of my fugues.
Stretto, for those who aren't familiar with that term, is a trick where you take your melody and present it in succeeding voices. Let's say you have a choir with four voices. Well, singer 1 starts singing the tune but singer 2 starts singing the tune before the first singer is done singing. The third singer starts singing the same tune before the second is done singing, and so on. What can sometimes happen is that the time through which the tune is being sung shrinks with each successive entry of each singer. So the gap between when singer 1 starts and when singer 2 starts will be bigger than the gap between when singer 2 starts and singer 3 starts. Or the time period may not change.
You have to hear examples to fully appreciate how awesome and effective this musical trick is. One of my favorite examples of stretto comes in the climax of the Kyrie in Maurice Durufle's Requiem. Stretto creates a surge of energy by having the melody in different voices, as it were, stumbling over itself in the most literal way to be heard. It's like five different kids all rushing to sing you happy birthday because they are so excited and happy for you they can't bother to start together. It's something like that, and if you don't like kids replace it with kittens or puppies or whatever you consider cute, charming, or beautiful. For people too macho to accept this illustration, just turn the quintet into five guys who are stumbling over themselves to defeat you in combat.
Having indulged in potentially pointless illustrations my earlier observation is that Bach used stretto surprisingly rarely if you compare Bach's actual fugues to what academics have often said about his fugues. As the stuffy but still great scholar George Oldroyd put it in his book The Technique and Spirit of Fugue, Bach saw to it that the musical material developed according to its nature and not against its nature. As to exacty what that entails books have and will continue to be written about that.
Stretto, for those who aren't familiar with that term, is a trick where you take your melody and present it in succeeding voices. Let's say you have a choir with four voices. Well, singer 1 starts singing the tune but singer 2 starts singing the tune before the first singer is done singing. The third singer starts singing the same tune before the second is done singing, and so on. What can sometimes happen is that the time through which the tune is being sung shrinks with each successive entry of each singer. So the gap between when singer 1 starts and when singer 2 starts will be bigger than the gap between when singer 2 starts and singer 3 starts. Or the time period may not change.
You have to hear examples to fully appreciate how awesome and effective this musical trick is. One of my favorite examples of stretto comes in the climax of the Kyrie in Maurice Durufle's Requiem. Stretto creates a surge of energy by having the melody in different voices, as it were, stumbling over itself in the most literal way to be heard. It's like five different kids all rushing to sing you happy birthday because they are so excited and happy for you they can't bother to start together. It's something like that, and if you don't like kids replace it with kittens or puppies or whatever you consider cute, charming, or beautiful. For people too macho to accept this illustration, just turn the quintet into five guys who are stumbling over themselves to defeat you in combat.
Having indulged in potentially pointless illustrations my earlier observation is that Bach used stretto surprisingly rarely if you compare Bach's actual fugues to what academics have often said about his fugues. As the stuffy but still great scholar George Oldroyd put it in his book The Technique and Spirit of Fugue, Bach saw to it that the musical material developed according to its nature and not against its nature. As to exacty what that entails books have and will continue to be written about that.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
live performance
I went and played my six studies in harmonics for guitar at the local guitar society open mic last night. I played to an audience of about nine people. The pieces went mostly well, though I fumbled on the second study (contrapuntal works for solo guitar are fraught with peril even when they DON'T consist of counterpoint written entirely using harmonics). But to play six pieces entirely in harmonics for an audience consisting of classical guitarists meant I was playing for the most sympathetic and understanding audience I could have asked for. The pieces went over well.
This is the third or fourth time I have ever played live in the last three years. I tried playing some work at the Seattle Composer's Salon a few years ago and while they were nice I felt as though what I played was not a very natural fit for the stuff they are into. They were nice enough to not say anything bad about my piece but, other than a local music journalist who told me my piece was very good and a welcome change of pace from what he usually heard at those events, I didn't remember anyone saying they really LIKED the piece. Music either appeals or it doesn't and while a person can acclimate themselves to understanding and appreciating music I realize this can be a steep learning curve and a long process, a process and learning curve many people don't bother with because the effort is great. I can understand this because time and repeated exposure have not led me to like The Doors anymore now than when I heard them twenty years ago. I still don't like their music!
