YHWH

Since it is the season of lent, we said the decalogue during the liturgy this morning. The third commandment is translated like this: "Thou shalt not invoke with malice the name of the Lord thy God." (The answer, of course, is "Amen. Lord have mercy.") Now, my fundigelical upbringing ingrained it into my head that the third commandment (always given as not taking the Lord's name in vain) means essentially "don't curse, don't use profanity" (or, since I was raised in west Texas, "don't cuss" would be more verbatim). Invoking God's name with malice sounds like something quite different. It sounds more like, "We need to make sure that homosexuals can't get married in this country because God said marriage is a man and a woman." It sounds, in short, like using God's name as an excuse to follow your malicious heart and not welcome your neighbor. Less an arbitrary restriction of personal piety and more the royal law of love that commands love your enemy, welcome the alien, I have washed your feet (next Thursday) go and do likewise. Just a thought, but a hospitable thought.

The Importance of State's Rights

You might recall that last year an international group of astronomers concluded that our solar system does not have nine planets as was previously thought, but eight, plus a whole bunch of sub-planetary detrius floating around. This was particularly bad news for the space-object-formerly-known-as-Pluto (SOFKAP), which was reclassified by this body of astronomers as nothing more than a big rock and is no longer considered a planet. My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas, indeed!

For concerned fans of the planet Pluto, it seemed that nothing could be done to save the little fellow from demotion. Science had spoken. All was lost.

Until now. The state of New Mexico, in a courageous assertion of state's rights, has decided to thwart scientific opinion by recognizing Pluto as a planet while SOFKAP is in its jurisdiction. Forget gay marriage-- if the New Mexican legislature has its way, the SOFKAP scandal will become the biggest issue in state's rights for a long time to come. As the Las Cruces Sun-News reports, "Under a measure approved by the House on Tuesday, Pluto will regain its status as a planet as it passes through New Mexico skies. The joint memorial also declared March 13 as "Pluto Planet Day."" That's right, whenever SOFKAP, the little planet that could, finds itself over the New Mexican skies, it can hold its head up high, a planet once again. And I, for one, am glad that New Mexico has taken a position on this issue. When will other states, or even the federal government, stop wasting time with absolutely pointless legislation and get on with the important work of governing? Thanks to New Mexico, planets of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Bravo!

Living on a Prayer

So I'm watching George Mason play in the Colonial Athletic Association basketball final. If they win, GMU gets to dance again. It's fun being a student at a D1 school. As for further school, I still don't know if I get to go on for more school. Hopefully, I will know soon.

Happy Birthday, Steve!

Happy Birthday, Stephen!

As you creep ever closer to your late twenties, keep in mind some of the people who died at twenty-seven (Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain) and get everything you can out of twenty-six. Suck life from the marrow bones.

Sake wa doko desko.


and then there's this...

Believing Scripture but Playing by Science's Rules

Today’s New York Times has an interesting article about Marcus Ross, a paleontologist who earned his degree at the University of Rhode Island, Believing Scripture but Playing by Science’s Rules. There’s nothing particularly interesting about his dissertation (at least to me), but what is generating some controversy is his methodology—you see, he wrote a perfectly normal thesis about paleontology, separated from his religious beliefs. Or, as the NYT tagline puts it: “As a paleontologist and a creationist, Marcus R. Ross has produced academic work that contradicts his own beliefs.” I wonder if this article raises any thoughts for us about the ethics of positioning ourselves in academic discourses, of “passing,” to borrow a term from critical race studies, in order to get degrees, jobs, grants, promotions, etc. when we know that full disclosure (i.e. “I graduated from Wheaton College”) would be, as they say, the kiss of death.

Some excerpts:

“Dr. Ross is hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a “young earth creationist” — he believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.

“For him, Dr. Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one “paradigm” for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different view just means, he said, “that I am separating the different paradigms.”

