A Good Day For Questions

Perhaps it has something to do with deciding that I was going to dress like a grad student and not like a musician. Perhaps it was the autumnal chill that has settled (finally) in the Town of Boston complete with the beginnings of color change in the leaves. Whatever it was, today was a great day for questions. There are times when I feel the only questions I ask when I'm reading something or listening to a lecture are "what are you trying to say?" or "is this supposed to sound like nonsense?" Today was much different. Maybe Sartre is an easy target but his concept of the relation between perception and imagination just wasn't cutting it for me.

So I asked, "Is there ever a phenomena that exceeds the imaginative capacity of the subject?" Put another way, is there ever anything that presents itself to us that is bigger and beyond our ability to understand it? There are obvious theological undertones within the question but I think that there are non-religious phenomena that exceed our conception of them. Like another person.

That was my favorite question from today and, as most good questions do, it lead to more questions. So I ask this:

Is God a phenomenon that would exceed our imaginative concepts? Does God appear as a phenomenon at all? Is it through other phenomena that God is perceived?

Just Bring It Down From The Mountain To Me

I've been thinking about community and identity today (amongst other things). What does it mean to live in a community that would welcome others and yet maintain a sense of what that community's identity is?

I've also been thinking about this line from a Derek Webb song "new law" which I heard while listening to the Speaking of Faith podcast on new monastics...

(Shane Claiborne and the New Monasticism)

...anyway...the line goes like this

"don't teach me about/moderation and liberty/i just want a shot of grape juice"

hmmm....

Something New

I thought that I would start something new here. I just got tired of the look of the old site...as tends to happen every 3 years or so. I remember changing the colors to look like a book I got for my thesis because I really liked the design...but now I need something other than green(s).

I've been thinking recently about what it means to be an evangelical. I can't find anybody with "straight" answer. So what do you think it is?

I tend to explain it in two ways:

[1] from the greek evangelion. It means good news. But it is also the word also means the gospel as in the writings about Jesus. I tend to see Jesus and the gospels as the hermeneutic 'lens' through which the rest of scripture is read if it is to be a Christian reading of scripture. As a result, this reading, and the tradition which follows it, is both the narrative tradition I am a part of and the one that I am also curious about. So the gospels and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the hermeneutic 'lens' through which I engage in questioning my world.

In this sense I am evangelical (adjective).

[2] A term used to explain a large group of predominantly conservative, non-mainline Christians. Evangelical Christianity has it's own culture and traditions, arguably it's own liturgy even though it might not be in a published form. (Notice how everyone knows when to stand and sit during a worship service and how familiar the order of the service is and you'll be witnessing something of an evangelical liturgy.) This is the culture out of which I was raised and from which I became disillusioned but never really left.

In this sense I am or used to be an evangelical (noun).

But what separates evangelical as a descriptor from being added to some catholics or even eastern orthodox practitioners? Why would some intellectual movements (such as radical orthodoxy) have such an aversion to the term?

I have my thoughts on the matter...but my church history is rusty so I'm eliciting the thoughts of others.

let the great experiment begin.