So I'm still applying for different jobs and while I do that I am dusting the cobwebs off of my badly atrophied chops and playing music. I had originally intended to play my prelude in B flat minor last night but realism prevailed and I quickly prepared the studies in harmonics, which was the wiser move to make. In a few months I hope to have more preludes and fugues from my set ready to perform live. The B flat minor one could be particularly nice because it evokes Bach more readily and, dare I say it, successfully. It feels the most Baroque and developed as a combined prelude and fugue. It is also going to be much easier to prepare for public presentation than my prelude and fugue in G major. The G major pieces are easily my favorites but the fugue ... the fugue is a nearly five-minute long juggernaut.
For now it's better to start small and be happy with small. It is too tempting to try to go for broke, think big, and do more than needs to be done. Years ago my composition professor said one of the common temptations of young composers is to try to say everything they want to say in just a single work. I feel fortunate my first serious forays into music were in rock and pop. I mutated the impulse to say everything big into cyclical composition. For me the big statements are not in giant movements or even in multi-movement works, for me the big ideas and big statements are what happens as a thing that emerges from the sum of the parts and goes beyond the sum of the parts. My big statement is something woven into multiple sonatas that you would have to see as a unified cycle of works. That probably means that no one is going to notice that stuff. When your big ideas are a gestalt that emerges from within a body of work there is a good chance the forest will be missed for the trees.
Oh well, I'm an unknown so I can have my metatheme worked into individual works and so long as the individual works at some point get some traction with listeners and musicians I don't need to worry about whether or not people "get" what the sonatas for guitar and woodwinds are moving toward as a unified whole. Now it is more important to get up in front of people, overcome anxieties, and play music.
This is the third or fourth time I have ever played live in the last three years. I tried playing some work at the Seattle Composer's Salon a few years ago and while they were nice I felt as though what I played was not a very natural fit for the stuff they are into. They were nice enough to not say anything bad about my piece but, other than a local music journalist who told me my piece was very good and a welcome change of pace from what he usually heard at those events, I didn't remember anyone saying they really LIKED the piece. Music either appeals or it doesn't and while a person can acclimate themselves to understanding and appreciating music I realize this can be a steep learning curve and a long process, a process and learning curve many people don't bother with because the effort is great. I can understand this because time and repeated exposure have not led me to like The Doors anymore now than when I heard them twenty years ago. I still don't like their music!
So I'm still applying for different jobs and while I do that I am dusting the cobwebs off of my badly atrophied chops and playing music. I had originally intended to play my prelude in B flat minor last night but realism prevailed and I quickly prepared the studies in harmonics, which was the wiser move to make. In a few months I hope to have more preludes and fugues from my set ready to perform live. The B flat minor one could be particularly nice because it evokes Bach more readily and, dare I say it, successfully. It feels the most Baroque and developed as a combined prelude and fugue. It is also going to be much easier to prepare for public presentation than my prelude and fugue in G major. The G major pieces are easily my favorites but the fugue ... the fugue is a nearly five-minute long juggernaut.
For now it's better to start small and be happy with small. It is too tempting to try to go for broke, think big, and do more than needs to be done. Years ago my composition professor said one of the common temptations of young composers is to try to say everything they want to say in just a single work. I feel fortunate my first serious forays into music were in rock and pop. I mutated the impulse to say everything big into cyclical composition. For me the big statements are not in giant movements or even in multi-movement works, for me the big ideas and big statements are what happens as a thing that emerges from the sum of the parts and goes beyond the sum of the parts. My big statement is something woven into multiple sonatas that you would have to see as a unified cycle of works. That probably means that no one is going to notice that stuff. When your big ideas are a gestalt that emerges from within a body of work there is a good chance the forest will be missed for the trees.