“He likened his situation to that of a socialist studying economics in a department with a supply-side bent. “People hold all sorts of opinions different from the department in which they graduate,” he said. “What’s that to anybody else?””

from Tyler

Hey, who wants to go canoeing?

The coolest thing EVER!

You must see this skateboarding bulldog! I'll never be half this cool.

Traber611 Online is dead! Long live Traber611 Online!

Wow. This new format looks great. It's almost as good looking as... oh, never mind. You guys wouldn't want to hear about that sort of thing.

Aeijtzsche Update

Well, Coye sort of asked how I was doing in another thread, so I thought I'd do an official update.

As many of you may or may not know/remember, last April I moved from Grand Rapids to Los Angeles to start working with a small company that handled the Beach Boys archival library. All was well for a time, and getting to know the culture of LA has been fun. What kind of place is this? It's like another country in some ways, or perhaps another universe. For instance, the phrase "no, you can't bring your dog in here" is not understood by naitive Angelinos. A mile in the rest of the country is equal to roughly 2.7 miles here when using powered transportation. People don't understand the concept of "snow".

On the other hand, LA is a place like any other, with lots of completely regular people and such.

It ended up being kind of a tough experience for me in the end now, about a month before Christmas, it became apparent that the company I was working for was about to break up. And, just after the new year, the company formally split up and became a non-entity, and I essentially lost my job, though I still am on call for the occasional errand from my former bosses.

All of that kind of took the wind out of my sails. I don't really feel like living here anymore. I like the area a lot in terms of geography and weather and interest, but I just don't want to be here right now.

I sold some guitars and am living off of the money from those sales. Contemplating my next move. As much as I dislike academia (sorry, Dr. everybody) I'm pretty close to trying to get some degrees and some qualifications. One problem with that is I still don't really have any idea what I want to do with my life, making any sort of specific pursuit difficult to choose.

Anyway, I think I may return to Grand Rapids for a while, do some music-related recording, and whatnot. We'll see.

Any of you DC guys know somebody in the FBI? I wouldn't mind being an elite special agent if somebody could hook that up.

Peace out.

Wilfred Owen

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son...

The DC Informant

Sometimes, people seem to forget that there is a T6 enclave here in DC (among all of the talk of reestablishing a physical T6 community). I'm going to take the liberty of providing a post Morehouse wedding update since they haven't been active bloggers. We (Luke, Brett, DeGroot and myself) were all together last night along with DeGroot's girlfriend for Emily Tangen's birthday dinner at a Moroccan restaurant. Luke, Brett, and Dave all see each other on a very regular basis since they all share an apartment. The hang out of choice is Mario Kart for the GameCube at their place, but Luke and Dave are also big into going to a local soccer bar on weekends and do not discourage Brett and me from joining them. Unfortunately, Dave can't do the athletic stuff much these days, because he is in need of knee surgery and will be out of commission for a couple of weeks after the surgery. Please keep him in your prayers.

It looks like I will be the one most likely to depart from the T6 fellowship first. Brett was considering applying to law school, but he decided not to because working to save his boss's job ate considerably into his LSAT study time. I'm currently waiting to hear back from econ Ph.D. programs after applying to 8 of them. None of the schools are in the DC area. I've been asked a few times if I could go anywhere, where would I go, but I'm trying to avoid answering that question until I really know my choices. Plus, if all continues to be going well, I'm hopeful to be taking someone else's opinion into consideration besides my own. Yes, if any of you are thinking it and don't already know it, I have a girlfriend, who I think is very special. I like talking about her, but if anyone wants to hear more, I'd prefer to fill you in further some way other than the blog. I will say one more thing though that when I went out to Chicago to visit her for a post Christmas vacation I got to see Brad Kaspar. It was very encouraging to hear how his missions work in the Czech Republic is going.

Congratulations!!

