Kangareynolds 

King of infinite space (were it not that I have bad dreams)

I'm sorry if this bores you to tears, but I'm pretty sure that at least a few of you (Stephen, Andy, Dave) will find this interesting. I've been doing some more reading through Jack Caputo's commentary in Deconstruction in a Nutshell (a book that I would place at the top of Dave's book list if he has any bookstore gift certificates left), and I thought I would try sharing enough of this fabulous book to entice you into reading it for yourselves. Everyone who plans on spending any more time in the university (or who ever feels tempted to comment on Derrida, "deconstruction", or "post-modernism") would benefit immeasurably from this relatively short and lucid book. It is very difficult to pick only a few sentences to represent either deconstruction or Caputo's work in this book, but I chose this collection of passages (from pages 54-55, if you're interested) because they are related to a post I've been wanting to write but never found the right time (I would have called it "Is Enlightenment Rationality a Phallacy?"). Anyways, I hope this is as good for you as it is for me:

"While Derrida is often made out to be the sworn enemy of the Enlightenment, he would contend, and we with him, that in fact the deconstruction he advocates is a continuation of what is best about the Enlightenment, but by another means...For it may be that what the Enlightenment seeks cannot be found on the basis that the Enlightenment lays...Derrida's doubts about the absolute judicial authority claimed by and for Enlightenment Reason, by and for 'pure Reason' (capitalized), do not constitute an outright attack upon reason, upon giving good reasons, the best you can under the circumstances. If the old Enlightenment makes everything turn on 'Reason,' the New Enlightenment wants to know the reason for reason, wants to take responsibility for what at a specific point in history calls itself reason and the age of reason, and to consider carefully what is being declared 'irrational' in the name of reason...But the effect of this new Enlightenment would be not to jettison reason but to redefine and redescribe it, for example, by steering clear of the simple opposition of reason and faith and seeing the extent to which reason is deeply saturated by faith...In the new Enlightenment, things are always more unlikely and complicated than the simple oppositions favored by the old Aufklarers-- like Kant and Marx-- might suggest."

Other fantastic titles for things I need to write (or wrote but gave a more mundane nomenclature) include : "Banging in the Bower: Ante-lapsarian Depictions of Human Sexuality in Milton's Paradise Lost" and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Beings unto Death: When Stoppard Stops Hiding Heiddeger".

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Isaac Watts, 1707

Dave Update

Ok, so it has been a while since I've written anything of an autobiographical nature on this site; and since I have five minutes to spare, I might as well do the ditty now. "Do the ditty" is a phrase which I just coined, I believe it means, "write an updated autobiographical blurb."

David Jones is currently sitting in the Buswell library of Wheaton College writing his most current autobiographical blurb. Recently, he's been hard at work putting together a groundbreaking training website for the ten Salvation Army corps who have entered the final stage of grant applications for Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Centers. "I've learned a lot of things as I've worked on this project," says Jones, who is known for his earthshatterly concrete descriptions of his vocational activities. The inside scoop has it he's currently writing articles and researching existing web-resource to help Salvationists incorporate wise principles in everything from urban ministry to fund-raising.

Jones lives with his wife Sarah on the third floor of the Amli apartments near the Danada shopping center. The Danada shopping center was named after Dan and Ada Rice. Isn't that interesting?

Sarah Jones is currently growing at an exponential rate in her general midriff area. She attends a weekly birthing course with her husband, David. This course involves a stuffed placenta, ambient music, and bloody videos, and may not be suitable for anyone under the age of 12.

David Jones is now currently wondering why, this autobiographical sketch is 1) written in a biographical style 2) not so much about David Jones any more 3) thinking how he should go pick up his wife because it is now 5:00

---

Oh yeah! Guess what? I got into Gordon Conwell a few months ago! So we're planning to move to the Boston Area May 15. Feel free to move out there with me!

OK, time to go now.

Terry Schiavo

Ok, since most of our conversations seem to be stalled right now, I want to jump into a new one: the Terry Schiavo situation. It strikes me that this is a tremendously important issue for all sorts of reasons and is on my mind (and probably yours) all the time as the media gives us a minute by minute accounting of this woman hanging between life and death. So, what do you think? Should her husband have the right to decide what is in the best interest of his wife, to interpret her desire to be kept alive or not by artificial means? Or, conversely, should the parents be able to legally trump the husband (who is, after all, her legal guardian) when they disagree with his decisions? And why in the world has this become so politicized? Schiavo has become exemplary—she is able to function as a signifier in this discourse because she is both just like so many other people (and thus, a representative example), and also somehow different from all the rest such that she stands out and is separate from all those in her condition. And it is this difference that most interests me. What is it about her, in particular, that allows hers to be the one “personal” life and death decision, out of the hundreds made each day, that Congress, and even the President of the United States, takes notice of and tries to intervene in? Think about that—Congress passed a law, that Bush quickly signed, that applies to the body of an individual. This use of federal power is, to my knowledge, without precedent. But even as I say that, I think back to the one rainy day we had over spring break when I sat for a few hours and watched as Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa and the rest testified to a congressional subcommittee, again about their bodies. To what extent should Congress be involved in baseball (which, at its core, is business and entertainment) or the Schiavo case? Should the federal government have the right to exert power over individual bodies? And what does it mean that the Republican party, traditional champion of limited government and states rights, is so aggressively seeking to expand the power of the legislature into these other regions? Maybe those of you with more economic/political science backgrounds can help me out with this. But I think we can all agree that, no matter where we come down in all of this, something very interesting is happening in this country of ours. I have my theories, which I will share in a few days when I have more time, but until then… let’s have a conversation.

ok

I'm bored.