Oh well, I'm an unknown so I can have my metatheme worked into individual works and so long as the individual works at some point get some traction with listeners and musicians I don't need to worry about whether or not people "get" what the sonatas for guitar and woodwinds are moving toward as a unified whole. Now it is more important to get up in front of people, overcome anxieties, and play music.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
In which I post yet another link
http://klassikaraadio.err.ee/helid?main_id=961913
Once I break the pattern I break it consistently. This is a link to an Estonian broadcast of music I heard about through Niccola (former Delcamper, I think). Her actual name is Kristiina Jalakas and she is a good guitarist. I am also linking the whole thing not just because that's how it links and because I want Kristiina's playing to get more exposure, but also because there are some sweet Arvo Part performances on this broadcast. For years I have been interested in music from the Baltic republics (very long-time readers of this blog may remember the plug I did for Jonas Tamulionis' work and the great CD the Corona Guitar Quartet did of his work). Baltic Voices 1-3 are also good CDs to go pick up if you want more familiarity with choal music from Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. The whole broadcast is in Estonian (which I admittedly don't know) BUT the program listing is easy enough to read even if you're not conversant in Estonian.
In other news, this week I received in the mail the newest CD by Atanas Ourkouzounov, which I am excited about. I wish to compose a separate blog entry about that CD and it may take up to a week for me to fully digest the music and articulate my thoughts about his newest recording and to provide these thoughts in the context of my appreciation for his recorded output over the last roughly six years.
Once I break the pattern I break it consistently. This is a link to an Estonian broadcast of music I heard about through Niccola (former Delcamper, I think). Her actual name is Kristiina Jalakas and she is a good guitarist. I am also linking the whole thing not just because that's how it links and because I want Kristiina's playing to get more exposure, but also because there are some sweet Arvo Part performances on this broadcast. For years I have been interested in music from the Baltic republics (very long-time readers of this blog may remember the plug I did for Jonas Tamulionis' work and the great CD the Corona Guitar Quartet did of his work). Baltic Voices 1-3 are also good CDs to go pick up if you want more familiarity with choal music from Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. The whole broadcast is in Estonian (which I admittedly don't know) BUT the program listing is easy enough to read even if you're not conversant in Estonian.
In other news, this week I received in the mail the newest CD by Atanas Ourkouzounov, which I am excited about. I wish to compose a separate blog entry about that CD and it may take up to a week for me to fully digest the music and articulate my thoughts about his newest recording and to provide these thoughts in the context of my appreciation for his recorded output over the last roughly six years.
In which I link to a sermon and write down some thoughts about it
http://www.graceseattle.org/Haralson111509.mp3
Although I was situated to have heard sermons from this pastor before it was Michael Spenser linking to John Haralson Jr's sermon on Psalm 41 that first caught my attention. I heard the Psalm 41 sermon around the time I was expressing my difficulties with the Psalms as biblical literature. I listened to quite a few of Mike Gunn's sermons on the Psalms and found myself wishing that a certain church Gunn was once affiliated with had even half as good a set of sermons on the Psalms. Well, along the way of listening to sermons on the Psalms I listend to Haralson's sermon on Psalm 41 and that got my attention.
At the church I had been attending, to be brutally honest and with a good chunk of sadness about saying this, the church I was at had a long and miserable history of being pretty irresponsible with Old Testament texts. This has particularly been the weakness of the main teaching pastor, though (to be fair) other pastors have done some great preaching from Old Testament texts. In fact one pastor's sermons on Jonah were great, so great I found them rather convicting and a catalyst for the realization that I actually needed to do the thing I feared doing, starting the search to find a new church to consider home.
So all that I wrote should not be taken to mean the church is the worst church out there, I just got to a point where I realized that my own weaknesses as a practicing Christian and a reader of the scriptures were not going to get helped by being where I was at. Haralson's sermons on Old Testament texts impressed me by being responsible expositions of the text, not the fanciful decorations of Old Testament scripture as an excuse to talk about pet topics I became convinced was a weakness at the church I was at (though, again, to be fair, there's just one who has a particular weakness for that).