AAAHHHH!!! Hearty congratulations to our collegue and friend Coye, who passed his qualifying exam yesterday (no doubt with the flyingest of colours!!!)!!! Although both his and Andy's intelligence pale in comparison to my staggering cognitive faculties (after all, the whole concept of instutionalized hazing...er, qualifying examinations... was my doing!!!), his success is yet worthy of high accolades and much praise.

William Butler Yeats

"Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost."

Games, boys. Games.

New Website Up

Finally.

www.davidnathanaeljones.com

I hear you Strauss

I won't switch over until everyone has been given the option to switch on their dashboard. Please let comment here and let me know when you have the ability to switch. Once I have Andy, Strauss, Coye, Stephen, Ryan, Adam, and--of course--TEFKAMS (i.e. the folks who post semi-regularly) I'll make the switch with my account.

dave

Today's Second Lesson

Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

librarything

Anyone else have their library organized on librarything? I am still in the process of completing mine. I will post the link soon.

Switching to Blogger Beta

My account wizard informs me that I can now switch my blogs over to bloggerBeta. After I research to make sure that group-blogs will still work the same way, I'm going to do it. We're going 2.0 baby! Consider yourselves told.

-The Managment

TWO YEARS!!! and Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everybody... almost. I hope you're all having a blessed advent, anyways. My life at the moment is better than it's been for... well, let's just say I can't really remember things being quite this good. My first year on T6 is, of course, a close second. Maybe a distant second. Medium range? Anyhow, I'm sitting in my appartment, supposedly writing my last paper of the semester (Joseph Conrad, ethics, aesthetics, dangerous books, etc... damn fine work, if I say so myself), and I decided to take a "break" from "writing" and check the old blog. I realized that it's been two years since Dave stuck that first, hopeful post out into the cold vacuum of electronic space. One small step for Dave, we might say. Thanks, Dave. I love this place; I love you guys. I haven't been around much for a the last couple of months, but I hope to show up a little more in the spring. It's great to know that I can find you guys, your lives and your crazy schemes whenever I want to... so thanks everyone who has kept this thing moving along for two, count 'em TWO, trips around the sun. So, I should get back to work, but Merry Christmas, everyone, and a very special Merry Christmas to Dusty, as always.
Peace

Commune musings

Rachel and I were on a road trip to Phoenix a few weeks ago and got into a brainstorming session about the commune-in-planning. Here's a few notes for discussion about what it might actually LOOK like, in no particular order...

- We should be thinking about doing this in phases, something that's already been discussed a little bit. It might be something along these lines... Phase 1) Getting into the same time zone or zip code with outside employment. Phase 2) Intentionally spending more time together in fellowship. Phase 3) Evaluate our gifts and skills; begin to find ways to be co-dependant and supportive of each other. Phase 4) Develop a plan for outward ministry... Etc.

- We may want to have a sort of formal "steering committee", one that would provide initial leadership and help choose a church and community.

- We may want to commit to each attending the same church (of course, not an easy proposition due to variety of faith backgrounds). This would reinforce our internal community, and that relationship would also support the church. Having everyone at different churches might drain our ability to minister to each other if we are also being involved in the local church body.

- Understand that WE would not be a church to ourselves. We don't have the church-planting experience, and I think that we would still need to be a part of a larger body of Christ for accountability and support. It would also be a lot to bite off if we tried to make this community living thing work and start a church at the same time.

- Seek out remote or on-site community advisors (elder mentors) in order to have wisdom from older generation.

- For participation in this community, have a clear agreement on what is expected as well as how and why someone may have to leave. Participation is based on willingness to sacrifice some of your own preferences and comfort for the sake of the body, not based on an enforced commitment.

- At a later phase of the community, we'd have to have an idea of whether there would be financial sharing. This brings up possibility of establishing a formal non-profit status.

- We were thinking that it would be helpful to have some sort of leadership group at a minimum, with input from all adults of the community. Think of maybe a rotating headship, with a president-sort of position to handle day-to-day admin decisions. That position would be part of a committee with the last pres and next pres in order to preserve continuity.

Anybody have comments or other thoughts?