The Big Board

I got some great news yesterday in the I-want-my-PhD category: the English department from the University of Texas at Austin sent me an email informing me that I will be offered admission for the fall and they are currently trying to get a funding package together for me! I still haven't heard from the other schools (it's hard to count the wait list at Boston as hearing from them since I still don't know if I'm in or out), so I don't know exactly WHERE I'll be next year, but I do know that I WILL BE IN GRAD SCHOOL somewhere! Needless to say, I'm now breathing much easier than I was a couple of days ago. So, for those of you who enjoy following my future plans or who have placed bets on what schools will reject me, I offer (in no particular order) this comprehensive list of my admissions status:

University of Pennsylvania: admission: NO
Columbia University: admission: NO [weeping and gnashing of teeth]
University of Texas: admission: YES; funding: 6+ years of TA and AI funding; Response: I'm going to UT in August!
Indiana University: admission: YES; funding: full after 1st year; Response: I turned down the offer.
Boston College: admission: Waiting list; funding: waiting list; Response: I took myself off the list.
University of Notre Dame: admission: NO [HA! who cares!]

I will update the Big Board as my status at each school changes.

Uncle Wystan II

This is intended as a companion to the discussion that Dave and I have been carrying on about theology and the Academy (it started in our discussion on Fish). It is also interesting in and of itself for a bunch of artists and (social) scientists like ourselves. Here is the opening passage from Auden's "Postscript: Christianity & Art" (from "The Shield of Persius"); it has some interesting implications for artists and scientists, that is, for the academy:

"Art is compatible with polytheism and Christianity, but not with philosophical materialism; science is compatible with philosophical materialism and Christianity, but not with polytheism. No artist or scientist, however, can feel comfortable as a Christian; every artist who happens also to be a Christian wishes he could be a polytheist; every scientist in the same position that he could be a philosophical materialist. And with good reason. In a polytheist society, the artists are its theologians; in a materialist society, its theologians are the scientists. To a Christian, unfortunately, both art and science are secular activities, that is to say, small beer.

"No artist, qua artist, can understand what is meant by God is Love or Thou shalt love thy neighbor because he doesn't care whether God and men are loving or unloving [Coye: only interesting or uninteresting]; no scientist, qua scientist, can understand what is meant because he doesn't care whether to-be-loving is a matter of choice or a matter of compulsion."

What do you think?

Words of Wisdom from Uncle Wystan

I've been re-reading a collection of W.H. Auden's essays called "The Shield of Persius" (it's part of a larger collection entitled "The Dyer's Hand"). Auden really was one of the greatest minds of the last century (and one of the greatest English-speaking thinkers ever), and I thought I would pass on a few grains of his wisdom from this particular collection:
"Debt or credit cannot be measured in quantitative terms; a relation between two persons is just if both take no more than they need and give as much as they can, and unjust if either takes more or gives less than this."

Guess what still exists...

No silly, not Reebok Pump shoes!

THIS!

Links

I don't know if anyone else noticed, but our beloved Davey added a space for links to the right-hand column of our blog. (Thank you, Davey). I had been thinking for about a month that I should ask Dave if this were possible, and one day I find that it is has become a reality before I even asked. (You're great, Dave). And the green blogskin is pretty sweet. (Nice choice, Dave. [in a Walford voice] "I like it.") Well, I could go on parenthetically praising Dave all day, but I have a purpose to this post. We should all post candidates for linkage as comments on this post, use some system to decide which are link-worthy and then get Dave to link them up on our template. Of course, not everything needs a permanent link, and those things can still be hypertext linked from posts, but this is a way we can share our best bookmarks with each other and anyone else who is eavesdropping/stumbles into our blog. Yippee.

Right with God - Christians in DC

I'd be interested in hearing what some of you think of this article if you are willing to take the time to read it, preferably before reading comments, if any occur. I definitely know the sub-culture that they were writing about. (And if anyone is wondering, the Jeff Hassler in this article is the Jeff Hassler that we went to school with.)

washingtonpost.com
Right With God
Evangelical Conservatives Find a Spiritual Home on the Hill
By Hanna Rosin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 6, 2005; Page D01

Lyric Hassler talks about her Christian rock phase the way some of us talk about crushes on Sean Cassidy, or acid-wash jeans, or the hundreds of hours we wasted memorizing Pink Floyd lyrics. "Uchhhhhh, embarrassing," she says. The gaudy soundtrack of the "Christian ghetto" she lived in as a teenager. Lyric the high school "Jesus freak," chastising her church youth group for wasting time on frivolous pizza parties, ignoring any TV that wasn't "The 700 Club."
"It just makes me wince," she says now that her ghetto self is long gone, now that she's made it here, to Washington, to the languid Friday afternoon tea time in a congressional cafeteria, to her starched white blouse and a stint on the presidential campaign and a husband who works in the Senate, to a salon of what she calls "Christian intellectuals."

click here to read more

Since we're never finished anyway....