All of that is to explain why I have just linked to a sermon when I obviously don't have a habit of linking to sermons. In fact, I don't even really expect you to download the sermon or listen to it because one of the tropes in Christian blogging is to write some big rambling blog entry about some sermon where you have to hear the sermon in order to fully appreciate the three to five sentences of "oh my gosh that was the bestest sermon ever!! Preacher XXXXXX is the best preacher and no one is like Preacher XXXXXX." I realize this entry has already become that and that is why I don't wish to make it a habit.
But the illustration Haralson used resonates with me because, well, I'm a musician. The tale of the musician who wanted to jam with Miles Davis and his band; did so and that disastrously; and who was advised by Davis (so the tale goes) to learn harmony and then come back later--it is a story that makes sense to me even if (as many internet borne tales are) it is simply a modern-day parable. One can be a musician and not a particularly accomplished musician. Haralson built from this to observe that though the grace of God saves us there are promises in the scriptures that are still conditional. I could attempt to explain things in more detail but I don't feel up to it, I'm afraid. I know I would ramble and it will take time to reflect on the sermon, time I would rather spend reflecting in some other setting besides a blog entry.
Although I was situated to have heard sermons from this pastor before it was Michael Spenser linking to John Haralson Jr's sermon on Psalm 41 that first caught my attention. I heard the Psalm 41 sermon around the time I was expressing my difficulties with the Psalms as biblical literature. I listened to quite a few of Mike Gunn's sermons on the Psalms and found myself wishing that a certain church Gunn was once affiliated with had even half as good a set of sermons on the Psalms. Well, along the way of listening to sermons on the Psalms I listend to Haralson's sermon on Psalm 41 and that got my attention.
At the church I had been attending, to be brutally honest and with a good chunk of sadness about saying this, the church I was at had a long and miserable history of being pretty irresponsible with Old Testament texts. This has particularly been the weakness of the main teaching pastor, though (to be fair) other pastors have done some great preaching from Old Testament texts. In fact one pastor's sermons on Jonah were great, so great I found them rather convicting and a catalyst for the realization that I actually needed to do the thing I feared doing, starting the search to find a new church to consider home.
So all that I wrote should not be taken to mean the church is the worst church out there, I just got to a point where I realized that my own weaknesses as a practicing Christian and a reader of the scriptures were not going to get helped by being where I was at. Haralson's sermons on Old Testament texts impressed me by being responsible expositions of the text, not the fanciful decorations of Old Testament scripture as an excuse to talk about pet topics I became convinced was a weakness at the church I was at (though, again, to be fair, there's just one who has a particular weakness for that).
All of that is to explain why I have just linked to a sermon when I obviously don't have a habit of linking to sermons. In fact, I don't even really expect you to download the sermon or listen to it because one of the tropes in Christian blogging is to write some big rambling blog entry about some sermon where you have to hear the sermon in order to fully appreciate the three to five sentences of "oh my gosh that was the bestest sermon ever!! Preacher XXXXXX is the best preacher and no one is like Preacher XXXXXX." I realize this entry has already become that and that is why I don't wish to make it a habit.
But the illustration Haralson used resonates with me because, well, I'm a musician. The tale of the musician who wanted to jam with Miles Davis and his band; did so and that disastrously; and who was advised by Davis (so the tale goes) to learn harmony and then come back later--it is a story that makes sense to me even if (as many internet borne tales are) it is simply a modern-day parable. One can be a musician and not a particularly accomplished musician. Haralson built from this to observe that though the grace of God saves us there are promises in the scriptures that are still conditional. I could attempt to explain things in more detail but I don't feel up to it, I'm afraid. I know I would ramble and it will take time to reflect on the sermon, time I would rather spend reflecting in some other setting besides a blog entry.
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