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“Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality." Jules de Gaultier

Thursday, July 15, 2004

blogging topics which will probably go unrealized:

its vacation -- shouldn't i have more thoughts simmering than time to write them on a blog?

1. shouldn't libertarians *want* the government to stay out of regulating marraige? + if Christians believe (a la Romans 1) that Jesus calls people unto himself by revealing himself throughout the world *&* if marriage is the best metaphor for God's consumation of his love for us *then* doesn't it make sense that *encouraging* gay marraige would allow everyone who partook in that part of God's truth to be led even closer to Jesus? (Do you think I may still have a career with Focus on the Family?)

2.what if everybody thought that part of the legacy they left for their world was some stories. Some people would continue the great oral tradition of storytelling, some people would blog a lot, some people would make children's books for their kids and grandkids, other people would make little movies. And if we started thinking of *our* stories as reconsistituting a seam between our selves and the *place* worlds we lived in -- then even this little books and stories and movies and songs would have audiences...

3. i'm mostly a *post* evangelical because i'm so desperately concerned that the evangelistic / missional impulse to *get it right* and to *convince* an audience makes every story go south. It chokes out the ambivalences that all good stories need.

4. I'm feeling like all my marxism and critical theory is making me feel too heavy about the world. that my stories (particularly the dark play that i'm currently trapped inside) have been too sincere. I love the flitting, easygoing COMIC FRAME that my Grandma Marge and Grandpa Andy use to talk about their complex and difficult lives. And I think that maybe I need to write an essay where Grandma Marge and the narrator of "Unbearable Lightness of Being" hash it out. Because unlike Tomas' lightness, my Lampiris family heritage is rooted in great tragedy *&* laughter. And unlike the surrealists exisistential irony, the Lampiris laughter is always both self-effacing & heartily *with*...

5. I leave for *the cabin" in one day.




"Treasure Island" (its other name) has been one of the deep resources of continuity and peace in my life, and when our family talked about the eventual possibility of being forced to sell it -- we argued about the merits of using profits to invest in a new family cottage (more accessible)? and honor Grandparents Rudds that way OR -- my dad suggested -- what about the horrific poverty of the world and our relative wealth? Could we invest that profit in a way that would satisfy more people in more diverse ways? It's the question of Mary Magdelene's absurd perfume performance art -- abject generousity VS. settling in the post-babylonic Jerusalem and "planting gardens" -- investing in the systems that will provide long term resource for the Kingdom and world?

posted by Redbaerd at 1:02 AM

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Andy:

I'm curious about this portion of your last post:

"the evangelistic / missional impulse to *get it right* and to *convince* an audience makes every story go south" Can you add a little more to the idea?

Mike (not quite a blogger) of Mike & Jenn

4:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Gov't should not be the entity that defines what marriage is, yes.

But why think that we reflect the consummation of God's love just in virtue of being married? If to be married is to participate in God's truth, then why prohibit polygamists, twelve years olds, stupid straight jocks, man/boy love advocates from doing so? I’m sure they would want the opportunity to reflect God’s love in this way. Or *maybe* there are additional constraints--moral or theological--that would preclude them from participating in a properly *Christian* marriage. But if those constraints apply to *them*, then...

You see the point. You need some non-arbitrary way to show that some groups can't participate Christian marriage but gays (are gays even a “group”?) can. There is certaintly no easy way to do this.

-Futureman (sorry dude, I ain't gonna register)

2:30 PM  
Blogger Redbaerd said...

hey mike! great to "hear" your voice --

i'll probably write a long blog about it someday (?) but right now, I'm trying to say that stories-in-the-service-of-evangelism always seem to be either too didactic or too simplistic to do justice to the characters / plot / or maybe even "truth" of the story...and my experience in evangelicalism has been that people's vocations / voices / lives (particularly whenever they begin to move toward the public sphere) toward the evangelistic-impulse. (i'm starting to see i can't possibly do these ideas justice in brief...) which, i'm thinking, then inhibits the author's ability to tell the (ugly parts of the) truth and/or situates the most important IMPACT of any story within the personal-faith-decisions of the audience...geez, did that make any sense? so fun to catch up on your life through jen's NONblog. how's lawyering?

11:08 AM  
Blogger Redbaerd said...

hey "futureman"...

i think my argument is willing to go where you take it...

i'm suggesting that God uses marraige as a metaphor for his love and work with his people in many kinds of contexts that reveal dimensions of his character / intent / work.

and so i am saying, in fact, that polygamists, twelve year olds, stupid straight jocks (?) & MBLAs *would* all have the opportunity to LEARN about how God's love for God's people is and is-not like their experience of marraige (were they to marry)...and would, as a result, come to know God more deeply (and know God to be more or less like their own experiences of marriage).

Certainly i'm not arguing that marraige qua marraige is a "reflection" of God's love --> Brittany Spears' 54 hours and even my own delightful partnership for Lynn would do God a disservice.

I'm not (personally) too interested in the processes by which the church (or Church if you'd rather) defines a "properly *Christian* marriage" -- though I would agree that advocates and detractors of the Gay Marraige movement would agree with you that there are moral and theological constraints that frame this hermeneutic debate.

I agree that the process isn't easy, but I'd also argue that there are *no* "non-arbitrary ways (depending, of course, on your definition of "arbitrary") to determine anything...but that social constructionist approach doesn's surprise you...probably...

11:20 AM  

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