Coye, remember this? I want to pick it up again, but I'm too lazy to keep going back to a million months ago.

so it begins

Oh, boy. I was roused from sleep today by a phone call from a representative of Boston College's English department. He was calling to inform me that I am on the waiting list for PhD adsmission and funding and that in a few weeks they should have a good idea about my odds of getting into BC. So begins the agonizing part of waiting. I'm sure that Andy can vouch for me on this: while doing the applications is hell, you really don't feel the pressure of waiting for them from the time you drop the last one in the mailbox until it's time to hear back from the programs. January and February are actually a nice break from anxiety. Once that first school replies, though, the game is back in full swing and everyday brings the expectation of those painfully thin envelopes and a sliver of hope for a fat, juicy fellowship.

Who or What?

Our recent discussion has brought an old philosophical question to my mind. I first remember hearing this discussed by Jacques Derrida, although the question is much older than his work, and I have thought about it considerably in the last year and a half. When we say that we love someone, what is it that we love? In particular, do we love the Who-- the absolute particularity of the person we love-- or do we love the What-- do we love that person's characteristics or qualities or the things they do (ie, something [perhaps even everything] about them)? This is a difficult question, and perhaps one that isn't quite answerable: on the one hand, how can you love someone apart from their characteristics (what is left to love), but saying we love the characteristics and not the person means that we would/could love ANYONE with those qualities (which makes the individual person interchangeable or accidental). The question is equally applicable to friendship as to romantic love, but eros has an exclusive nature (as opposed to friendship's openness) that makes it a particulary fruitful ground for addressing the question of "do we love the Who or the What?" While many of us might characterize our current living situations as "lonely", I know that there are many among us who are or have been in love, so I think we can all benefit from hearing one another's experiences. Apart from being discussion-worthy on it's own merits (its repercussions multiply as in an echo chamber), I also feel that this question has implications for two conversations we are currently carrying on: of course, it has a lot to do with our debate about dating services, but I think it might also have less obvious implications for our conversation about civil unions. So what do you think: do I love her absolute and irreplaceable particularity, or do I love her virtues, qualities and characteristics?

Custer

Custer just sent out another update so i'm gonna share it with ya'll.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Thank you all for your prayers. God is clearly, and at times not so clearly (for my eyes), at work here in Fresnillo.
For those of you just joining us, this letter is intended to connect you with my life, ministry, and the people we minister to here. I have been extremely encouraged recently at the number of people in the last month that wrote me and asked to receive these updates. Thank you!
I have also been encouraged recently in my musical endeavors with my housemate, Chris. We had a rough start last summer and I was not looking forward to spending a whole year living with him. Through prayer and the wise and timely counsel of Jonathan and Doug, we have become close friends. He loves music and I studied voice at Wheaton, so we make a good team. He has incredible natural talent, and I have the ability to tell him what he is doing when he plays something wonderful. I am teaching him to read music and he is teaching me how to cut loose as a musician. We have written two worship songs now and we look forward to sharing them with the team on Tuesday at our worship time. We will also led worship last week at our cell group meeting. Chris has been a great friend over these past few months and a great outlet for my musicianship. Praise God that He gave us hands to play and voices to sing praises to Him!
Cell groups are also a new experience for me here. I joined the “Alpha” group led by Pastor Doug and Juan Camarillo. Tuesday is our fifth meeting and I am excited to see how this group will grow and develop. I felt a lot of encouragement and good spirits two weeks ago, especially in our icebreaker. We played the game Jenga: wooden blocks are built up in a tower and we each take turns removing one from a part of the tower and placing it on top. Everyone in our group participated and we got to 31 levels before it toppled! I have never seen that before. One woman from the colonia in particular, is generally reserved and was very nervous about participating. We all encouraged her, helping her pick out a block, and she did very well! You could see by the smile on her face at the end of the turn that she knew she could trust this group. That is a huge thing here in the colonia. Lack of trusts exists abundantly between neighbors and even within families. Praise God for his relationship-building through the cell groups!
I would appreciate your continued prayers for my decision about next year. I am trying my best to seek out God’s will for this coming year and I don’t yet know where He is leading me. Please also pray for the next team that will start working together in 4 short months. Please also pray about becoming a partner in my ministry through regular prayer and financial donations. We cannot do anything without prayer and funds. My support for this year is not up to where it needs to be at the moment, but I am trusting God for His provision. Please pray about your possible involvement in that provision.
Thank you for your interest and prayers for this ministry that is drawing people closer to the heart of God – growing missionaries (me!) and the families with whom we work. Blessings to you all.

By His Grace,
Stephen

Judge Lefkow

Both Judge Lefkow and her husband were Wheaton grads and first met in the library. Not sure if you guys heard about this story.

Destroy the Earth

http://tinyurl.com/4r67n